Five minutes  later, the night cooled and darkened.  The fields were fields again, washed clean of mystery. The river widened and slowed, pooling into the shape of a long glass, a champagne flute perhaps. A fierce steady rushing sound filled the night. Anna pulled herself into the bank and listened: water plunging over the old four-foot broadcrest weir at Brownlow, perhaps a mile outside the village; beyond which the river, bending east to look for a way through  the downs to the sea, would lose confidence and, a few miles further  on,  somewhere  above Barcombe Mills, submerge its  identity  in  the  Ouse.  Part-beached,  Anna  sat  contentedly in the warm shallows, letting the water support  her legs so that they  bobbed  and  glimmered  out  in  front  of her,  just  beneath the surface. A small grey moth  flickered about. She could smell guelder rose, night-scented stocks from some distant garden; and above that the replete, weighted, yeasty scent of tonne after tonne of water pouring over the weir. I don’t feel in the least tired, she thought. Seeing herself with a sort of loving amusement  from the outside, she wondered what she might do next. A minute or two later she was crossing the pool step by difficult step, hugging the upstream  side of the weir itself, pummelled  and deafened by the roar, struggling to move her legs against the vast, steady sideways pressure of the water. Halfway over, something  made her stop. She dipped one hand into the shining flow across the crest – it was like pushing at the shoulder of some big, steady animal and feeling it push back. What  else was there to do? she would ask herself later. Once you saw a thing could be done, what else could you do but try to do it? Shiver with excitement, laugh aloud as the water shoved your hand about, stumble out on the other side and walk the mile home along the river bank in your sodden knickers. She had a powerful urge to pee. It was dark, and who, after all, would see? She felt very calm and satisfied, even when, trudging  back across the pasture with her wet shoes in her hand, she saw that her summerhouse  was on fire again. Great silent orange and yellow flames went up from the roof at the same odd angle as before. There was no smoke. There was no smell of smoke. The summer-house seemed taller, and as if it was leaning away from her. Heat shimmer  gave it a squat conical shape like a windmill. Glorious showers of sparks, blown in a strong wind despite the dead calm below, lit up the crowns of the orchard trees beneath. Beneath the sound of the flames, she thought she heard a voice calling her.

‘Michael?’ she whispered. ‘Is this you? Are you here?’

There was no answer, but Anna smiled as if there had been. She dropped her shoes and opened her arms.