‘Come on, girl. Get your skinny self up here,’ she says at last, patting the bed beside her.

With surprising ease, and needing no further encouragement, Thistle springs up onto the bed, tail wagging.

‘Well, you certainly seem pretty well healed, don’t you? Want to come for a run with me in the morning, hmm?’ She ruffles the dog’s fur and it settles down next to her, a warm presence and welcome draft excluder. Thistle wriggles deeper into the bedding, and gazes up adoringly at her mistress with a look of such trust that Tilda is moved by it. Never having shared her home with a dog before, she finds she is frequently surprised at the rewards this symbiotic relationship brings. The unexpected velvety softness of the animal’s fuzzy, cocked ears, or her silent but attentive presence as Tilda works in the studio—such things are small but real pleasures.

The two manage a fitful sleep. Tilda is disturbed by the raucous wind, and unaccustomed to sharing her bed. Each time she moves, however minutely, Thistle adjusts her position so that the gap between them is closed. Tilda remembers how soundly Mat would sleep, scarcely stirring all night. She notices that the memory no longer causes her physical pain. The customary jolt that has, until this moment, accompanied each and every recollection of him is absent. The realization brings mixed feelings. There is relief, certainly, but also a strange sense of guilt, as if by not hurting she is allowing him to become less important to her.

And why now? With all this weird stuff going on … Don’t I need him now more than ever?

She is too sleepy to try to make sense of it all. When she did what she did to the boat motor; when she dared to harness and use the bewildering ability that has come to her seemingly from nowhere, Tilda was briefly frightened, but then, to her own astonishment, she felt exhilarated. Empowered.

Happy? For heaven’s sake, yes. Happy. Here. Like this.

She finds she is not fazed by living without electricity, though she knows that when her parents arrive for their promised visit they will be appalled, and that she will have to do something about a nonelectric kiln. The bizarre nature of what is happening to her unsettles her less than she might have expected it to. What does disturb her, however, the thing that does still cause her to jump at sudden noises, or make her heartbeat race when something on the periphery of her vision snags her attention, are the inexplicable things that she sees. As she lies beneath her warm bedding, Thistle snuggled close, the wind wailing around the chimney pots of the cottage, she forces herself to list those things. To name them. To face them.

The waking nightmares of Mat’s death.