Marnie could picture the three of them, herself, Lucy and Gabriel, sitting round the kitchen table eating her best vegetarian pasta with a green salad and fresh bread, a bottle of cider open and the lamps on and they could play some music. It was a cosy picture. But if Gabriel had only come out of kindness then the picture took on a different hue. What if, although he was smiling, complimenting the food, he was itching to get away? What if the whole evening was a nightmare for him? What if, afterwards, he did all he could to avoid Marnie, so he never had to be in that situation again? What if, by trying to strengthen their friendship, Marnie ended up destroying it?

* * *

Before she set off for the agility show, Marnie went upstairs, crept across the landing and pushed open the door to Lucy’s room. The door stalled against the clothes spread on the carpet. Marnie stepped over them. She manoeuvred round Lucy’s school bag, her riding hat, Scrumpy’s saddle that Lucy had been cleaning on the floor, a tin of saddle soap and an oily cloth, a copy of Jill Has Two Ponies. The walls were covered with posters of horses, and pictures torn from magazines of show-jumpers and cross-country competitors. The air inside the room was warm and smelled sweet.

‘Mum?’

The bundle of duvet and blankets on the bed shifted slightly. A web of dark hair silken on the pillow, a small hand, fingernails with chipped varnish the colour of lichen.

‘Are you off now?’

Yes.

‘I know what to do. If I need you, I’ll text, but I won’t, I’ll be fine. I won’t let any strangers in. Go away. Have a nice time.’

Marnie paused, her hand on the door frame. She half-wanted to step over the detritus on the floor and climb into the bed beside her daughter, hold her in her arms as if she was a small child again, feel her heartbeat, wrap her up and keep her safe.

‘What?’ Lucy asked. ‘What are you waiting for?’ She groaned and pulled the covers up over her head. ‘I’m not going to get murdered. Go away, Mum, win all the classes!’

* * *

Marnie didn’t enjoy driving in the dark, and now rain was falling too. The satnav directed her across the Somerset Levels, and the road undulated and bumped beneath the car, jolting the sleeping dog, the peat beneath the tarmac sinking and floating, moving in its ancient ways regardless of what was above it. Every now and then the road elbowed sharply over some tiny, fierce bridge that almost bottomed the car. Glastonbury Tor loomed in the distance, its tower pointing into a paling sky.