From the dimmest portion of the hall, gloved by shadows that torrent from the staircase, Jess can only hear Flo’s voice but not what she is saying. Nor does she want to. Nor will she look at that frail tyrant. Not for a while.

12

Leaning over the banister, Jess can see Flo, sleeping in the living room. Head down, lipless mouth closed, the wheelchair stricken by the afternoon light blasting through the open windows. A breeze stirs the nets and ruffles papers somewhere out of sight.

Jess continues up the stairs, passing the wheelchair’s stair-lift, stepping like a goat on a mountain pass to navigate a frozen avalanche of bags and boxes. After stealthily crossing the barricade she reaches the summit for the first time and can only look aghast at the disorder of the first floor.

As on the ground floor, up here a poorly-lit exhibition of antiquities with no curator is strewn, piled and propped. A jumbled archive of a long life bereft of a librarian. ‘Bloody tip.’

Before wandering far, she pauses to examine the rusting blade of an ancient scythe mounted upon a wall. A brutal and grotesque agricultural artefact, and her distaste only increases when she investigates the line drawing hanging opposite the scythe. An original illustration made indistinct by a thick layer of dust and the impoverished light. But she can make out a cart being hauled through woodland by a hunched figure. Not a horse but a man. A second figure, one even more indistinct beneath the dross of the ages that films everything up here, follows the cart. The vehicle contains a large spherical shape.

Mystified, Jess moves off and pauses outside Flo’s bedroom. The door has been left wide open and a rectangle of daylight promises instant relief from the unpleasant claustrophobic darkness of the landing. She doesn’t hesitate and pads inside.

Despite the confusion and gloom of the vicarage encroaching right up to the threshold of this door, Flo’s bedroom is striking in its neatness. Old-fashioned elegance and tasteful furnishings encourage Jess to tread carefully and self-consciously to the largest window, which she promptly throws wide open.

From up here, the furthest border of the property is absorbed by the copse of tall trees, their shadows blackening the air between the trunks but not completely concealing a shimmer of water at the heart of the glade. The hallowed atmosphere she intuited earlier continues to cling to the wooded area.

Drawn to the multitude of framed black-and-white photographs on the dresser opposite the foot of the bed, Jess puts aside her fascination with the grove and, as if nervous of being caught in the room, approaches the pictures on light feet to lessen the creaks of the old floorboards.

One photograph catches her interest immediately, of an elegant younger woman she assumes is Flo, flanked by a pretty little girl and a formally dressed older boy.