I tried to make sense of it. I was in a stolen vehicle. I’d been driving for two hours and hadn’t betrayed my position or stopped to make a phone call. If somebody knew that I was driving the little Allegro, it was because a police report had been filed and somebody with a decent IQ had recognized the description of the woman wanted in connection with the vehicular theft. That could only be somebody within the intelligence community. My destination couldn’t be hard to fathom. A quick glance through my personnel file would show where I was living when I was first recruited, and no doubt Cranham had given my pursuers a heads-up about where best to get their hands upon his errant wife. That meant I had somebody behind me and no doubt somebody coming in from the opposite direction and headed for the house. I gripped the wheel, palms oozing sweat, feeling the perspiration on my brow turn to ice as the cold air blew in through the open window. I breathed in deep, trying to centre myself. Despite the panic in my gut there was something almost comforting about breathing in that rich, complex, rural smell. I inhaled the scents of damp earth and fresh rain, churned-up fields and the great empty nothingness of this rugged, barren land on the edge of England. Memories flooded back. Tears prickled at my eyes as I thought upon Stefan, his weight upon my tummy as I lay on the dew-damp grass and read him his stories; the gritty sand of his ashes upon my rain-soaked palms as I scattered his remains among the bluebells and cow parsley at the little church where Felicity and I first became friends. I heard myself give a great rasping sob and had to squeeze my eyes tight shut before the tears betrayed me and started to fall.

I glanced again in the mirror. There was no doubting it now. I was five or six miles from Gilsland, adjacent to the little hamlet I knew as Low Row. I could pull in at one of the farms and kill the headlights, but even if they drove on by, what next? I’d still have to work out whether Felicity was best served by my presence or by my absence and if the person behind me was the piggy-eyed bruiser from the train, I didn’t want him getting to the house before me. He wasn’t somebody I ever wanted Felicity to meet.