Pansy wagged her tail.

‘Just badly trained. It’s not her fault.’ The woman held the paper bag out towards Laurence again. ‘Have one yourself,’ she suggested.

‘No thanks.’

‘They’re really good.’

He shook his head.

It was now raining quite hard. They appeared to be the only idiots left in the park.

‘My mother made them.’

‘No thanks.’

‘Suit yourself. You don’t know what you’re missing. See you round.’ She shoved a biscuit into her mouth and walked off chewing. Hopefully, Pansy ran after her.

‘Pansy!’ he yelled, and moved briskly away in the opposite direction, towards the shelter of the trees.

Listening to music! That was a rare one all right.

Caitlin had listened to music; real music, played fortissimo. He would hear it when he came from the school, raising the roof of her studio at the bottom of the garden. It was lucky, he often said to her, not being a music man himself, that they lived apart like they did, away from neighbours with sensitive ears or differing taste to hers.

She put her tongue out and carefully licked the end of her paintbrush, coaxing it with tongue and lips into a sharp point. She touched it into the paint and drew a clear thin line on the canvas, then she looked up and smiled at him.

‘Five minutes,’ she said. ‘I will come up to the house in five minutes and then you can fuck me and make me scream and no one will hear that either. There are great advantages to not living in a housing estate.’

Her words pattered out into silence as the raindrops fell through the leaves.

What is the point in all this?

This running away?

This pain?

They all tell you it dissipates.

‘Life can become normal again,’ they say. Even my old father believes that.

I always used to think he knew everything. Now I slam the door in his face and have to leave the country because I can’t say sorry. Won’t say sorry – that’s what Mum would say. ‘Who do you think you are, treating your daddy like that? Do you think you’re the only person in the world has suffered tragedy? Look around you, son.’ That’s what she would have said if I hadn’t run. Thrown some clothes and Pansy in the back of the car and driven off. I don’t even remember locking the front door, now I come to think of it.

A cold wet nose nudged his hand.

‘We’ll be OK, Pansy. That’s what they all say.’

He didn’t believe it.

He bent down and fastened the lead to the dog’s collar. They trudged together back the way they had come. The rain was unrelenting. There was no sign of the biscuit woman.

Bloody good shortbread biscuits, Clara thought.

Discerning dog.

I’ll have a long hot bath when I get home; wash my hair, turn on the record player fortissimo – drown out the sound of rain. I will contemplate my scar, still much too visible for my liking, in spite of the dollops of vitamin E i massage into my stomach every day.