As I turn onto the village track, I ready myself for a public appearance, facing the gathering outside the Dane’s Head, but this time, the whole village has gone queasily silent. The shutters are still closed at the Tinkers’ house, and the pub looks shut now too. The sign swings back and forth as if somebody smacked it, making the Dane look like he’s nodding. There’s a line of red at the bottom of his silhouette—his neck, severed. Funny I never noticed it before. How grim.

I peek in the wide window of the police station. The lights are on in there, but nobody’s manning the desk. Sandra, who keeps the office, is over on Sunnan with her kids, but Brian should be around. Maybe he’s in the back of the station with a cup of coffee, sobering up.

I glance at all the cottages I pass, searching for signs of life. One of Janet Murrow’s cats sits in the lane, licking its butt, and I stare at it longer than is strictly appropriate, comforted by the sight of a fellow creature going about its business as usual.

I can tell even before I get there that Jo’s shop is closed. The lights are off and the only thing moving is the iron weather vane on the roof, a running horse tilting this way and that.

It all makes an inverted kind of sense. Why not open the pub early and shut it down before midday? Why on earth would the tearoom keep advertised hours? Why bother doing anything expected in a place like this the day before the Day? We’re all mad here, Alice.

I slip through the narrow iron gate into the side alley of Jo’s cottage and knock a few times on the back door that leads to her living space above the shop. As I wait, I pick at the chipped green paint around the doorknob. Bad habit. Not my door.

I squint down at my hand, the bit of green stuck under one fingernail.

I’m intruding. Maybe Jo wants some private time today, but then, it’s not like Jo to hold her breath inside, waiting for me to leave. She’d open a window and tell me to bugger off. The house is empty. She’s gone like the rest of them, but where? Can’t have gone bloody far.

I’m more disappointed than I have any right to be. I don’t want to be alone today. I could and probably should wrest Hugh from his study, spend time with my kids, let Sally and Avery spike their own glasses with Pimm’s, but there’s something so oppressive about the house this morning. I can’t explain it. I want nothing to do with it.