Edie chased it, trapping the animal between the corner of the fence and the shed that stood at the rear of her garden. She dropped the can and grabbed the goat by the scruff of its neck. There was a gate in the fence beside the shed that led directly out onto the hill behind the cottage. For a moment she considered pulling it open and shoving the animal through, letting it loose to roam free and cause chaos somewhere else. God knew its feckless owner deserved that much. Instead, she dragged it out as it kicked and bellyached, avoiding its angry hooves as it tried to squirm free. Edie pulled it back down the path towards the gate that connected her garden to the one that belonged to the cottage next door.

‘Ezra!’ she bellowed, as she pushed the protesting goat through the open gap and clanged the gate shut before it could get back through. ‘Ezra Jones, do you hear me? Come out here right now, you blithering idiot!’

There was no answer from her neighbour, who might be out, or might simply be ignoring her. Either was possible.

‘The next time that thing gets into my garden I swear I’m going to barbecue it!’ she shouted, before stalking back to the workshop. Inside she went to the sink to wash her hands, grabbing a towel to scrub rainwater from her hair and face, still fuming.

When Edie had bought Corner Cottage twenty years before, she’d thought she was getting a bargain. Sure, she’d have preferred it to be detached, but it had come with the workshop space she’d needed and what better view for an artist than the bizarre lighthouse she could see rising above the empty hill behind? She’d never imagined that she’d end up living next to a man she could stand even less than her unmitigated pig of an ex-husband.

That goat, though. That goat might actually be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Ever since he’d acquired it (‘I rescued it, Edie, try for once to be less hard-hearted!’), the little piebald monster had spent more time in her own garden than it had next door. Ezra refused to tether it or put it in a pen, on the grounds that it was cruel to curtail its natural instincts. Edie’s natural instincts had been to batter both over the head with a baseball bat. It might yet happen.

She sighed and went back to packaging prints. It had taken her a while to get used to Instagram, but it had proven worth the effort. Her art had found a new audience, a global one at that, and two years past retirement age she was as busy as she had ever been. The lighthouse had been her muse for two decades and was a regular feature of her work. Her latest edition had been her most ambitious for a while – a set of four five-colour reduction prints depicting the James MacDonald Tower in each of the seasons, the subtle changes of light, shadow and shade a challenge she had worked on with relish. Months of planning and work had turned into an edition of ninety-five prints, nineteen sets in total, all of which had sold. Edie was now in the laborious process of carefully packaging each sheaf of paper and ink for mailing to countries as distant as New Zealand and Malta. Long live the Internet, Edie thought, as she reached for the next print.