Finally, she took Peter’s bike out. There was snow on the ground, but only a thin covering. The roads were just passable. The plan was only half formed in her mind. It was her body that took her along Leafy Lane to the Holkham Road and past where she had been so many times. The journey felt long and slow without Jack’s motorbike and her legs ached with the effort. But they kept turning, pain shooting up her calves and thighs to her groin, and she welcomed the pain because it felt like she was at last doing something. She existed. The sky was a clear, pale blue and the white-streaked fields sparkled, and although there was a cold wind coming off the sea, that too gave her a sensation of her body as part of nature, that she was alive, as it was.

On the little track that led to the marsh, she pulled the bike through a snowy arbour of trees crackling with old snow hardened to ice. The weak sun lit it up like a glittering ice tunnel. Then onto the marsh. Her walk slowed as if she no longer wanted to get to the endpoint. The door of the shack was frozen shut and she had to get a stick to lever it open. Inside it was so cold she shivered despite the effort of the ride and her layers of woollens. She stopped in the hallway, listened, and heard only the whisper of wind in the old chimney and through the cracks in the windows. It must have been flooded too. There was scum on the walls and the smell of salt was strong as if the sea had reclaimed the space that had once been theirs. Which in a way, it had. Her feet wandered to the kitchen but there was nothing there: just their two enamel mugs on the side by the stove. She thought she heard a scuffle and started, heart lurching. She looked around wildly, but then heard another rustling and she remembered the mice.