The little man who pushed past me did so while doffing his cap. He was one of the few I was likely to recognize. His name was Parker and he lived in the house next to my own. He was an unsightly little fellow, with a hunched back and lips like lugworms. His wig looked like a squashed cat. Stefan had laughed at him without malice the first time he spotted him in the neighbouring field. I’d shushed him, but not with any gusto. Parker was a vile little imp: all twisted limbs and mottled flesh. He’d been there beside me when Stefan died. Trying to help. To be kind.

‘Your pardon, Mrs Hemlock,’ he said, knuckling his cap. ‘Are you well?’

I was a bit startled by his closeness. I had a sudden memory of the past winter, when Stefan first fell ill. The Parkers knocking at my door. Could they help? Could they hold my hand as my son breathed his last? I swear, if I’d had a gun I would have killed Parker and his mousey little wife for no other reason than temper.

‘There’s a stag,’ he said, and I heard the trace of his accent. ‘We’re looking for whoever hurt it. Left to bleed, it was. A terrible thing. Terrible.’

I looked past him at the other drinkers in the bar. Parker had been sticking a reward poster to the wall beside the counter. It was offering a tenner to anybody who could help find whoever had butchered a stag and left it to bleed to death on the forest floor out at Greenhead. That was typical of Parker. He saw himself as somebody important. A toff – that’s what he’d have called himself. He had nothing against hunting and wouldn’t have objected to a pack of hounds tearing into a fox, but he disliked the notion of somebody sticking a knife in a stag and letting the poor bastard bleed away.

‘If you need anything,’ he said, and his wormlike lips stuck together like wet jelly sweets as he spoke. ‘Audrey and I – we’re there for you. Whatever you might need.’

I gave him a little nod, my own lips unconsciously pressing together as I did so. He saw me mimicking the action and he looked sad for a moment, as if he had looked in a mirror and it had laughed. My heart softened at once and I was about to invite him to stay: to say an overdue thanks for the help he and his wife had given last year. But he was already shuffling past me. I reached for his arm and he turned to look at my eyes with such intensity that I feared my thoughts would be visible on the back of my skull.

‘You don’t have to be lonely,’ he said, quietly. ‘Not when there’s people who would do anything to be your friend.’