Instead I unwrapped the stone he had thrown for me and smoothed out the paper. The white was the wrong side, the blank side. On the inside, very creased as if half a dozen people had pored over it, spelling out the words, was a bright scarlet picture with a white horse in the middle and two trapeze flyers going over the top: a man and two girls. In curly letters of gold it said: Robert Gower’s Amazing Equestrian and Aerial Show.

It was them. Their tour had brought them here. I should have expected them earlier if I’d had my wits about me. Selsey to Wideacre was just a little way, they must have gone on down the coast, or perhaps they stopped for a while after burying her. Somewhere they must have found another fool for the trapeze. They were going on as if nothing had happened.

For a moment there was a rage so hot and so burning that I could see nothing, not even the garish poster, for the red mist which was in my head and behind my eyes. It had made no difference to them…the thing which had happened. Robert was still working and planning, Jack was still standing on the catcher frame, still smiling his lazy nervous smile. Katie was as vapid and as pretty as ever. They were still touring, they were still taking good gates. It had made no difference to them. It had killed her, it had killed me. It had made no difference to them at all.

I dropped the handbill and walked to the window and threw it open again to breathe in the cold night air to try to slow the rapid thudding of my heart. I was so angry. If I could have killed every one of them I would. I wanted to punish them. They were feeling nothing; although her life was over, and mine was an empty shell. I stood there for a long time in the cold but then I steadied and I turned back to the room, picked up the paper, smoothed it out again and looked to see where they were working.

They were playing outside Midhurst. They were doing three shows, the last one a late, lantern-lit show in an empty barn just a little way down the road. If I had wanted I could have gone and seen them tonight.

I gave a deep shuddering sigh. I could let them go. I could let them work my neighbouring village. I could let Rea poach the odd rabbit from my Common. I could let them pass within four miles of me. They did not know I was here. I had no need to tell them. They could go on into the high roads and byways of travellers, of gypsies. These people were my people no longer. Their ways were not my ways. We would never meet. I would never have to see them. They were a life I had left behind. I could cut myself in two and say, ‘That was the old life, the old life with her; it is gone now, all gone.’