The door was shut again, and Holly was gone, and Piotr was standing on the doorstep bewildered.

He stepped backwards and stumbled down the step. To his right, he could see the gravelled path that led around to the back garden.

Kaz was standing over by the woodpile, holding an axe. It was above his head, hanging there against the backdrop of icy blue sky. And then, as the head of the axe arced down towards the piece of pine trunk at his feet, he let out a low, wordless shout that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him. The axe struck the wood. It fractured down the middle, and he kicked it over to a haphazard pile of broken logs before dragging the next section of trunk in front of him and raising the axe again.

Piotr crept forwards, half hidden by a laurel bush. What had happened to this family? But somewhere in his stomach he already knew the answer. Piotr hadn’t chopped wood when his baby died. He had memorised statistics and stormed from expert to expert, demanding answers. He had lain awake with arguments in his mind, and his shouts had not been guttural and abstract, they had been pointed and utterly misplaced. He wished he’d broken tree stumps instead of the relationship he should have been holding together.

Kaz had realised he was there.

They locked eyes for a moment, Kaz still holding the axe high, Piotr almost hanging his head – a sorry interloper in this garden that he had no right to be standing in.

‘It was my fault,’ said Kaz.

‘What?’

‘Have they told you? The doctors?’

Piotr stepped towards him – it was too late to leave now.

‘Kaz,’ he said as he approached slowly, as the axe was lowered and Kaz’s body seemed to sink to the ground even though he stood still on his feet. ‘What’s happened?’

Kaz looked at his hands, at Piotr’s hands, at his bag.

‘Off the rec—’ Piotr shook his head against the phrase. ‘I’m not here as a journalist,’ he said. ‘I was leaving … I’m not …’

‘He died.’

Piotr swallowed.

‘I suppose you know already. I suppose everyone knows.’

‘No one knows,’ Piotr replied, still shocked, still feeling his own grief. But then he realised that one person did. Eva must know. At least, Eva knew something. How did Eva know? What did she know? He had a dry, coarse taste in his mouth. ‘I mean, I don’t think the public knows anything. I only came here because I thought everything was OK … that you’d be, that you and Rosie …’

Kaz was shaking his head. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Stop talking.’

‘OK.’