Out on the hill, Hal follows the well-worn paths, crisscrossed with sheep tracks, listening to the harsh shouting of a crow, whilst Honey trots obediently at heel, though she looks alert. At intervals he encourages her to run ahead, to explore, but she remains close beside him as if she is baffled, even nervous, at this expanse of open land. He pauses beside a slab of granite beneath a hawthorn tree and looks out across the valley to the moor, and down to the spinney of beech and oak below him at the bottom of the hill. When Mole was small, running round the spinney was a game. He and Susanna sprinted round the small belt of trees whilst Fox stood here, where Hal is standing now, watch in hand, and timed them. It became a test, an important part of the nursery routine. Times were checked, improved, written down. But the real test was that Mole should one day run round the spinney alone. With the terrors of the massacre of his family in Kenya still upon him, even those few minutes out of sight, unable to see Fox on the hill above him, or The Keep on the opposite slopes, filled Mole’s heart with dread. The whole family knew and waited patiently for that great moment when Mole might feel secure enough to run round the spinney alone.

Now, Hal stands on the hill, arms folded across his chest, with Honey waiting patiently beside him, thinking about Mole’s son. What a bloody tragedy that Mole didn’t know that he was to have a son. What a damned waste of a lovely man; a first-class officer. Hal thinks of Sam, hoping that if Mole is watching somewhere he’ll approve of the way Fliss and he have tried to make sure that Sam is secure, confident, loved. If only they could be absolutely certain that all is well with the boy, that this reserve is simply his natural genetic inheritance from his father and not something deeper.

Hal’s aware of a movement and glances down. Honey is looking up at him hopefully, tail brushing to and fro across the short sheep-grazed turf.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Sorry, old girl. Come on. Let’s get going or Sam and Cara will be here. Go on. Run. Rabbits! Go get ’em!’

But Honey remains at his heel. Clearly she is as nervous of leaving his side as Mole was at running round the spinney.

‘But Mole did it,’ he tells her, ‘and so will you, in time. There’s no rush but it will happen.’

Honey wags her tail obligingly and they return the way they’ve come, down the hill and home to The Keep.

Fliss arrives only minutes before Sam’s Mini passes under the archway and into the courtyard.

‘Hope you don’t mind us being early,’ he says, getting out. ‘We’ll have to get back after lunch because of Oscar.’