Carrying the coiled flex over his shoulder, the extension lead in one hand and the storm lantern in the other, Alec mounted the three mossy steps from the terrace to the lawn, then crossed the lawn to the wooden gate that led into the orchard. There had been an orchard here for perhaps three hundred years, if the first trees had been planted when the house was built. The present trees were shaggy with lichen, and despite pruning some gave fruit only one year in three. But the fruit they did give, small and hard and tart, was, for Alec, the true taste of an apple, and he never bought apples in London, however sweet or polished they looked on the supermarket shelves.

He walked to the centre of the orchard, set down the lantern and lifted the lights from his shoulder. There were four trees, well spaced, which served as the posts from which the lights were always hung. He began to work, securing the bulb at the end of the flex in a nook just above his head, then walking backwards, paying out the flex until he reached the second tree, then backwards again to the third and fourth, before connecting the flex to the extension lead and running the lead to a socket by the wall. He was crouched there with the plug in his hand when he heard the ringing from the house. In the instant of hearing it he thought it was the alarm, and that he would not answer it. Then he realized it was the telephone and he sprinted across the lawn, blindly, reaching the kitchen just as the ringing stopped. He went to the bottom of the stairs. The call went on for perhaps two minutes, after which he heard the receiver returned clumsily to its cradle. He went up.

‘Larry,’ she said.

‘I was in the garden. Sorry.’

‘He’s coming soon,’ she said.

‘I couldn’t get to the phone in time. Sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘No.’

‘Goodnight, dear.’

‘Goodnight. Mum?’

‘What?’

‘Goodnight.’