And I unhook them. In fact I untie them. And then she falls like a bag of potatoes, out of the trousers. She disappears from view. The heel of her old white plimsoll almost smacks me in the face.

Oh balls!

‘Hello? Can you hear me? Are you all right?’

Short silence, followed by a door opening and someone speaking in a thick, German accent, followed by the gate-person, the fallen person (Miss Hahn) yowling plaintively, ‘I’ve dislocated my thumb!’

I’m not sure why, exactly, but I suddenly think that this might be a good time to make myself scarce. I’m not … I’m not running away, as such, no. I’m just not … not emotionally equipped to engage with all this right now. I didn’t … I didn’t ask for this to happen. I mean I should be planning a funeral, attending a funeral. And if not in fact, well, then at least in my fevered brain. The perfect funeral for Kimberly. A fantasy funeral for darling Kimberly, my recently deceased …

I just don’t need all this … all this … uh …

When I return to the cottage (a little out of breath, slightly furtive, perhaps) I find the big man, Clifford Pemberton (Is it Pemberton?) sitting out front on the bench. He is deep in thought. He has the rabbit in his hand. It fits, in its entirety, into his giant palm.

‘That was quick!’ he remarks.

‘Nobody home,’ I lie.

‘Oh. Well I had a thought while you were gone,’ he says, pointing towards a partially dismantled chest of drawers which is lying on its back close by on the lawn. ‘I found it in the shed,’ he says. ‘She was planning to chop it up for kindling – but in the meantime …’

I go over to inspect it.

‘We’ll need some kind of …’

‘Already thought of that …’

‘Oh yes. Genius.’

Inside the upturned chest is the cover of an old sewing machine.

‘It’s a perfect retreat,’ he says, ‘there’s a little hole in the front, the exact size he needs – custom made, almost! I filled the insides with straw. He’ll need food and water then he’s set up. Obviously you’ll want to bring him indoors at night or the badgers will suck his brains out.’

I wince. The badgers really are – they really are – the most awful blight.

‘It’s milking time,’ Pemberton continues, in a loud voice (stiffly, awkwardly, almost as if delivering the lines of a bad play). He stands up. ‘But before I head off …’

He gives me an intense, one could almost call it a meaningful look.

‘Is there a problem?’ I ask. What an extraordinary man he is! So messy. Like he’s been drawn with a broken brown crayon by a bored child with an excess of imagination.

‘You made Carla cry on the beach the other day,’ he tells me (very quickly, garbled, almost). As he speaks, I suddenly feel myself fading (or is it him? Is he fading?). Exhaustion. Lack of food, I suppose.