He remembered how they had come to the door, Billy with the dog, the policeman, the other men. They knew because they had found him. There was old Billy’s grave, over in the corner. He had come to Billy’s funeral if not his father’s. He remembered Billy’s pals all around him, old men with weathered faces standing there beside him singing ‘The Old Rugged Cross’. Did they all know? He thought they did. They must have known. And Billy was buried here in the churchyard, and his father was. Rosie they buried in the spinney where his father might have been buried, in the leaf mould where the nettles grew up, so green when the leaves caught the sunlight. That had been his idea, to bury Rosie there, not Billy’s. Perhaps he had sensed there was some meaning in the place, and Billy went along with it, knowing what the meaning was. Yes, boy, that’ll be a good spot for her, she’ll like that, you know we used to go shooting there, when your father was alive, it was a good spot, your father was fond of that spot, you’ll remember that. To Billy it might have made some kind of memorial.

He thought of that first time Billy took him out shooting. How he shot the hare – so great it had been to get a hare his first time out with Billy – and how Billy did not congratulate him but only said, That’s it, boy, now carry it home and you’ll see what hares are made of. He carried the hare all the way from Hewitt’s Field, and learned how heavy it was, the dead weight of it that he could feel again, pulling down his arms.

At last he turned away and drove the mile back to the farm. He went up the drive and parked the Land Rover in the yard. They would all be having lunch by now. They would be waiting for him. When he came in they would see him and, whatever they thought had gone on this morning – unless the girl had told all of it, and he thought that surely she could not have said it all – they would think they knew who he was. They would be sure of him as he had been sure of the memory of his father. Only he couldn’t be sure of any of them any more, of his mother, or Jonny, or old Billy whom he had trusted so completely. Good shot, boy, you’ll be growing up like your father, you will. You’ll be running that there farm in no time.