Edie looks out across the reservoir. They had often walked up here together, watching the water side by side, Francis’s voice telling her about giants and witches and Roman roads. He had pulled flints and fragments of pottery out of his pockets and had talked about the village under the water, she remembers, the cottages and the public house and the Methodist chapel, all submerged when the valley was flooded to make the reservoir. Edie had thought about how the families must have felt as they had watched the waters rising, seeing those well-known walls and floorboards and fireplaces lost to the liquid underworld. She had imagined their sense of dislocation. She feels something similar now when she contemplates the walls of Harry’s house. Today those walls had felt like they were closing in on her and she had to get out.

There had been another letter from him that morning. He writes to her about war memorials, haymaking, and the Frenchman who is in love with his brother’s widow. She is not sure what he expects her to feel about the latter. What emotions does he wish this information to incite? His letters radiate heat and sunshine but also sadness. Her replies are full of shortages in the shops, the price of coal, and questions. She keeps her letters with his, filing her replies in between, as if this were a conversation. But she will never send him her letters. She will never actually put them in the post. This will never be more that a one-sided conversation.

There are couples doing the circuit of the water today, smiling at the sun on its surface and the silent landscape beyond. A group of children in Sunday best are leading a horse. Two girls twirl parasols, and shadows roll across the moor. She shuts her eyes to it all and listens to the lapwings.

“Edie, isn’t it?”

It startles her. For a moment it is Francis’s voice. For a moment it is always Francis’s voice, but when she opens her eyes a ferryman is standing at her side. He flicks his cigarette away and offers her his hand.

“Mrs. Blythe? I’m rotten with faces, but you are Francis Blythe’s wife, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” She turns toward him. She is still Francis’s wife. She will always be Francis’s wife. She just wishes that she could be certain what that now means.

“I thought so. It’s the hair.” He nods. “I often think about him. Often used to see him up here with his camera.”