She knocked at the front door but there was no reply, so she made her way through the overgrown garden to the kitchen. The door was pushed to but not properly shut. Perhaps the wood was so warped by the damp that it was impossible to close it firmly. She knocked again, shivering because the back of the house was always in shadow and always cold. Still there was no reply. With some difficulty Molly pulled open the door and went inside. The room was warm but with none of the blazing, comforting heat she remembered from her childhood. She opened the range and saw that it was nearly out. There were just a few red embers at the bottom of the stove. She took logs from a pile in the corner and threw them in, then opened the flue to let the air get to them.

‘Ursula!’ she shouted, but without much hope of reply. Ursula would be out on the fells. She had always seen being confined indoors as a form of imprisonment. The Land Rover was still in the yard so she would not be far away. She would be looking out for Molly’s car and soon she would return.

Molly was not shocked by the state of the kitchen. Her own, if marginally cleaner, was just as untidy. But she was disturbed by the lack of evidence that any cooking was done there. There were no fresh vegetables and the pans were dusty, obviously not recently used. Ursula had always been a good if haphazard cook and Molly hoped that now she was feeding herself properly. Molly began to open cupboards, thinking that she might make some soup, have something hot for when Ursula came back. The range was not yet warm enough for cooking so she lit a gas ring and put the kettle on it to make tea.

In the fridge there was an indication that Ursula had recently been shopping. There were tubs of margarine and packets of ready-wrapped cheese, a two-pint carton of milk, unopened. The milk bottles delivered by the milkman had obviously been emptied the day before – by those cats, Molly thought – and had surprisingly been washed out and set upside down to drain. In the fridge there was a meat pie, obviously homemade, with one portion removed. Molly was reassured by the pie – it showed after all that Ursula was looking after herself.