‘Is this decisive enough for you?’ I say.

She shrugs and piles the books back into her canvas bag. I grab the food. The car door slams. She pushes herself up over the gate first. I try not to look at her legs, muscled from years of long distance running and netball and inexhaustible energy. She sits down under a tree, back straight like a yoga instructor, and I sit next to her with my back against the trunk, right in the shade. Look up. The rough-grooved bark against my scalp, the light filtering through the little oval leaves, fanned out, barely moving. It’s an ash. I can still remember the shapes from the Pocket Guide to Trees Nan bought me the year before high school, we used to go out, her and me and I would actually carry the bloody thing around so I could tick off every one I identified.

The plastic bag rustles as Lorna roots around for the sandwich without tomatoes in it. We eat. We surround ourselves with debris. We pretend not to be pissed off with each other. The grass is parched, scattered with buttercups, the sour, animal smell of cowpat or sheep crap or manure from somewhere nearby. She dabs sun cream on her nose, twists her hair up. For a minute I think she might ask me to do the back of her neck.

‘I’m going to finish the plan and then we can talk about it – ok?’

‘Fine.’

I lean back and close my eyes and try not to think about her neck or anything else. I replace her with darkness, spring rain and mud. Jumping off the stile not so far from here in my green wellies with Nan. Sticking to the official routes, the rough wooden markers, the trampled-in paths in the corner of fields, over hills and cloughs and unexpected bridges. There were always sheep. I used to find them funny – bleating insults to each other like miserable old men, bellies hanging down ready to flood the place with spring clichés. She stopped me by the river once when I was busy looking down at the boggy ground, trying not to get sucked under.

‘Shhh,’ she said, ‘the old man’s sleeping.’

I squinted over the stone wall, my heart going fast, expecting to see a dirty tramp or a man with a beard made of moss, half buried. There was no one there.

‘Not that way, up and across,’ she said, pointing out to the fells, out over the fields behind the next farm. It was the nearest hill she meant. She crouched down and traced the shape of it for me. ‘Can’t you see him there lying on his back? He’s sleeping off his dinner.’