Jack Ferrers has been an early riser from being a boy, and even with most of the livestock sold and the workload not a third of what it was, old habits die hard. Jack likes to be up by five, even though this time of year there’s still a good while before sunrise and there’s nothing to see from the windows but the dark on the fells. In the long weeks of autumn and winter, all Jack does in the pre-dawn hours is make tea and read yesterday’s paper.

The farmhouse at Ainsclough Top is three hundred years old, and cold seeps through every wall. In a while, Jack will bring in coal and light the range, so the place is warming through before Dora wakes, because Dora feels the cold these days, in a way she never used to.

Outside, Millie the border collie is restless, dragging her chain backwards and forwards across the stone-flagged yard. Probably she’s scented a fox sniffing round the coop, and Jack thinks he’ll let her loose a while to see it off.

But then the phone rings. It doesn’t ring often, and in the quiet, it’s jarring.

He folds the paper, goes out into the hall and picks up the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘Dad? Is that you?’

Jack recognises Matt’s voice, though it’s different to normal, without its usual cheeriness.

‘Don’t you know what time it is?’ asks Jack. ‘You’ll wake your mother.’

‘Dad.’ Matt sounds broken, tearful, and Jack knows there’s going to be something bad. He closes his eyes. ‘Dad, something’s happened to Evan.’

Jack feels the need to sit, but there’s no chair. On the side table, alongside the phone, are photographs in frames. There’s one of Jack and Evan down by the beck, Evan a smiling four-year-old with sticklebacks in a jar, his grandpa’s hand resting on his head. In the photo, the sun is shining. Outside, Millie begins to bark.

‘Dad?’

‘I’m here, son.’ Overhead, he hears the creak of floorboards, Dora out of bed and coming to see who’s on the phone. Jack keeps his voice low. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

Matt’s voice is unsteady as he tells the news. Jack senses Dora at the head of the stairs, listening, and turns his back so his face will give nothing away. He lets Matt talk, until his son has no more to say.

‘What do you want us to do?’ asks Jack. ‘We’ll come down. I’ll get Bob Sturgess to keep an eye on this place.’

He listens to Matt give the reasons why his father should stay where he is: the house is full of police and they’ve been warned to expect the press.

‘Whatever you think is best,’ says Jack. ‘Do you want to talk to your mother?’