Hiraeth
HEER-ithe
n.Homesickness for a place you cannot return to, or that never quite existed.
WelshEstablished linguistic term
The House That Isn't There
The village had a website now. Priya found it at two in the morning, the way you find things at two in the morning, and there was a photograph of the lane taken from roughly where the bus used to stop.
She studied it for a long time. The lane was tarmac now. There was a car in it, a silver hatchback belonging to nobody she knew, parked outside a house that had been painted a colour her grandmother would have had opinions about.
Everything was there. Nothing was there.