‘There’s no reason to be nervous,’ Florence had put in. ‘Just be yourself.’

‘It’s much too soon for that, miss.’

‘Well, at least make sure he foots the bill.’

‘I’ll do my best. I should be home about eleven.’

‘There’s no curfew. You enjoy your evening.’ Florence had a smile that somehow made her look both wiser and more childish. She’d tapped her breastbone with the rolled-up journal. ‘Still, it’s nice to hear you call this home.’

These sentiments had left a mark on her, but there was nothing she could do with them. She’d wandered up the driveway, out the gate, with Mal’s instructions circling in her head. I’ll have a car for you, don’t worry. She’d come to hate the grousing of his voice so much. It was a pain that wouldn’t fade. Just take a walk down Hungry Hill Lane till you reach the bend. I’ll park it on the verge a few yards after that. Well, she was pacing through the darkness now and following the tarmacadam, looking for that bend, but she’d been going for a while and the road had barely turned. A Vanguard, it’ll be. Mint green, but that’s not so important – you won’t see the colour. And she didn’t even have a torch, in case it drew attention. But she’d brought some matches, fearing she might wind up lost and freezing in the woods. There was an engine ticking over somewhere in the black, a distant shush of wheels. I’ll leave the keys inside the glovebox with a map. You’ll need to drive to Streatham Vale. She hadn’t got the chance to argue with him. I’ll put a cross where you’re to meet me after.

For the past two months, there’d been a sort of peace between them – fragile and uneasy – and she’d carried the lead weight of fear inside her belly all that time. She’d smothered it with attitude so nobody would see. She’d dulled the sting of it with labour on the farm. She’d started drinking Mr Mayhood’s brandy in the night, to blunt the edge of it enough that she could sleep; and when she had, she’d dreamed of him, Mal Duggan, with an ice cream dripping on his knuckles, a stuffed lion underneath his arm, missing a paw; or she’d dreamed of Mr Hollis in his straw hat, dropping rye seeds on a pure white bedsheet, only when she scooped her fingers in the fallen grain, it was a heap of teeth.

There hadn’t been another package since the last one, which she’d taken as a mercy. She and Mal had barely spoken. At the start of every week, she’d made her calls. ‘A lovely morning in the countryside again,’ she’d said, while sleet had struck the phone box, hard diagonal rain, and one day, out of nowhere, hailstones the size of peppercorns had rapped against the glass. ‘Nothing doing yet. Ring back on Tuesday,’ Mal had told her. So she had, five Tuesdays in a row. The only information she’d been given was, ‘I’m working on a fence, that’s all. I wouldn’t bother getting shirty with me, Joy, if you’ve got any sense left in you.’ All the while, she’d wondered just what sort of gear could be so hot no fence would touch it. Something wasn’t right, and Mal had sounded more and more beleaguered.