I walked past the church and down the lane towards the pools. There was no wind that night; the sky was clear and scattered with stars. I wore my woollen hat – a present from Mum one Christmas. The fibres scratched the tops of my ears. The ground was frozen, and several times I had to grasp hold of a branch to keep myself from slipping. I began to regret wearing the wellingtons, which didn’t have much of a tread.

It had been years since I’d walked down here, and I remembered the day I’d come with Kathryn to photograph her in her yellow dress. I remembered how the yellow contrasted with the dense, dark green of the yew trees in the churchyard. The only dark thing about Kathryn that day was her eyelashes.

Steam from the cooling towers still pumped high into the sky and over the village. The moon lit the whole scene, and I could see that the trees and bushes were much taller and denser than they had been the last time I was here. Without their leaves, all the branches seemed very straight and solid. They criss-crossed the sky and scored the pool.

I didn’t look over towards the water, even though I could just see it glinting between the branches. I concentrated on my destination: the farm.

As I got closer, a strange sound became more and more insistent. It was like a radio that hadn’t been tuned in properly and was turned up much too loud; there was no release, and no soothing note. There was just the squabbling, squawking noise of turkeys. It seemed to drift one way and then the other, making me feel a little dizzy. I realised that this must be the sound of the remaining birds, the ones who had so far escaped slaughter, as they swept from one side of their pen to the other.

I approached a large shed that was lit up inside. The rusty corrugated iron door was slightly ajar and I could see feathers floating in the air.

I opened the shed door and stepped inside. It was no warmer in there, despite the lights, whose brightness seemed to encourage the mealy smell – an overwhelming mixture of sawdust, blood and turkey flesh. Along each wall, dead, headless birds hung from hooks, in various stages of plucking. Some still had thick plumage on their breasts, others were almost bald, save the odd patch of greasy feathers. Feathers were everywhere, falling to the ground, nestling in the hair and on the coats of the boys who stood in front of the birds. Each boy had a basket for his finished work, and a man with a clipboard stood at the far end, handing out new birds, already attached to hooks so they could be hung from bars on the ceiling.