Dark as pitch on the Gilsland road; a few little spits of rain now and again and wind lashing across from every direction. It’s a place at the edge of things, is Gilsland. Proper Borderlands. It’s not much of a leap to the Scottish border in one direction and then you’ve got the boundary between Cumbria and Northumberland running right through the middle of the village. As if that weren’t enough there’s the scraps of Roman Wall cutting through people’s back gardens and farms. It’s a big old cobweb of ley lines and most of the history is written in blood and dirt and cow muck. Stick your shovel in the ground and you’ll pull up bones or sword hilts or musket balls. Pretty to look at, though; just miles and miles of wild nothingness, all these bare fields and little dark pockets of wood. There’s a ruggedness to it: a toughness. Always makes me think of some old warrior with stitch marks and scars all over his skin. John says I talk daft when I’m trying to be poetic, which is rich, given that he once spent three hours trying to find a rhyme for ‘seagull’. Fairly near to wetting ourselves when he finally finished the ditty and he’d plumped for ‘giggle’ but in a funny voice. Were a good afternoon, that.

The Zealand place, as we still called it, was at the top of a slope about half a mile from the village itself. Three storeys, lots of chimneys, big rectangular grounds but it looked about as inviting as a crocodile’s mouth. Never had known much joy, that house. The little square windows were eyes that had looked down on a lot of sorrows. I always felt as though the tears Cordelia shed after her boy was taken had somehow bled into the walls. I got a shiver when I stepped inside.

‘You all right?’ asked John, as the car slipped and slithered over the muddy track to the back entrance of the house. We never felt right going to the big front door. It was the kind of door a butler should open. We went in by the old farm track, a narrow little curve of rock and mud that you could only find through a gap in the neighbouring field. It was screened from the road by a line of trees, but I still felt like we were burglars as John nosed the car down the lane and we crunched into the back courtyard where the kitchen staff would once have greeted butchers and bakers and their ilk. John had to ask me his question another three times before it registered.

‘All right?’ I asked.

‘You get jittery when it comes to this place. Your nerves. You fret.’ He shrugged, not uncaring but just not having the right words.

‘I’m fine. Are you hurting?’