Did she hear the shot? Her memory told her that she did. But this was a morning like many others. There had been other mornings when there were shots, when he or Billy had gone out early. One shot was much like another, coming from some indeterminate direction dully across the fields. The death of a rabbit sounds much the same as the death of a man. If she heard the shot she thought nothing of it, but only dozed the longer because it was a Saturday morning and there was no need to wake the boys to take them to school. Thank goodness for that, she thought, when finally she got out of bed and walked yawning across the room to draw the curtains, thank goodness, because there was such thick fog outside. They were still at the village school then; that was then, before, when they all lived at home and she drove them each day the mile to school. There was nothing she hated more than driving the boys to school in winter fog, leaning forward to the windscreen as if that would help her to see better, wiping the condensation with the back of her hand, worrying that there might be ice, at the same time going over their spelling or their tables with them as advancing bands of fog seemed to materialise in the headlights. No school this morning, but there would be homework, for Richard at least; not for Jonny as he was too young. She thought as she got up that she would make them all a good breakfast. Charlie would like that, if he had already been outside in the cold. But what could he be doing outside, in this fog? Not shooting, surely? And yet hadn’t there been a shot? He would barely be able to see further than the end of his nose. (And was it then at the time or was it only later when she remembered, that this simple thoughtless thought turned cold in her? How could she think that, why think that, just then? The day just passed, the day before, the evening just passed, had been a slow, easy day, an easy evening. Perhaps even for some days before it had been so, she could not count them now. Only she knew that there had been some time of calm, before. The brooding that was sometimes such a weight in him had seemed to be gone, that previous evening at least, like mud gone from his boots. How could that be, she would think later. Surely there had been a sign, something in his behaviour, some premonition? What had she seen, and what missed? Possibly the calm itself was the sign, a calm that meant that his plan was made and the intention had given him ease. And she had lived with him through those days and slept beside him through the nights, and known nothing. If these questions were not with her at the time then they would be with her ever after.)