He had made himself a black coffee before he went out. That was all. There was only the cup on the table with the dregs of the coffee. She thought, when she came down, how he would be needing a good breakfast when he came in.

He had stoked the Aga. The oven was good and hot.

It was kind of him to do that, she would think later. If he had in his mind what he was about to do, then it was a kind thought – or was it only thoughtless habit, persisting regardless, the habit of their lives, or proof that he meant to come back, after all, or just an option left open? He had taken the time on this his last morning to stoke up the stove so that his family should be warm when they came downstairs, and the bacon when she cooked it, if he were to come to eat it, would be crisp. (But he can’t have been thinking of them, not then. He can’t have been thinking of anyone but himself. It was so selfish, what he was doing, so appallingly, abominably selfish.)

What then? What happened next?

Calling to the boys upstairs. Hearing them moving, coming down.

The knock at the back door. Billy, the constable, the bedraggled dog held by a string tied to her collar, some other men.

I had to be putting her on the string, madam. She wouldn’t be going otherwise. I’d call her and she’d come along a little ways, and then she’d run back.

Thank you, Billy, she had said, taking the string in her hand, bending to untie it from the dog’s collar.

The men came on in, crowding the kitchen. Men who looked useless, their hair damp, eyes looking about, evasive; the smell of them the smell of a wood in the morning mixed with tobacco smoke. She wondered why they were all of them there; if the dog had been found straying somewhere, why they had all of them taken it upon themselves to bring the dog home? They looked about, shuffled. The boys had come in at the same time.

Perhaps we should go into another room, Mrs Ashe.