The two women walk in line on the single track. Chloe is grateful for a moment to think. She needs to keep Maureen talking while Patrick isn’t around. It’s obvious he doesn’t understand Maureen like she does. She looks out at this flat landscape, the isolation, trees standing hundreds of yards from their neighbours. How lonely it must have felt for Maureen to have carried the weight of her grief alone all these years.

They walk for another half a mile or so back to the village. By the time they arrive at the house, cloud has stolen the sun and the air is cooler than it had been when they set off. They come in the back door, breaking the stillness of a kitchen they hadn’t bothered to lock, and Maureen switches the heating on while they warm up beside the radiator.

‘Chloe, love, stick the kettle on while I go upstairs to the loo,’ she says.

Chloe does as she asks and listens to her footsteps disappear up the stairs. But five minutes go by, then ten, and she hears no footsteps returning back down. Their tea sits cooling, staining the rim of the mugs. Chloe walks to the bottom of the stairs in the hall. She listens out and hears a faint shuffling across the floorboards.

‘Tea’s ready,’ she calls.

But there’s no response. She puts her first foot on the step, waits. She takes another, then the next one, until she stands at the top of the stairs. She scans the landing. The padlock is missing from the spare room, the door slightly ajar. Inside, Chloe can just make out Maureen, moving around among cardboard boxes.

She steps onto the landing, walks slowly over to the door. How long has she waited to look inside? Maureen doesn’t hear her enter. She is heaving and emptying boxes.

‘Maureen?’ Chloe asks quietly.

Maureen stands still in the middle of the room, her back to Chloe.

‘Are you OK?’ Chloe asks.