“The food was great though. He’s a talented man, your husband. You were right.”

“Can we stop talking about it now?”

“Sure.”

Cate sips her tea, which is green and gently fragrant, and stares into the flames. There is the sweet smell of wood smoke. Gulls calling in the high, thin sky.

“I went up to the Senate building today,” says Dea. “To check in on the students. They’ve turned off the heating in there. The university authorities.” She shakes her head. “It’s barbaric. I took them a couple of blankets. They’re asking for more.”

“They should come out,” says Cate sullenly.

“Oh?” says Dea. “Why’s that?”

“What are they going to change? What does anyone ever change?”

Dea looks at her.

“You know how it is.” Cate shrugs. “Young people become older people. They’ll compromise. That’s what we do. We stop fighting. We capitulate. We become part of the problem.”

“Right.”

“The vote’s over. The Tories have won. If the students are cold, they should go home. See their parents. Have Christmas. Get warm. Don’t you think?”

“No,” says Dea. “I’m not sure I do. I’m not sure you do either.”

She goes over to the pile of bracken, taking an armful of brambles and feeding them to the fire, regarding Cate through the flames.

“Have you compromised then?” she says. “Is that what’s going on?”

When Cate does not reply, Dea crouches to poke the fire with a stick, rearranging it, raking the burning embers. “I meant to tell you,” she says, after a while. “There’s a job available. At the university. It’s just maternity cover, but I thought of you.”

“What sort of job?”

“Outreach—all over Kent. Going into schools, helping kids get into higher education. We’ve got some of the poorest areas in Britain on our doorstep—Sheppey, Medway. I’m sure it would be perfect for you. It could be very creative, if you gave it some thought.”

“Right. So poor kids can go to university and be thousands of pounds in debt when they finish?”

“What would you rather? That they didn’t go at all?”

Cate is silent.

“Anyway, they’re interviewing early in the New Year—they want someone to start in the spring.”

Cate turns back to the fire. “Who are you? My career advisor?”

“No,” says Dea, throwing a stick into the flames. “Just a friend.”

Hannah

IN THE CAR ON THE WAY TO JIM AND HAYLEY’S, SHE SITS IN THE back seat, behind her mother, her head leaning against the window as the edges of the city give way to villages and then the villages to moorland, to dry-stone walls—all of it with a thick covering of snow. Every so often, her father brakes for a grouse or a sheep in the road.