Patrick reaches for its long angular head with both hands. The animal struggles, but his strength is too much. She sees the hare’s black-tipped ears poke out of the top of Patrick’s palms. There is no time for Chloe to look away. The wind carries the sound towards her: the snap of the hare’s neck breaking in two. It is the swiftest of movements that does it, and in the same second the animal stops struggling. Patrick returns its limp body to the road. Its wide eyes reflecting the last of the amber sun.

Chloe stands as still as the hare on the tarmac. In this barren landscape, the only witness to this death.

Patrick makes to stand, then bends back down. He pulls what’s left of the hare from the road and tosses it onto the grassy verge. A pinky stain remains where it lay. He turns back towards the car and that’s when he looks up and sees Chloe’s face. He stops still. The pair of them twenty paces apart. His own face drained of blood.

‘Chloe, it was the . . .’

She stares at the blood on his hands. Those big hands.

‘There was nothing more . . .’ He takes a step towards her.

Chloe instantly jumps back. She feels the boot of the car against her back. She whips round, searches the landscape for another car, another witness. There is nothing, nobody.

Patrick holds his hands out as if surrendering. But he knows she’s seen it, the ease with which he stubbed out that animal’s life. There is no going back and she cannot hide the horror on her face. He knew how to break that hare’s neck. He did it as though he had done it a thousand times before. But there is only one occasion now that runs like a reel through Chloe’s head. He sees it too. He must do.

‘Don’t come near me,’ she says, her hands feeling behind her for the side of the car.

‘Chloe, what—’

‘Don’t move another step.’

‘Ah, come on, Chloe, you saw the poor fecking creature, it was the kindest—’

What will she do out here on this lonely road? She reaches into her pocket for her phone, then remembers it is off. And who would she call, anyway? What would she say? What is there to tell? That’s when she hears herself say it.

‘You did it, didn’t you?’

‘Did what?’ Patrick asks.

‘You killed Angie.’

FORTY-SEVEN

There is silence between the pair, just the whistle of the wind as it finds the only two things around which to coil.

She stares at Patrick. His face is blank. Her own hot blood pounds in her ears.

Patrick staggers backwards and forwards in the road, his hands reaching for his temples. For a long while, he can’t speak. When he does, all he says is, ‘What?’

His tone is incredulous, frayed at the edges.