Carrying the cat, Laura let herself out of her flat into the deserted corridor and walked along to the lift. As she walked she regretted leaving her warm and orderly flat, her calm London existence. As the lift took her down to the basement garage her spirits, already low, sank lower. She put the cat basket on the seat of the car, drove up the ramp and headed west through the rain to the motorway. She switched on the car radio but quickly turned it off, nauseated by the bonhomie of an early disc-jockey, preferring the hiss of tyres on the wet road and the rhythmic clunk of the windscreen wiper. As her guilt feelings towards Emily and Nicholas hounded her down the motorway, she thought enviously of ordinary, happy, uncomplex families at liberty to love each other. With the coming of daylight she dimmed the car’s lights and took note of the passing country. She had last driven up in the death of winter. Now spring was making a start; there were occasional clumps of snowdrops and aconites on the verges, relics of gardens bulldozed to make room for the motorway, flights of mallard crossing the lightening sky from one reservoir to another. She drove away from the rain into brighter weather.

At the turn-off from the motorway she stopped to fill up with petrol, remove her drab jersey and put on instead a bright red one, topping it with a purple wool cap; if she wore clashing colours in the country, gossips would comment on her get-up rather than the expression on her face. She drove on, hoping that Nicholas and Emily’s flu, if it existed, would not have engendered too mischievous a mood and might allow her a few days’ peace in her quarters at the back of the house and some therapeutic work in the garden. ‘I shall make a bonfire,’ she said to the cat, ‘and you shall go mousing.’ She smiled, remembering Claud’s surprised eye ranging round the disorderly room when he had come that first time, and that he had half-believed the caraway seeds in the cake were droppings.

Coming to a stop in the Old Rectory drive, she was careful not to slam the car doors. She let herself into her flat and released the cat. The room smelled cold, musty and damp; she crouched by the fire and struck a match, setting light to the tinder. After some initial hesitation the flames caught and roared up the chimney, sweeping with them the clammy air. Laura crouched, feeding the fire with twigs, then logs until the heat built up. The cat came close to roast its chest in the warmth.

She brought the duvet from her bedroom to air and switched on the electric water heater, listening with pleasure to the water gurgle in the pipes. She fed the cat and put fresh water out for it, set a kettle to boil for coffee.