When she woke she felt cold. She shivered. She had woken because of the distant telephone and because of the weight of something against her thighs through her cotton skirt, the sense of a movement, that had just stopped. She might have dreamed it, but the weight was real. Her eyes opened. A snake was lying curled between her tummy and her thighs. For a moment she couldn’t take it in, then the narrow head stirred in its patterned coils as it nestled, and raised itself. I mustn’t move too quickly, she thought. But her body jerked, out of her control. She threw herself backwards onto the grass. Sprawling, she scrambled onto all fours. The snake hadn’t moved. She was clear. Bent low, she stared, as the snake reared up, slowly, weightless. She stared into the black discs of its eyes. Its lipless mouth curved up at the sides with strange enthusiasm. Its black tongue flicked. It wasn’t very big. Her heart thumped, hugely. The blood pumped through her. Distantly she heard Dan’s voice.

‘Bea! Griff just rang –’ He stopped. She saw him moving towards her, at the edge of her vision. ‘Bea …’ he whispered.

He was witnessing the aftermath, not the thing itself.

‘Snake on the bed with me!’ she cried, gasping. She stood up, shaking vigorously, brushing off her skirt. She rubbed her hair and arms, freshly, warmly human. The small snake, swaying in harmless defence, fixed her with its alien stare. Or perhaps it could not see her. Together they watched it lower its head and flow weightlessly to the ground, then it rippled sideways over the short grass to the longer grass, to the woodpile, and was gone.

‘Oh my fucking God,’ said Dan.

Bea stood there, out of breath. Appalled. Invigorated.

‘Bea?’ he said, as she began to walk to the place the snake had disappeared. She felt weightless too, she couldn’t feel her legs. ‘What are you doing?’

Slowly, she sat on her heels, staring at the log pile, some stacked and some tumbled in a frozen cascade. At the back was a mess of breeze block. She stared into the dark holes. Did snakes reproduce in crevices or need a nest? Did they have eggs, or live young? Reaching out, she touched a log.

‘Bea –’

It fell. Ants scattered like a firework. Dan reached her side and took her wrist and pulled her up, his arm around her waist. She pulled away.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’s fine. It wasn’t an adder, it was a grass snake. Alex said the adders have diamond-shaped eyes, do you remember? That was a grass snake. It was harmless.’

‘No. Still,’ said Dan. ‘Fuck sake.’

‘I want to tell Alex about it,’ she said. ‘But I can’t.’

They went inside together, but she walked away, and up the stairs.

‘I just need to be on my own.’

‘Are you sure?’ he said from the hall.

‘Yes.’