“Shush,” Lily whispers, one eye still on her insect’s fate. And then she spots another opportunity. “Anyway, I don’t mind going.”

“It’s her turn,” says Edna full volume.

The wasp is nearing the pencil-sized hole in the wax paper. It’s going in.

“Oh, I can’t do this!” Edna throws the newspaper down on top of the book. Lily imagines the spine developing a new crack, one more infinitesimal line among a thousand others. Her eyes begin to water. Edna hauls herself from the chair, and the springs groan their release.

“Where are you going?”

Edna hobbles to the conservatory doors. “If you’re going into the village you might as well pick up a few other bits and pieces. I’ll make you a list.” She disappears into the house.

Lily has her way out. She lets out a deep breath and turns back to the tree. The wasp has gone, and suddenly she needs to know if it has gone in. She lifts herself up from the footstool, feeling the letter crinkle in her pocket. She places a hand over it and trots up the three steps to the raised lawn.

It had been on the doorstep with the rest of the post, though there was no stamp on the envelope, which means it must have been hand-delivered. That thought is the most troubling part for Lily.

Under the apple tree, the sunlight reaches her in mottled patches. It’s cool and dangerously inviting; no wonder so many creatures meet their ends here. She kneels down on the bone-dry grass and lifts the jar to peer through the water-damaged label. It’s not jam at all but marmalade.

A single sheet of crisp white paper, folded into three. A single line of text. Typed. Not stitched together out of different-sized letters cut from magazines, which is the way they always do it at the pictures. Typed. On a word processor or a computer, she supposes, rather than a typewriter. Nobody uses a typewriter anymore. There was no telling letter A, set half a width higher than all the other letters. The line was straight and uniform and to the point.

I know what you did.

The wasp works to pull itself from its crystalline fate. Lily watches it tire and slow. Its wings falter, and the creature sinks further into suspension. There are other petrified bodies below it.

Perhaps it’s all a mistake? Perhaps the letter was delivered to the wrong door? It wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular, so it could be for anyone. And yet Lily knows, deep down, that the letter was meant for her.

Edna’s ghostly voice emerges from the conservatory. “I think we’ll have chops tonight.”

Lily replaces the marmalade jar, wipes a tear from her cheek, and walks back to the house. To her left there is the hole in the fence that marks the boundary between their property and their neighbor’s. An overgrown path stretches away into the trees. Beyond this copse, its roof just visible over the trees, stands the Old Vicarage. Somewhere ahead of her through the undergrowth she hears a noise she hasn’t heard in a long time. A familiar sound at one point, a car skidding in loose gravel. She hesitates, glances back at the cottage, but Edna is nowhere to be seen.