‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I’ll sort you out.’

‘You needn’t go to any trouble, Mal. I’m comfortable enough.’

‘No trouble whatsoever.’ He’d licked the corner of his mouth. ‘I was hoping to drop by again tomorrow evening. How’s that sound to you?’

‘All right.’

‘I’ll have a different motor. Listen for the horn. Round sevenish?’

‘Yeah, fine.’

‘Let’s have it, then,’ he’d said, and pointed to the fleshy section of his cheek. It hadn’t felt polite to turn him down. She’d leaned across and kissed him there. ‘See you soon, girl.’

‘Bye, Mal. Thanks for everything.’

He’d had her spinning like a pony on a carousel from the beginning, and she hadn’t even heard the music playing.

*

Now there was a dial tone bleating in the earpiece. She slammed the phone down on its cradle, wishing the entire booth would sink into the ground and swallow her for ever. Through the misty glass, she checked for movement in the doorway of the post office, but no one came. The shudders hadn’t faded, so she got her ciggies out and lit one. She stuffed the headscarf up her sleeve again and went outside.

Coming back down Alms Heath, worries landed in her mind like birds; she had to think of an old song to make them disappear. By the old mill stream I’m dreaming, Nellie Dean … It was something that her mother used to sing to help her fall asleep, to calm her if she knocked her head upon a table’s edge, or if her brother woke up wailing in the night. Dreaming of your bright eyes gleaming, Nellie Dean … And she couldn’t separate her mother’s voice from the sweet melody, which quieted her mind enough for her to carry on and do what needed doing. As they used to fondly glow, when we sat there long ago … She dumped her cigarette, unlatched the gate. The wind swelled, wetting her eyes. Twenty paces up the drive, there was a thin division in the hedge for her to cut through. Listening to the waters flow, Nellie Dean …

She veered off when she got there, hurdling the verges of the track and pushing through the spindly arms of shrubs. Deeper in the copse, the ground was soft and padded with damp leaves. A little further on, there was a tree with pale grey bark – a hornbeam was the name for it, or so Mal claimed. It had a mighty trunk that twisted up into a whirligig of branches. At its base, there was a good-sized rock the shape of a clenched fist. She crouched and tilted it, watching as the woodlice scuttled in the flat space underneath. Then she dug, scooping up the cold earth till her fingers met the edge of something.

The first three parcels she’d collected had the same light feeling in her hand. They’d been round, like tubs of Pond’s cream, sealed up tight with loops of packing tape. When she’d shaken them, they’d made no sound at all. But this one was much different – thinner, longer, and it rattled. It was bundled in a square of shammy, tied with string. The way it was presented – just a loose knot to untangle – must’ve been some kind of test of her devotion. Mal was tempting her to open it. With nobody around to check on her, she couldn’t stop herself.