His mother started to get up to bring him some soup. No, don’t do that, I’m not eating. He walked out and on to the office. He took the key from the central drawer of his desk and opened the metal gun case in a cubbyhole to the side of the room. He took out a shotgun and a couple of cartridges and went out again, by the front door this time so that he did not have to pass them.

I’ll go after him, Jonny said, running to the front door.

No. She pictured horror. No. Not you. You can’t. She caught him back. If anyone goes, it has to be me.

They tussled on the step there for a moment and then he saw that she was right, and let her go, and she ran out down the drive, hectic, apron flapping. She was still wearing the blue apron she had been wearing to cook, that she had been too distracted to take off before lunch. But already Richard had disappeared from view, down the drive, past the hedges. He might have turned in any direction after that. The hedges hid everything beyond.

Come back in, he said. It’ll be all right. She was walking back so slowly, taking off the apron as she walked, smoothing her hair, closing her eyes and opening them as if to dispel a dream. Come inside and sit down, I’ll make some coffee. He’ll be all right, you know Richard. He’ll settle down. He always does. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.

The kitchen was quiet. A fly buzzing on the fly paper. The kettle coming to the boil. They heard a single shot in the distance. Claire stood. Jonny turned to her. The shot – if it had indeed been a shot, and not just some sudden bang, or bird-scarer (but what bird-scarer could there have been this time of year?) or backfire – was not repeated. The fly buzzed. He took the boiling kettle off the heat.

We have to go, she said. Both of us.

Yes. Only when they moved it seemed they moved so slowly.

They saw him coming back up the drive. Upright, striding, the gun under his arm, a tall blond man like a hunter coming home. He looked to them where they stood at the door of the house.

That scared you, didn’t it?