‘I’m making ice cream,’ said Cora. It made no sense.

The guard stared at the bowl of flowers in her hand. The flowers dropped around her feet.

Her walking boots. Her legs.

‘What do you do with the train?’

‘Thermo.’

The thinner guard reviewed her with strange unbatting eyes. ‘I’ve seen you. I’ve noticed you,’ he said. And it felt as if his eyes rolled into the bowl of her mouth.

Cora felt an animal certainty that there were more men than there really were.

Her dress clung to her sweat. She felt it outline her. Present her.

‘You should not be up here,’ said the first guard.

The locus of her fear changed. To a fear they were going to mete out punishment.

‘There are people. Up here,’ the guard continued. ‘They have intent. It’s why we’re here. You can’t be up here.’

Cora felt the eyes of the thinner guard in the soft shallow of her neck.

‘Have you not read the directives?’

‘Best go back,’ said the first guard.

Cora could not stop the shake. It set the gorse buds rattling in the bowl.

‘We’ll pretend this didn’t happen.’

Her dress stuck to the sweat of her skin.

‘Read the directives.’

The yolks were the colour of a bumblebee’s band. The mix paling and thickening as she beat them with sugar.

The claim there were people up there, out there, on the hill, waiting to attack. Directives. Tear-proof clothes, equipment vests and heavy boots. And guns.

Her adrenalin had morphed into a frustrated anger.

They were not needed here. Everything here had been quiet. Chicken runs. The gleam of eco-foil accommopods. A nearby new-farm and ice stashed in a hill. It was good here.

Now them. The guards had simply been surreal to her.

And now.

As she infused the syrup, the faint smell of gorse got into the kitchenette. As if she was still up there in the thorn.

When she unwrapped the block of ice to break it up, the cloth again clung briefly.

Her dress bunched, strewn now, in the basket for the drywash.

Don’t. Don’t let it spoil it. She talked to herself. They were just doing their job. They just surprised you.

But it was done.

When she went out later, the block of ice sat melting slowly into the border at the edge of the path. The bowl of glaceous egg whites in the fridge reminded her it was her night to close up the chickens.

She’d got angrier. The way, when she’d turned to look from the foot of the hill, she saw them, sat as if for a picnic, watching her through their rifle sights.

Nothing happened, she kept telling herself that.

You were being silly.

But it had spoiled it. She was sure her anger would taint the eggs and sugar.

Had dumped the mixture in the waste.