Early on, Dylan and the old man had occasionally ventured the ten miles into town themselves, lumbering along in the twenty-year-old mud-encrusted Volvo that his grandfather called ‘she’ and talked to as if it were alive. But for a couple of months now, they had been eating solely out of the vegetable garden and the cavernous bench freezer in the outhouse, which was stuffed with fish, pheasant, sausages, steak, cuts of local lamb, as well as neatly labelled bags of vegetables, harvested from previous seasons. The only excursions in the car since November had been for putting Dylan through his paces in the bumpy field behind the cottage, the old man barking commands about using the mirrors, despite there being no other vehicles within sight.

Come December, his grandfather had stopped taking the lead in the vegetable garden too, instructing Dylan instead, between pointing out the bits of fencing that needed pinning down against the rabbits, and sifting through whatever produce got picked with his knowing fingers and hawkish eyes. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, leeks, kale, parsnips – Dylan continued to be astonished at what grew in the damp and the cold, and how good vegetables he’d thought he hated could taste. There had been extra work that week, his grandfather predicting the bitter weather long before the forecasters, and commanding every single thing Dylan could lay his hands on to be dug, or gathered. Broad beans, runner beans, mangetout, cauliflower, it was like stockpiling for a siege, Dylan had grumbled to himself, his grandfather keeping vigil as Dylan followed orders for preparing the new pickings for the freezer, cutting, parboiling and letting everything cool before dividing and sealing it into bags.

The morning eggs were small, speckled, and flecked with bits of feather. Once the water was boiling, Dylan carefully tapped each one on the side of the pan – he had proved cack-handed at this in the past, their shells being so much thinner than supermarket ones – and then watched, amazed every time, at how the whites swirled and curled round themselves in the bubbling water.