She passed through the front yard, checking on the rye shoots in the field with squinting eyes. A stiff wind brushed the treetops as she came along the driveway and the dirt blew now and then above the ankles of her boots. She closed the gate behind her, crossed the road and went down Alms Heath with no urgency at all, though she was sweating underneath her coat already. At the junction, where the postbox stood enclosed within a wall of bricks, she dropped the letters through the slot. The shudders were still with her, tracking down her arms, and it was quite a battle to dig out the headscarf from her sleeve. She tied it round her hair and felt a hundred years older.

Across the road, the empty phone box waited, all its little windowpanes tinged white with condensation, putting her in mind of Christmas. A car turned down the lane before she reached the other side and she was careful not to show her face. Inside, the booth was cold and musty as a cellar. The dial seemed to go on ratcheting for ever when she put the number in – she had it memorized by now, but it had taken a few days to stick – and she was under orders to speak first. When the line connected and she dropped her pennies in, she said what she’d been told to say: ‘Another lovely morning in the country.’ That was how Mal knew it was all right to talk – a cautionary measure, on account of all the people who were after him.

Eventually, she heard his heavy breath in the receiver. ‘Half an hour late, aren’t you?’

‘Sorry, it’s not easy getting out the house. My brother’s always nosing.’

‘If your Charlie’s causing trouble –’

‘No, I didn’t say that.’ The shudders reached her fingers and she had to squeeze the dangling cable. ‘He’s no bother, Mal. You know that I can manage him.’

There was an awful pause. She imagined he was scratching at his beard, the way he did when he was sizing up a problem. ‘Next time, phone me when I say to phone me. I’ve got better things to do than wait around for you all day.’

She wanted to reply, Like what exactly? For as long as she’d known Mal, he’d had no pressing obligations or appointments, except to drop a car off at some backstreet garage or to sling some bit of gear down at the pawnbroker’s in town. But she wasn’t daft enough to start that conversation with him now. ‘All right. OK. I’m sorry.’

When he cleared his throat, the sound was so distinctive and familiar: a slow warble in his nose that ended with a crack of phlegm, a spit. She used to hear it often, waking up beside him on the pull-out in her flat. Mal had changed a lot since she first met him as a girl – he must’ve piled on six or seven stone over the years, and lost most of the hair above his forehead – but his habits were no different, or his manner. She’d never been entirely sure how old he was, because she’d always been afraid to ask – in those early days they were together, nothing could’ve mattered to her less. She imagined he was in his thirties now; maybe with a shave and better-fitting clothes, he could’ve passed for younger. ‘I’ve got another parcel for you,’ he said. ‘Same place as the last one. Go and fetch it, would you?’