Trees leaned out further overhead as the downward slope grew steeper. Would my aunt have seen the blackened sky weighing them down? She might have thought the past represented by the multiplying strata of the walls was drawing us lower still. No doubt she would have appreciated how some of the sets of bracket fungus on the walls resembled pairs of fleshy lips. She could have envisioned the large beads of moisture that clung to the lichen as lidless eyes, their blank stares following me through the gloom. Had I undergone enough of her kind of fancies yet? Although the wind seemed not to reach down here, I kept feeling colder. The trouble was that I had no real idea of how she might have viewed the place or how it might appear to my son. Surely there was nothing he ought to avoid, and why should I have imagined there might be? That was Julia’s attitude, not mine. I was still trudging down the slope when the land above the cutting emitted a moist whisper that progressed into a hiss as it closed in, and the branches overhead began to writhe as if they were struggling to fend off the storm.

The nearest shelter was the bridge I’d left behind. As I sprinted for it, the ground underfoot grew treacherous. It must be soaking up the rain, even if I didn’t yet feel drenched. It felt no more stable than a marsh, and I dodged onto the nearest sleeper and then the next one up. They weren’t quite as close together as I’d assumed, and the slope was steeper than I was anticipating. Wasn’t this often the case when you had to return uphill? I told myself so while deploring the incompetence of the workmen who had laid the line, since the sleepers weren’t evenly spaced – indeed, each pair was a little further apart, and I was having to stride wider. I felt as if I were striving to climb a ladder without being able to use my hands to clamber, and soon I had to jump from board to increasingly slippery board as outsize raindrops plummeted from the trees to thump my scalp. I tried walking on the ground instead, only to slither backwards. I could easily have fancied that I felt the ground shift underfoot, and I retreated onto the sleepers, lurching from one insecure foothold to the next. I’d missed my footing more than once, landing on the restlessly insecure earth, by the time I stumbled under the bridge.