Being still and simply observing is bound to draw attention, so I cut across the fields, wanting to learn more about Maxine’s world. It is working-day, school-day quiet, but for an elderly man out walking a poodle. Whenever I fantasise about having a dog, it is a huge great beast and I have named him Keeper, like Emily Brontë’s dog, and Keeper and I are running along the beach with a small child. This impossible picture still comes to me, even now.

The public footpath winds me to a village, hidden in the valley, where I pass a double-fronted brick farmhouse with a large duck pond. The house’s front garden ends at the base of a steep hill, which is covered in tombstones.

Stone steps twist their way up through the tombstones, towards an octagonal chapel of rest. As I climb them, I hear the laughter and shrieks of children, coming from the section of the footpath I have already taken, though they are still behind the farmhouse and out of sight.

What comes next is Maxine’s voice, scolding one child for pushing the other. I freeze for an instant, stabbed by something I cannot understand. Pain. Jealousy. The two mixed together, probably. I make myself move, and manage to slip behind a pair of mildewed gravestones. They are as close as a husband and wife’s pillows, separated by a few centimetres. I crouch on the wet grass and peek through the space between the two stones as Maxine and the children come into view.

Maxine has changed clothes. She is wearing jeans, green wellies, and a navy waterproof jacket. Her hair is in a ponytail. Her face is scrubbed of make-up. She looks a decade younger – late thirties at the most. She looks pretty, which is normally too frivolous a word to apply to Maxine.

Clinging to each hand is a perfect blond child, one boy and one girl, who look about four years old. Are they twins? It appears she was telling the truth when she said she had two children. The little girl is wearing a red raincoat, while the boy’s is olive-green. Their beauty makes my heart squeeze. I am astonished that Maxine managed this. Glinting on her finger, I glimpse a wedding ring. Clearly, she leaves that off when she is working.

A man comes from the other direction, quickly approaching Maxine and the children. He isn’t dressed for the countryside. He looks as if he has rushed from the office, not expecting such an outing in his dark grey suit. At first I don’t recognise him. Then I realise it is Martin, and that I could not have described him if my life depended on it. It is as if he’d been genetically engineered for the job.