I have to go out and see. I want to see.

Are you sure? Perhaps you should wait a while, madam, let us bring him in first.

Yes. No. Now.

She led them back into the kitchen, where just the boys and the dog now remained, and spoke to Billy, her eyes to his high above the boys’ eyes, adult to adult. Her voice surprisingly controlled. Billy, would you be very kind and stay with the boys just a bit?

She put on her coat, hastily tied a scarf over her head.

Took up her gloves from where they lay on the table.

Put on her boots by the back door. Jonny’s stood beside them, neatly placed but wet with mud. How odd, could he have been out already? The thought registered but only superficially. It was nothing beside the shock of the other thoughts in her.

The air was cold, moist with fog.

The constable spoke plain words to prepare her. It’s a bit of a mess, Mrs Ashe. Might be best if you could wait and see him later, when they’ve tidied him up a bit.

How could she say that she must see the place? See him. Be outside in the cold air where words were not only words but visible as breath?

The constable knelt on the leaves on the ground of the spinney and lifted the edge of the coat that had been thrown over him. That was enough. She did not need to see the rest. She saw the twisted way that he lay, the length of his body, his hand that had let go its hold on the gun. The constable looked up at her with a question and she managed the smallest shake of the head that stopped him from going any further, an answer in her eyes as much as anywhere. No more.

In the kitchen, the boys had got themselves some cereal.

Billy had made a pot of tea. Always until now it had been she who made tea for Billy. He had made the strong tea she kept especially for him. Thought you’d be needing it, Billy said, his hands shaking as he poured her a cup, unsure of themselves, slopping milk white onto the blue-and-white saucer. Such competent hands they had seemed to her until now, big rough knobbly countryman’s hands, reddened with work or with cold.

The boys sat in their chairs and watched.

There’s been an accident, she said. She heard herself say that as if it was someone else’s voice speaking. She didn’t know what to say next.

She remembered the bacon then, that she had put in the oven before. She grabbed the oven glove, knelt before the stove, opened the door onto smoke.

The rashers quite black, welded to the roasting tray.

The tray hot through the glove.

She dropped the tray into the sink and ran water onto it. Stood back from the steam escaping the white walls of the sink.