Nick laughed. ‘That’s just Sadie. She won’t do you any harm, her peck’s worse than her bite, as it were.’

‘What is it?’ said Stephen. He looked horrified.

‘Guinea-fowl. She’s our self-appointed guard dog. Sexy Sadie, she’s named after.’ Nick was utterly unperturbed by the young man’s reaction. Stephen felt almost indignant. Nobody had warned him that England had scary wildlife.

‘Are they, you know, native?’

‘Lord, no.’ Nick laughed and went to open the boot of the car, so Stephen could get his case and duffel bag.

The peculiar bird retreated and the two went into the house, along a flagged path which led to a little side door. Straight away they were in the kitchen. When Stephen pictured Stony Hill Farm, afterwards, it was always to this room that his memory returned. He had never been in a room like it. The kitchen at home was a neat galley, brightly lit with a fluorescent strip. It had a hatch in the wall through to the dining area. There was just kitchen stuff in there: plates and glasses neatly stowed in wall-units, the fridge, a compact electric cooker. This room was full of things that didn’t have a lot to do with cooking, and furthermore it looked none too clean. The pine table was covered with papers and books. The whole of one wall was taken up with a dresser whose shelves were stacked with ceramic figures of men and women in historical clothing – later, Stephen learned that these were Staffordshire figures, collected by Celia Clarke’s mother. Opposite the dresser was a big range cooker in a tiled alcove, with a patchy old velvet armchair next to it. What looked like a fur rug on the chair turned out to be a dog, which raised its head as they came into the room. There wasn’t a lot of wall space left, what with the dresser and the range; but what there was had been rag-rolled in a rich, uneven terracotta paint. A cupboard door had old, curling cuttings from newspapers pinned to it. A thin stream of classical music came from a radio on top of the fridge.