He has had the franchise ten years, and business has been good, more or less. There has been some luck in his life. The station is on the main road if you're heading for Limerick or Galway, Mallow, the west. The shop is popular with people who live nearby. Outside the light thickens and purples the roadway. It glints off the roofs of many houses, a sight that deeply satisfies him. He'll close at eleven, go home and have supper, a few drinks. The weather is expected to last. He can hear the birds settle in their nests in a swathe of waste ground across the road.

Just before nine o'clock a car pulls up by the waste ground. A skinny man takes out a hammer and a timber post and thumps the post into the ground. Then he tacks up a piece of paper, covers it with clingfilm, to protect it should the weather change, and the weather will change. The job takes five minutes.

Morrie is excited. There has been talk that city hall is going to do something with the waste ground. A little park, or houses. Either way, good news for his garage. He crosses the road and reads what turns out to be a planning notice. Harland Holdings has made an application for a retail/service station.

The gases in his stomach bubble and whine, louder than the surfing traffic and shrieking teenagers. He locks up the shop and is home before half-nine.

His wife is shaking lettuce dry in the kitchen sink, and the thought comes to him that the motion of her wrist is overtly sexual. Surprise slips over her pretty features. What are you doing here at this time, she says. Jean, he says, would you make me a cup of strong tea. He sits at the kitchen table, and his head falls into his hands. Sweetheart what's the matter, she says, and she is behind him quickly, her damp hands on his neck. There's a planning notice gone in, he says, for the land across the road, retail/service station.

The fluorescent kitchen light overtakes the last of sunlight's glow, and he sees his wife reflected in the window. They can't do that Morrie, she says, not just across the road from us. We'll object.

But that is business for you. The city hall can sell that land to whoever it wants and bam, goodnight Vienna. Even so, the next morning, a little after ten, he makes his way to town, wearing his one suit. He and Jean tried to brush it off last night. They assured each other the new station would never go up and drank two bottles of wine on deckchairs in the back garden. The kids were inside watching TV, oblivious. Even if it happens, he and Jean said, we have our customers, people are loyal, you have to trust the good in people. They left the windows open in the bedroom and fell asleep as an unclean musk floated in from the river. He awoke an hour later and was quickly at the kitchen table, with the books out. A harsh eye showed him that in reality they weren't so very far from the precipice. If they lost a quarter of their trade, they would be close to trouble. What happens, he thinks on his way into town, if we lose half?