I opened my eyes. I’d been right the first time. Both blond, Priss taller and sandier, full-lipped and big-chested with narrow hips. The second woman I recognized as Alice Calcraft, the girl whose family owned the manor and who didn’t rate iceberg lettuce. She was as slender as a weasel with small, even, white teeth and fine, fair hair, the kind of woman who would always be girlish. She caught my glance and then turned her back, like even a glance was common.

But then, I was never going to warm to Alice Calcraft. Because of ponies and skiing and posh school, and because for Alice to be nice to you, you had to disarm first. But mainly because, after she turned her back on me, she bent down to say something to the man sitting next to her brother at the picnic table—hair tickling his cheek, one hand on his shoulder—and this man, when he stood up, turned into David.

We did another drive, this one through the thickets by the river. I climbed over mossy fallen trees and through reed beds and brambles and patches of marsh, thrashing my flag about and banging it on the trunks of cricket willows, nose streaming. It was good to feel something as simple as fury. The guns fired overhead, and shot fell from the sky, pattering down through the trees. It sounded like summer rain on the roof of a tin shed. A small piece hit me on the forehead. I swore and rubbed the spot. The metal had been hot.

It was becoming overcast, the sky threatening to split open like a bag of flour. There would be one last drive. The beaters fanned out again and I took the furthest edge through a copse, pressing forward through tangles of ivy and briar. I heard a noise and turned expecting to see one of the dogs, but it was David. It had been over three years since we’d seen one another. If he was shocked, horrified, or delighted to see me, he didn’t show it. If anything, he looked at me with weary recognition, like he was facing a familiar and unwelcome vision.

“Not like you to be waving the white flag.” The guns were still firing, the shot raining among the trees, the sound of the pheasants breaking cover. “Listen, I wanted to—”

Only I didn’t get to find out what David wanted. A gun fired close by, too close, and there was a shout of pain, and then another voice shouting, Stop! And then I was running, sure that it was Marcus I’d heard.