It’s quiet beneath the white-grey sky, and mist curls eerily around the bare trees. Silvery spiderwebs glitter amongst blades of grass. At the far end, beyond a tangled curtain of shrubs, a dilapidated shed leans against a moss-covered wall. A flat patch of ground is covered in grass and weeds and dead rose bushes.

Marina is surprised to see an arched entrance set into the wall. She guesses it leads to the church. Idly she turns the handle and the door opens easily. She steps into silence and what looks like the oldest part of the graveyard – ancient tombs with cracked stones and faded inscriptions. She wanders along the overgrown paths briefly, and is about to return the way she has come when a figure appears. It’s Dorothy holding a bunch of flowers. She frowns, surprised, perhaps, to find the door left open, and then she walks slowly, skirting the graves, and disappears to one side of the church.

On impulse, Marina follows her. The paths and graves here are equally unkempt, the ground uneven. Crosses lean precariously and headstones crumble.

Dorothy stops midway along the side wall and stands head bowed. Her lips are moving, as if she is talking to herself, or praying. Marina watches only for a moment before she walks quietly away and round to the front of the church.

She waits in the cold stone porch. There is a noticeboard set behind cracked glass. Absent-mindedly, Marina reads. There is a list of services, an out-of-date advert for the Christmas fair. There’s a rota of women who clean the church and sort the flowers. Dorothy’s name is among them. There is a list of other roles too: the vicar, the curate, the treasurer. The last: Kenneth Quip. Marina smiles wryly. They have enlisted the help of an ex-thief to take care of the money.

It seems as if their names are forever linked: Kenneth and Dorothy. She was his spy, perhaps his one-time lover. And now this. They’ve known each other for years, yet it occurs now to Marina that when she was speaking to Kenneth in the garden and Dorothy appeared, the two of them hardly exchanged a glance.

Marina leaves the porch and returns to the side of the church. Dorothy has gone but the flowers lie against the wall. Marina looks around, curious. Does Dorothy have a relative buried here? She scours the graves, but they are all so old and weathered that the inscriptions are almost gone. Besides, why would she put the flowers all the way over there?