“I’m sorry,” George said, wondering for a moment if he should tell her, “ I can’t tell you, until I’ve talked to him.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I should have told you all this before. I feel better now. But I was so worried about Peter. Has it caused you a lot of trouble?”

“Only a day trip to Scilly,” he said lightly. He continued more seriously: “When you saw Adam in Fenquay on the day of his accident, you thought he might have been talking to someone in the coffee shop. Can you remember anything about the other person? Could it have been Peter for instance?”

She looked at him sharply, but answered honestly.

“It could have been anyone. I think it was an older person, but I don’t know, why. I really didn’t get a good enough view. I’m sure that it was Adam, though.”

“Will you be all right here on your own? Should I phone Jenny Kenning and ask her to come over? I’m sure that she’s a good listener.” He looked at his watch. It was three thirty. Bernard Cranshaw would soon be back from school. “ I must go now.”

“I’m fine. Barnaby will be waking soon. I can talk to him. And I’m going out tomorrow. Ella has asked me to give her a hand at the Windmill. Sandra’s gone to a wedding. It’ll be fun and she’s going to pay me.”

As they got up, and George prepared to go, he took her hand.

“I don’t want to frighten you, but I want you to promise that you will be careful. Don’t let anyone into the house, not even someone you know, or someone who seems quite harmless. And don’t tell anyone that you saw Adam in Fenquay that day. That really is important.”

“Okay,” she said, not recognizing the seriousness of his voice. She was feeling happier after her talk with George. “But don’t worry. No one ever comes to visit me.”

As he left the house George could hear Barnaby talking loudly and incomprehensibly to himself, and rattling the bars of his cot for attention.

They had seen the black stork. They had seen it early in the morning after their night in the signal box. At the same time George would have been in the helicopter on his way to the Scillies. Tina was nearly asleep and felt very hungry, but she shared with the others a secret elation, a deep uncomplicated joy at seeing the bird, which carried them, and her, further north, to new places and different birds.

She had resisted at first. It was only Thursday. She could still get back in time for lectures and an important tutorial on Friday, but the others would not hear of it. It was decided that if no rarity turned up elsewhere, they would stay in the Highlands until Sunday, and see some of the breeding birds. Peter especially was excited by this. So they went to the Cairngorms. In the Old Caledonian Forest they looked for crested tit and capercaillie. The sun slanted through the pines on to the moist floor of the forest. It was moss green and boggy, and there was a smell of pines and of water. Further up the mountain they saw ptarmigan, on the bare boulder scree there were dotterel, and away over a long, narrow loch they saw golden eagle.