‘I keep expecting to come up the hill and find another of the turbines dead,’ said Alice. I could just see the other half of the Chinese coin I wore around my own neck peeking out through her scarf, on its silver chain. ‘I’m amazed they’ve lasted this long.’

I pulled a fuse box open and took a look inside. ‘Always the pessimist,’ I said.

‘Takes one to know one.’

I glanced over at her, still wearing her blue cardigan and green scarf. She’ll catch her death dressed like that, I thought, then quickly pushed the thought away.

I could see a streak of rust at the back of the fuse box, at the top. I looked up to the roof of the shed, to where I had cut a hole for the power cables. The weatherproofing had partly come away, letting in rain and snow; one more thing I had to fix. I pulled out the fuse nearest the rust stain and saw where it had become touched with corrosion.

No wonder the power had nearly gone the other night. I pulled a spare out of a box on the floor and replaced it.

‘Job done,’ I said, stepping back, but Alice had vanished once more. I went out of the shed, but there was no sign of her. It was maddening sometimes, the way she’d come and go.

I glanced down at the broad muddy patch that spanned the distance between the nearest turbine and the transformer shed and saw several sets of bootprints. I stared at them, then blinked hard, sure I was seeing things, but they were still there when I looked again. They were fresh: their outlines clear, the grooves in the mud filled with a thin layer of water, indicating they had been made some time within the last couple of hours. I stared at them numbly. It had been a couple of days since I’d last been out, and it had rained heavily. I peered more closely at them, seeing they were quite different from my own bootprints. Then I looked around, trying to make sense of it, the blood thundering in my ears.

‘Alice?’ I called out, the words choked. ‘Have you . . . ?’

I stopped mid-sentence. Of course it hadn’t been her bootprints, couldn’t be. I looked again; there were three distinct sets of prints. They had stood here, walking back and forth across the mud, studying the turbines, the shed and presumably the cables leading down to the house.

Three people. Three living, breathing human beings.

That’s when it really hit me. My heart began to thud so hard it hurt. I fell to my knees, tears rolling down my face. I wasn’t alone.

But then something else occurred to me. If I wasn’t alone . . . who, exactly, had come calling?