Marnie walked quickly and soon her blood was pumping. By the time she returned to the cottage she was wide awake and ready to go. She took Mister back to the feed room, checked his bedding, refilled his water dish and gave him a beef knuckle to chew. Jenna was coming to take him and Luna out later that morning.

She mucked out and fed the donkey and the pony. The radio was playing at low volume in the stable and the blackbird was singing from his perch on top of the telegraph pole. Finches were in and out of the hawthorn, swinging on the feeders. Spring was on its way. The sapling that Gabriel Romanescu had given her was in its pot, waiting to be planted in the orchard.

A cynic like her father would say Gabriel had given the sapling to Marnie to forestall her complaining to head office about the destruction of the old tree. But Marnie didn’t think that was the reason. Gabriel was a kind man; she’d sensed it from the start. He had never regarded her muteness as an impediment or as an obstacle to their tentative friendship, just accepted it was part of her. And he’d told her some things about himself, offered her the knowledge as a kind of gift. He had grown up in a small, rural town in Romania, and met his wife, Elena, at university. Elena was a nurse who had died of cancer. The couple had no children. While he was working in Severn Sands, Gabriel was lodging in a shared house in Avonmouth, with six other men. He had his own room, but it was cramped and he had no privacy. Sometimes he slept in his office, on the building site. He was fond of reading, like Marnie’s mother, and of bird-watching, like her father.

Marnie thought she should do something nice for him. She could invite him round to the cottage for a meal but perhaps that would be too much. Marnie never invited anyone round and she wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate. She couldn’t decide how Gabriel would feel if she were to invite him. Politeness would make him accept even if he didn’t want to come. And if he came, it would be Marnie’s job, as hostess, to make him feel comfortable and relaxed. She wasn’t sure she’d be up to it.