He stood for a while and watched her, then gently called her name. ‘Clara.’

She turned at once, almost as if she had been waiting, and smiled at him. ‘Good morning. I hope you slept well?’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘That’s OK. At least you didn’t snore.’

‘I’ve brought this.’ He shook the umbrella at her. ‘I tried to find your house, but I couldn’t. I’m not endowed with a good sense of direction. I always need a navigator.’

‘Thank you.’ She took the umbrella from him and looked at it with distaste. ‘I hate umbrellas. I’m sure it’s something to do with Mary Poppins. My mother used to read Mary Poppins to us ad nauseam.’

‘You’re rather hard on your mother, aren’t you?’

She turned away and looked out to sea again.

‘I don’t want to be like her, that’s all – and I probably will. The temptation to be nice is pretty overpowering. Anyway, it’s none of your business.’

He wondered if that was a dismissal. He took a couple of steps away from her, backwards, awkward steps. Pansy, taken by surprise, yelped as he stood on her paw.

‘Oh God, Pansy. I am so sorry.’ He bent down to comfort her; when he straightened up again Clara was standing with a biscuit in her outstretched hand. Disloyal Pansy was there in a flash pulling the biscuit gently from the woman’s fingers.

‘She’s saving me from myself,’ said Clara apologetically. ‘Otherwise I would eat them all. I don’t really want to become like a barrage balloon, but it will happen if I don’t find enough people to share my mother’s biscuits with. It’s a plot of hers. She longs to see me roly-poly comfortable and with my feet anchored to the ground.’

‘It’s going to take a lot of biscuits,’ he said. A single raindrop exploded on his cheekbone. ‘Damn.’

He looked up at the sky. There was no grey cloud directly above him. He wiped at the wetness with a finger.

‘Rain,’ he said.

She nodded. She pushed a biscuit into her mouth and chewed at it vigorously. ‘Rain,’ she agreed through a mouthful of crumbs.

Another drop hit him between the eyes. I am a target, he thought. Here I stand under this circle of blue and … another one.

Two, three, four.

She was saying something to him.

She was pointing at the umbrella in his hand.

He nodded and fumbled and the umbrella opened and he held it up between himself and the rapidly diminishing circle of blue and she moved towards him and took his arm. She was still talking and the rain was tapping on the nylon arch over their heads.

‘Coffee.’

He heard the word.

She pulled at his arm. ‘You’re not listening.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You owe me a cup of coffee.’

‘Yes. I … of course. Of course.’

She was pulling him along, back over the brow of the hill, past the obelisk, along the path now freckled with raindrops. Pansy galumphed beside them.