Later, she would think that he was trying to save them. Whether from the past or the present she didn’t know. She didn’t think that he knew either. Only that they should go away from there for a time.

Out after dawn

Richard had noticed his wet boots. Probably there was wet on his face too, and in his hair. Richard was bigger than him, dark against the light, blocking his way to the light of the kitchen, or even upstairs, to safety, where he might have run into his room and held the door shut. The only place left for him to run to was his father’s study, and that way he would not go.

Where were you?

When?

This morning, I looked in your room. Where were you?

Nowhere. I wasn’t anywhere.

His brother had been still asleep when he went out. His mother must still have been asleep. He had heard his father go down the stairs to the kitchen, like on every morning, though this seemed earlier than every morning. Maybe that was only because there was so little light outside. It was November and the days were slow to start, and besides, there was fog. He had heard his father go out, the soft thud of the back door closing, seen through his bedroom window, which looked out at the back onto the yard, his father go out across the yard carrying his gun. The house was all asleep, though he had seen his father go out. He had taken off his pyjamas and thrown on yesterday’s clothes which lay on the chair by his bed, thrown them on any-old-how, and his coat and his gumboots from the passage downstairs, and run out after him. No gloves. His fingers would be cold. No hat either. He had left behind the stillness of the house and run into the cold and stillness of the fields where his father had disappeared. The fog covered everything, caught and stilled it. Coated his skin and his hair with cold dew. He might have gone no further if he hadn’t heard the shot.

You went out, Richard said. Where were you? He held his arm up tight behind his back until the pain stabbed through. Your boots are muddy. I’ve seen them, down there in the passage where you took them off. The mud’s wet.