‘I will eat it. Some of it.’

I lowered my eyebrows down against a thumb and middle finger.

‘You called me,’ he said.

‘I thought you were going to rescue it.’ My voice was stretched taut.

‘She was dying.’

She. That made it so much worse. ‘You – it’s not fair.’

He just looked at me, patiently. Waiting.

Lottie stared at me, pushing her glasses up into her hair. ‘By a deer?’

‘It’s dead now.’ I walked to the kitchen and downed a pint of water, feeling my stomach swell and her eyes on my back.

‘Did you …’

‘Yes, I kickboxed a killer deer to death.’ Glass on table. ‘It’s fine.’

She was looking at me like she had a million things to say and wasn’t sure which one to start with. Instead, she came and picked up my wrist, her thumb on my cuts. ‘You don’t have to be so gung-ho. You’re going to really hurt yourself.’

‘Don’t I?’ I gestured vaguely out of the window above the sink. ‘Look at where we are.’

She stroked my skin. ‘Still OK for later?’

I drank another half pint and nodded.

‘So this is Douglas fir, and these are all softwood. All locally sourced. Being a good guy.’

Adam was giving us the tour of a house he’d designed a couple of villages down. It still had that show-home glossiness, choice pieces of unblemished furniture, no TV. Cobalt-blue window frames and a Scandinavian vibe.

He was doing his best offhand, all-in-a-day’s-work voice. ‘Underfloor heating, and the Rayburn keeps everything toasty.’

Lottie was putting her palms on the plaster, her eyes rainbowing with colour schemes, her brain switching the furniture around. ‘There’s so much scope here. So much light.’

Adam hummed non-committally and followed her up the stairs.

My forehead hurt. The sunburn felt like something of a stamp of pride. Branded by the weather. I went to the back door. A stream gave off dirty laughs a few feet away and the midges zinged around it.

I couldn’t get that sound out of my head. The eeriest thing I’d ever heard. Would ever hear. All the world’s heartache drawn out in one, long note from its throat.

Jim had waited while I’d stood there on the road, unwinding my anger and looking anywhere but at him. He’d wrapped a grubby J-cloth round my lower leg to staunch the bleeding and yanked a fistful of leaves from the bank for my nettle-stung hands. Just past my driveway, I had looked at the deer, prostrate on the back seat, and at the purple stain on Jim’s shoulder.

He’d been staring at the roof of the cottage as if trying to see through it before he turned to me. ‘I’m sorry about – before.’ He hadn’t meant the deer. ‘Come and see me again. If you like.’

‘Polly, are you coming to have a look?’

I trailed up the stairs. It smelled like the forest in here, roasted and sticky.

Adam was saying something about solar panels and breathing walls, Lottie nodding earnestly. I went to the window and looked down at the stream again.