Esther stood at her bedroom window, staring through the bars of rain at her half-shorn garden. In the steely mid-morning light it resembled a battlefield; the cleared ground a pockmarked no man’s land, the shed a hump under the thatch of camouflage beyond. She had managed a couple of productive hours at her desk, despite a fitful night, snatches of which had been spent scribbling garbled thoughts about her garden dramas in Viv’s journal, while the rain drummed on the patio. That her neglected wilderness had been harbouring another person was not only unnerving, it also made her feel supremely stupid. To not know. To not see what was under her own nose. It made her wonder about other things that might have passed her by. It had also brought Viv and her uncharacteristically wild theory about loneliness to mind. Someone had been watching her. Viv had been wrong.

By the time Esther had made it back through the brambled tunnels to her abandoned gardening gear, the rain had been falling in earnest. To her surprise, the cat had followed, darting inside as soon as she opened the back door, where it had embarked on a cautious tour of the kitchen, before lapping noisily at a saucer of milk she’d put down. One nimble leap, and it had then settled on the kitchen table, licking its paws and rubbing them over its whiskers between casting disdainful glances at Esther, trundling in and out with her bits of garden equipment, which she’d stacked into as tidy a pile as she could in a corner.

The incentive to reclaiming the potting shed thus greatly increased, but fearing the return of her squatter, Esther had found a drawing pin, and a biro, and torn a page out of Viv’s book.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY. PLEASE RING FRONT DOOR BELL IF YOU NEED HELP.

It had nonetheless taken all her resolve to pull on her cagoule and wellies and plunge back through the tangled maze to the shed, ears and eyes straining to discern anything untoward through the clamour of the downpour. Her heart had hammered with relief to see the shed door at exactly the angle she had left it. Even so, she had completed her task at a run, pushing the door to, and stabbing the note into place with the drawing pin, before diving back for home.