Stephen didn’t have the heart to ask Georgie to help him, much less Cass. He felt too ashamed. And he didn’t want them to see that he’d been crying. He wondered if the surviving bird felt traumatized by the sight of all the feathers, or by being brought back into the henhouse. She didn’t seem too fussed. He couldn’t scoop up the mess with just one arm, so he set the bantam down on the ledge where the birds had sat. Gently, gently. He stood still beside her so that she would become used to his presence, but the henhouse was too low for his full height, so he had to stoop. He tried to move smoothly, not to alarm her. He generally liked the smell in there, a peaty smell of straw and warmth, but now it began to cloy. He deliberately looked the other way as he gathered up the feathers, afraid to see entrails, or severed heads. He imagined finding a disembodied hen’s claw, yellow and scaly and somehow prehistoric. He prayed he wouldn’t, but the image of a bird’s talons curling upwards to scratch for air – like the hand of a man buried alive – lodged itself in his mind. The picture was so vivid that it felt like presentiment.

Suddenly he was burning, his mouth full of saliva. He was going to chunder. He was too doubled over to run, so he propelled himself – it was almost like diving – out of the coop and on to the morning-cool grass outside. He lay on his front, the grass tickling his face. He could smell the earth. It was lonely, to be in this place. He thought he might never move again, but stay there until the grass grew up around him. He remembered that Cass had shown him a spot at the bottom of the snowdrop field, where a deer had lain. It had left an impression in the shape of a bicycle seat and a neat, shiny pile of droppings, like chocolate raisins. He wondered if his body would leave a shape in the rough grass. Sometimes he had a floaty sensation, as if he wasn’t tethered correctly; as if he was not a real person but just an assembly of sensations and feelings, lighter than air. He almost felt that if someone came to find him they’d see no one there.

11.

‘He’ll have to go,’ said Celia. The children had gone down to the river to swim and she was alone in the kitchen with Nick.

‘Because of the hens? Are you still annoyed about that?’

‘Only fairly. But he’s getting too attached to the girls, I can just feel it. It’ll end in tears, as Nanny used to say. It was better when he was sleeping with Helena. She’s more his speed. Kept his mind off Cass and Georgie.’

‘Mind, or hands?’ Nick teased her.