He’d roared out a laugh. Whoa! Reckon she’s got a crop going, do you? We all wish! And he laughed again, shaking his head. Nah, it’s got something to do with that plant. Been declared a noxious weed; you don’t see it much in the wild any more. Her butterflies need it to breed.

But they’re … She hadn’t wanted to say it, but he said it for her.

… only butterflies? Yeah, I know. But she says she can’t imagine a world without them.

The Monarch flits away, lands on one of the dandelions in the thyme. Even from here, Avril can see their flat pugnacious bases, green among the silver, taking rude possession. The herb garden has already been colonised by couch and clover. She looks down quickly, saws at her nails with the scrubbing brush. Everything’s going to seed and there’s nothing she can do about it.

She’d spent two years improving the soil, breaking up the clay by adding lucerne, newspaper pulp, rotted manures. But now the thought of plunging her hands into it … No, not even wearing the thick leather gardening gloves that skirt her forearms like medieval armour. That humus-rich earth is rank and alive, and for Avril there isn’t a protective barrier sound enough, or an antiseptic strong enough, to alleviate her fears of transferring bacteria to Coop. He is so susceptible, so acutely, preciously at risk.

The water in the washbasin turns pink and she pulls the plug, runs her hands under the tap, blots at a bleeding cuticle with a tissue. Too vicious again. Maybe it isn’t rational, maybe it’s obsessive, but when you’re in danger of being engulfed by things beyond your control you will grab hold of anything that floats by, just to keep yourself above the white water, keep yourself breathing. Disinfecting her hands, her nails, her hair, her clothes, scrubbing everything scrupulously clean, is one thing she can do. A ripple in a river of things she can’t.

The photograph taped to the wall reminds her of what’s at stake. Coop in uniform, laughing, his arm around her. A shot Ben had taken one morning when she’d stopped in at the station with a tin of fudge brownies that had, for once, turned out like the photo on the recipe. They’d had an argument hours before, at home. Same old thing. But not the same, because when she’d told him—again—that she wasn’t ready—still—his long-stretched patience had snapped like elastic.

When will you be?

She’d felt cornered. Glared at him, mute.

Halfway through the door on his way out, he’d turned back, frustrated, wistful. Will you ever be ready, Av?

She’d turned up later at the station, with her wordless, entirely unsatisfactory offering, and he’d popped the lid of the biscuit tin and scoffed down two brownies. A silent exchange: