Arriving home, she stepped out of the wagon at the front gate, leaving the engine running, as she always did. The latch was slightly rusted and there was a certain knack to lifting it. She was pushing back the gate, facing all the hedges and the bracken on the neighbour’s side, when she saw movement in the copse. It wasn’t rare to spot a fox stalking the woods this time of day, and roe deer had been known to spring on to the track, so she didn’t find it too perturbing. But then she noticed how the bracken quivered, splayed, and she was sure, when she glanced into the copse again, that a man was squatting there amid the tangle of the ferns and bushes. A rather large man, was her sense of it. The bald cap of his head was poking out above the greenery.

‘Who’s there?’ she said. ‘Come out, please, or I’m phoning the police.’

She paced backwards to the wagon. A spike of trepidation scratched along her spine. As she got behind the wheel, the man skulked from the bushes with both hands in the air. He was thick around the middle, hunched and bearded. And the buckle of his belt hung down.

‘Don’t bother the police,’ he called. There was no panic to him, which she thought surprising. Not a blink or twitch. ‘I was only – look, you’ve caught me short, that’s all.’ He steered his eyes down to his trousers. ‘Could I make myself presentable again?’ Lowering his hands, he tightened up his belt and clasped it shut. ‘I was about to wet myself. I’m dreadful sorry. There was nowhere else with any sort of coverage – I thought it’d be private. More fool me.’ The face he gave her then was childlike, fraught with shame. ‘If it’s all the same with you, I’ll just be on my way, dear. That all right?’

Well, she could hardly punish him for doing exactly what she’d done herself ten minutes out of Burford. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘be off with you. Don’t ever let me see you on my land again, you hear? Or the police will know about it.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Much obliged.’

She slammed her door closed, trying to make a point, to shoo him off.

He grabbed his belt and started walking, stepping round the wagon’s flank. She eyed the mirror till he passed behind her and then drove on a few yards. Getting out to shut the gate, she was disappointed with herself for being so uncharitable, so protective of her property – it undermined the spirit they were trying to foster round the place. She hadn’t meant to sound so scathing, but that scratch along her spine had caused it: she’d felt vulnerable before the stranger in a way she hadn’t with the farmers she bought parts from. Why? The man had seemed no more suspicious than the rest of them, just larger. She decided it was best to leave these details out when she reported the encounter to her husband later on; he’d only rant and rave about her lack of caution.