It is ten weeks since Anton died. Ten weeks since that awful day, and Hilary is still recovering. The cuts have healed, the bruising faded, the muscles of her shoulder, torn during the struggle, have knitted themselves back together. Most days, she feels fine – stunned but lucky. On bad days, she feels the scarring inside, deep wounds slashed across her thoughts, her heart. Some nights, she awakens from her dreams, sweating and crying, and Greg has to hold her close against him until the panic subsides.

She has not gone back to school this term. A leave of absence was hastily arranged in the last days of August. Officially, her leave is to last until the new year, but lately Hilary has questioned whether she will ever return to teaching.

There is a sense about her, these days, of needing to start over. She yearns for renewal of some sort. A second act. She’s only forty-nine. Much of her life remains to be lived. Some days she spends hours on the internet, perusing different third-level courses, browsing speculatively through websites for adult education, life-coaching; occasionally she checks out recruitment sites. Greg thinks it’s too early for her to make any big decisions.

‘Take your time,’ he says. ‘Wait until you’re ready.’

His kindness to her in these past weeks is the one true thing that’s kept her going. It feels like a small miracle, the way they have drawn close again after all these years. Small gestures of consideration, like Greg’s new-found enthusiasm for cooking, his need to nourish and protect her, encourage her to seek out new challenges for herself – these things fill her with hope. For so long, she had planned a future without him. Now she shrinks from the prospect. She has survived, and she intends to make the most of the rest of her life.

Over the next few weeks, she watches the comings and goings across the street. Estate agents, valuers, surveyors. A removal truck sits outside Number 14 for an entire afternoon while three men carry furniture out of the house. She watches as they struggle with the piano until eventually it disappears into the dark cavern of the truck.

Maria Bolton tells her that a young family have bought the house. ‘He’s in the tech industry, she works in finance,’ Maria says. ‘Four kids between the ages of two and ten – all boys. They’ve an au pair, too, so they’ll need the space. Money to burn, apparently. They plan to gut the place and build on some glass-box extension – as if the house wasn’t big enough already. That’s if they get the planning.’

‘I hope they do,’ she responds.

Maria gives her shoulders a little shudder, her eyes widening. ‘Four boys, though! Can you imagine?’