Joan looks sidelong at Merle through the rear view, studying his lumpy profile. He reminds her of the kind of men her father hung out with, the kind of person her father occasionally thought he was. Merle has proven, to Joan's own fear and shame, that he's much smarter than her father ever was, and a lot more cunning. A lot more cruel. Could Peter Dority have turned his gun on a kid caught out alone? Maybe if there was something to steal, but never for as long a haul as this. No, Merle has the casual cruelty of her father, but he also has something deeper and meaner.

Which is all a lot of pretty words for something more simple than it feels. Like it or not, simply by the virtue of lowest common denominators, Merle Dixon is the key to Fairyland.

"Why d'you live there?"