The girls in green and the boys in blue arrived together; the policemen waiting patiently while a very calm lady paramedic inspected the bump on my head, shone a little pencil torch in each eye and asked me sane and sensible questions. I assured her I didn’t feel nauseous or have ringing in my ears and wasn’t seeing double. She said I’d been lucky, it could only have been a glancing blow, I didn’t have to go to casualty if I didn’t want to. Barring a bruise and a headache, I’d probably be fine. On the other hand, if I experienced any blurring of the vision or nausea, that might be a sign of delayed concussion blah-de-blah. I barely listened. I’d picked up enough elderly people who’d bumped their heads and I’d heard it all before. She left fairly promptly.

As luck wouldn’t have it, the boys in blue turned out to be the same ones I’d encountered up on the moor. I remembered them distinctly and, unfortunately, they remembered me. Why this should make me feel guilty and uncomfortable, I can’t imagine, but it did. They seemed to take ages, taking statements. I told them everything I’d seen and so did Richard, but I got the feeling they didn’t believe me, any more than when they’d questioned me that day on the moor.

‘And neither of you saw this person’s face?’ This was the officer who’d driven the car before.

No, we repeated, neither of us had. ‘I just saw this man in dark clothes – it was definitely a man – leave the house in a hurry,’ Richard told them. ‘I didn’t get a look at his face.’

The police turned their attention to Kate, who was bursting to speak, hopping from one foot to another like an excited wallaby. ‘Well, we were in bed, you see,’ she began, rolling her eyeballs dramatically, ‘and we heard this noise – this terrible crash – from upstairs. We sleep in the room underneath. And Juno called out, and then there was this noise on the landing – sort of bumping – and we heard someone run down the stairs and open the front door. And of course we got up, just to check, and the front door was wide open and Juno was lying on the landing. And Adam went to the front door and saw this figure in black scrambling through the hedge.’

The policeman studied Adam. ‘And you didn’t attempt to follow him, sir?’

Adam looked down at his striped nightshirt, bare, hairy legs and slipperless feet. ‘No,’ he said acidly.

‘And you’ve nothing else to add?’

‘No.’ Adam didn’t like having police in his house. He wasn’t going to add anything that might encourage them to hang around. But if I rolled my own joints from a plant on my kitchen windowsill, neither would I.