Ten or fifteen minutes later, she caught someone hanging about in the garden. He was a boy of about sixteen, somewhat shorter than Marnie, dressed in tight grey jeans rolled halfway up his calves. His white T-shirt was too small for him, his black lace-up boots were covered in hardened dribbles and spots of yellow and pink enamel paint. With him he had a small dog, a kind of long-legged Border terrier, sand-coloured, with short, bristly hair and scruffy-looking ears. Boy and dog stood in the middle of the lawn. Both of them seemed fascinated by the wreckage of the summerhouse.

Marnie rapped on the window.

‘Excuse me,’ she called. ‘Excuse me! Can I help you?’

He didn’t seem to hear. Marnie went out on to the lawn and marched up behind him. ‘Excuse me!’ she called again, perhaps more loudly than she had intended. ‘Do you mind if I ask what you’re doing here?’

He jumped in surprise. His face had a raw appearance, as if he lived up on the Downs somewhere in the constant blustery wind. His arms were stringy and tough. ‘I don’t know what you think,’ he said, ‘but I’ve come to do some work for a woman who lives here.’ He stared expectantly, then, when Marnie failed to reply, offered ‘She’s an older woman. She’s lived here years. She does her shopping down in Wyndlesham.’ He made a movement with one shoulder, a shrug or perhaps a wince. ‘Some people like her, some don’t. She’s got some work she needs doing.’

‘What kind of work?’

It wasn’t much, the boy said: it was just some painting.

‘I don’t live far,’ he said. ‘She said if I called, I could do the work she needed.’

‘There’s no work here. No one wants any work done here.’