“Zack Allerton. His family owns the estate. He’s got an older brother, Lawrence, but he’s in banking. Not interested. So Zack’s having a go at running the shooting and fishing. He’s a DJ. Plays records in those London clubs, the ones the kids thrash about in like de-knackered bullocks while clutching bottles of water.”

“How do you know about them, Col?”

“I saw it on Panorama.”

By nine, I was standing on the perimeter of a field, holding my flag, a white triangle of fertilizer bag nailed to a stick. Marcus was a hundred meters to my left, Col further up on my right. The other beaters were on the other side of a small copse. The drive began and we advanced toward them over the sheep grazing and then through a small field of rotting maize stalks, waving our flags and driving the pheasants into the waiting guns. Dark birds with long tail feathers burst upward and sailed frantically in the direction of the river. The guns sounded, and I watched as a pheasant dropped out of the air mid-flight, like a switch had been flipped. They fell among the brush that bordered the river where it split into channels. The dogs hurtled in and out of the freezing water bringing back the bodies.

At lunch, the beaters perched on the veranda of the club hut. Most were retired country folk like Col, or dog breeders, but there were a few hobbyists like us, doing it for the fresh air and a couple of crisp twenties. The guns sat at picnic tables by the river. There was wine, beer, and whiskey for everyone, and Zack took around bowls of crisps and made sure people’s glasses were topped up. He was just a few years older than us, but so polished he seemed ageless. I sat with my eyes closed, facing the sun. Mike, the gamekeeper, was conspiring with someone.

“We’ll give him a brace,” I heard him say in a low voice. “He kept quiet about the business with the mower, he deserves some birds.”

Two women had arrived. They were talking some feet away by the picnic tables about the drive down from London and I amused myself by trying to picture their faces. They would be blond, of course, but whereas one—Priss, what kind of name was Priss?—was bursting with words, juicy with enthusiasm for the shoot, the day, the drive across the snowy country, the other sounded dry, had a voice that twitched with a permanent-sounding dissatisfaction. She would be dark, I decided, wasp-waisted, perhaps a bit wolfy around the face.