It was all her own fantasy, she reminded herself. The problem was, the reality was not easy to ascertain. There was no evidence of any artisan handicrafts. Nobody proclaimed their line of work with any clarity. There were small boards beside some of the doors, which she scanned self-consciously. The word ‘Solutions’ appeared twice, but nobody seemed to offer ‘Logistics’. She was gradually aware of faces peering out at her, from windows on all sides of the yard, one woman standing just inside the big glass windows, arms folded. At any moment, someone would emerge with a frosty, ‘Can I help you?’ and she would have to invent a reason for being there. And that would carry a degree of risk. She wanted to say, ‘I gather there’s a furrier here,’ and watch the effect. Illegal tiger skins or fox furs could so easily be tucked away in back rooms. But the police had 255already performed a thorough investigation into all these businesses – or so she assumed. They could hardly have failed to pursue the flimsy story told by Grace, however implausible it was proving to be.

So she turned round and began to walk away again. Anybody watching would, with luck, conclude that she had come here in error, looking for a non-existent footpath, perhaps. Or seeking a lost dog. She began to mime behaviour that would fit such an explanation. Craning her neck to look over the hedges, turning round every few steps, and trying to maintain a worried expression. She hoped that her demeanour had not been too different as she’d walked up the driveway initially. There was something increasingly unsettling about the whole place, with nobody outside, no comings and goings, only a few faint voices that she suspected came from a radio somewhere. A summer weekday morning, with reasonable weather, should surely bring at least a few people outdoors. Could they not sit in the fresh air with their crafts or Dictaphones or laptops? She had read on the website that families lived in the ancient cottages – so where were the children on holiday from school? And didn’t anybody own a dog?

And still nobody accosted her. She knew she was being watched, but presumed that so long as she kept walking, causing no trouble, she would be left alone. It was a creepy sensation, like something from a horror film. Her vivid imagination flipped into notions of lurking monsters – huge slimy creatures that had disguised themselves as human beings. If she offended them, they 256would throw off their false skin and come slavering after her. There had always been this unsettling aspect to villages in the Cotswolds: the suspicion that hidden eyes were watching from the silent stone cottages. There was a loosening of the usual boundaries that kept you firmly in time and place. In a Cotswolds village you might carelessly step through a portal into an earlier century – or even perhaps a later one, which would be even more terrifying. They so often felt like a film set, or something fiercely preserved for the sake of permanence. Nothing was allowed to change – that was how the tourists liked it, and the tourist was king. Especially here, just down the road from historic Bibury. The beauty was so extreme that there was a wholesale fear that it might crumble and vanish if constant vigilance was relaxed. This had all become plain to Thea years ago, and had developed into an unexamined given now she lived here permanently. Only when forced to confront the paradoxical reality did she revert to thinking about it.