There was no sound of any other person on the footpath, but she was accustomed to the silence of the road at this late hour. The public houses that she had passed on Camden Street and South Richmond Street had been noisy and filled with loud-voiced men and women bawling and shouting. Out here it was as quiet as the countryside. A new terrace of lawn-fronted red-brick houses was hidden across the road in the fog. The southern side, along which she now made her way, was still bounded by meadow fields.

She sensed the pressure of the cold air pushing behind her a moment before she heard the hissing of the steam tram on its outward run from the city. When she glanced over her shoulder she saw it forming out of the mist behind her, its bull’s-eye lamps deploying a meagre illumination over the cobbles. She caught a momentary glimpse of passengers in the dimly lit interior. Men with hats, huddled in overcoats, drawn in tight against the November air. Two or three tired-looking women, probably making their way back to the houses where they worked in service. It would be the last tram from the city for the night. She heard the church clock strike the half-hour after eleven as the vehicle disappeared into mist.

There was no street light where Blackberry Lane rose from the fields to meet the road, but she knew the bramble hedges that grew at the place where she would turn. She could make her way blindfolded to the cottage at the end of the rutted laneway. Even in the darkness, she knew how to navigate the cart tracks, ankle-deep with rainwater. She knew how to avoid the thorns and the nettles on either side. She could not afford to destroy her boots or muddy her waitress uniform.

Perhaps ten yards up the lane, she knew, a wooden gate gave entry to the meadow field. The children of Blackberry Lane were in and out through it, winter and summer, tolerated by the farmer who accepted the futility of trying to keep them out in the first place. Now it was invisible, obscured by the mist. But she knew that something was wrong when she heard the scrape of its iron bolt being drawn back.

She had walked the lane many times in darkness. She was not frightened by its night sounds. Foxes, rats, badgers, sometimes a wandering cow pushing its head through the bramble. But she knew that none of these creatures could draw a gate bolt. She froze, straining to see through the fog.