The New Forest is the unfamiliar landscape Don and Blake enter after leaving Cornwall, a place of busy roads, full-leafed woods, heather-covered heath and open public paths. It frames their visit to Holly Walsh and a later meeting with Anna Marchant, setting scenes of private strain and uncertain information against a broad, sociable countryside.

Setting and First Arrival

Blake has never been to the New Forest before. The journey takes place on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon, when cars towing caravans and horseboxes crowd the roads, and picnickers and hikers are out among the woods and heath. Wandering ponies and cattle add to the sense of a landscape with its own visible life; compared with Cornwall, everything seems softer and sleeker, and the distance between the regions registers as more than a change of scenery.

Their destination is Furzelands, Holly Walsh’s home on the outskirts of Brockenhurst. It is not the thatched, old-fashioned cottage Blake had imagined, but a modern bungalow in a cul-de-sac of similar homes, with a large garden and abundant flowers. The carefully tended grounds make a precise counterpoint to the imagined rural idyll: the setting is domestic and maintained, not picturesque in the way Blake expected.

Heathland Meetings

The New Forest also supplies the open-air setting for Don and Blake’s appointment with Anna Marchant. They arrive early at a nearly full parking area facing heathland popular with walkers and dog-walkers on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Anna is not late: her mint-green Fiat turns into the car park and moves slowly toward them, the driver’s eyes hidden behind sunglasses. The approach makes the meeting visible and ordinary, even as Don and Blake wait with questions they do not yet know how to resolve.

As the afternoon grows late, Don and Blake remain in the MG, looking out at the green stretch of heath. Fewer people are crossing it than when they arrived, though the sun is still high. The changing number of walkers gives the conversation a quiet temporal frame: the landscape remains open, but the public movement around them is thinning while they test what Anna has told them.

Narrative Function

The New Forest’s spacious, accessible landscape contrasts with the suspicion that gathers inside the car. Don receives a call that proves not to be from Fran, then listens as Anna’s account is considered; Blake doubts the story of an anonymous wealthy American in Chicago funding treatment, particularly the explanation that the donor’s identity must remain private. A folded copy of the Financial Times, with Perkins’s name and phone number written on it, carries another investigative lead into this pastoral setting. The heath is not an escape from the inquiry: it becomes the backdrop against which the pair compare what they have been told with what they can believe.