I turned to see her leaning against the frame of the bathroom door, arms folded across her chest, one corner of her mouth turned up in amusement. She wore a thick navy cardigan over a red T-shirt that clashed violently with the ratty green scarf knotted around her neck. I never saw her wear anything else.

‘Remember you have to check the wind turbines today,’ she said, stepping back from the door. ‘Last thing we need is another power failure.’

I nodded mutely. There had been another outage the previous evening, the lights fading to a dull brown before eventually stuttering back to life. I had a diesel generator as backup, but fuel was precious and I didn’t want to use any more than was absolutely essential. I had made repairs to the transmission lines only the week before. The problem, then, could only lie with the wind turbines up the hill that were still functioning.

I dried my face and stepped back out into the corridor, then hesitated. I could hear Alice humming from the direction of the kitchen. What was it that suddenly felt so wrong? What was it that . . . ?

Of course. How could I have forgotten?

I made my way back to the bedroom and picked up the broken I Ching coin from the bedside table, a piece of black cord tied around it so that I could wear it around my neck. It was my lucky charm, my talisman, the last remaining link to the life I had lost long ago.

When I entered the kitchen, Alice was gone and the house was silent. I breakfasted on wheat grain milled by my own hand, softened with powdered milk and filtrated water. This was flavoured with a dribble of honey from the food stores I maintained in the cellar. I heated some water on the wood-burning stove and washed the meal down with freeze-dried coffee, then made for the hallway. I pulled on a heavy jacket and picked up my shotgun, my breath frosting in the cold air.

The past few weeks had been bitterly cold, sleet and snow tumbling endlessly from grey English skies, but over the last few days the temperature had started to crawl back up. I stepped outside, seeing the snow had begun to melt. In the distance, past the trees lining the road, I heard crows call out to each other, their voices stark and flat in the monochrome landscape. The wind turbines were visible at the peak of the hill a quarter of a mile away. Altogether a peaceful winter morning.