Clara waved at him; he pretended not to see. Pansy gave a friendly bark and ran up the hill towards her.

Over and over the scene he had gone in his imagination, over and over, different aspects, different camera angles, picking the scab off the wound each time it seemed like the pain might be lessening.

She would have been singing too, he thought, as she passed the truck, with a little wave of her hand. ‘With an oink oink here and an oink oink there, here an oink, there an …’

This place had a similar feel to it; the stone bridge, the stony hillside above, the silence. Up the hill and over the man must have started to run as his hand left the plunger, not waiting to see the devastation, ducking, dodging, running behind the rocks to the safety of the getaway car on the other side of the hill.

‘Old Macdonald had a farm …’

‘Yoo hoo!’

He had to hear that. He looked towards her and lifted his hand in greeting.

‘What the fuck was all that about?’

The words came bouncing down the valley towards him, like a small avalanche of stones.

She must have seen the look on his face then, because she shut up. She struggled to her feet and turned away, looking back the way they had come along the black snaking road, leaning with one hand on the granite cap stone of the bridge, with the other scratching the top of Pansy’s head.

He was panting and hot by the time he scrambled up from the stream to the road, sweat running from his hairline down the side of his face.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I said something, didn’t I?’

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed carefully at each side of his face.

‘I have tried to work out what it could have been. Mother always says that I speak before I think. It’s quite difficult to know what you can or can’t say when you hardly know a person, but whatever it was, I’m sorry.’

She put her hand on his arm.

He shook his head.

‘You said nothing – it’s not you, it’s me. I sometimes lose it.’ He thought for a moment. ‘It was the bird really. That,’ he pointed upwards, ‘hawk. I just …’

She squeezed his arm.

‘Let’s go. We’ve had enough country air for one day.’

That was good and bad.

Good: the mountainy air, quite warm, unpolluted, startling to the skin. I sat there by that little bridge feeling my skin, face, neck, hands being invigorated by the touch of that air. If I had been on my own, even post-operative, I might well have stripped off and sat there, staring up at that hawk and allowed my entire body to receive the therapy so simply offered. In other and less complicated terms I actually felt quite happy; an emotion I had thought I might never feel again.

I must get out and about more.