Later that morning I set out on foot. A long walk ahead, but I have absolutely no desire to get behind the wheel of a car. The day is clear, dry. A thin light wind chills my head and ears. Emerging as I do from the house, harrowed by my visit to Tom and recently ghosted, I feel like a sheep tipped out into the yard after shearing, shivering in an unfamiliar breeze, curiously underweight.

The road runs along the far side of Beacon Hill. Here the land doesn’t plunge down to make a rampart as it does on the Upton side. Instead the hill falls away gently and then levels into a wide plateau of plowed land. I walk between fields so wide I can’t see the other side, the shallow soil fading to white where the chalk has worn through. There’s no break from the wind; the boundaries are marked only by thin wire fences. Birds lift into the air as I pass, alighting again behind me, churring. I don’t know what they are. I’m no expert on birds.

Yvette was utterly herself. Nothing mysterious or portentous about her. As if she’d got up early and was popping in to see me on her way out. She’d started learning sign language before she fell ill, the better to communicate with two new deaf children, brothers, at Sunday school. She might have been on her way to her sign language class. Yes, slightly impatient with me, as if I was holding her up with my foolishness. She might have been chiding me for looking for socks in the larder, or writing paper in the coal bunker. I hear her voice, echoing up the stairs to Tom, who had lost his shoes for the thousandth time. They’re your shoes, darling. Think! Where did you take them off?

A useful function of ghosts. Giving the searchers a good kick up the bottom. You’ve jolly well got to find it yourself.

My route drops down to the river valley and I emerge onto a road I know, the one that runs along under the beech wood. I would like to walk among the trees but the paths have a lot of slippery, jolting ups-and-downs, and besides, I’m nearly there. The urgency gathers in me and I pick up my pace. If he’s out, I’ll simply wait until he comes back.

The wall bulges, too late in the season for rock daisies to flower. She used to park the Hillman here, under the wall where the road widens. Almost twenty-five years ago now. A long time.

I pass on down the lane.

—

As before, the canine wolf greets me with his silent snarl. I try to make my knocking neighborly but the knocker slips from my numb fingers and bangs down hard on the plate. A pulse beats at my throat.

Footsteps, and then the door is opened.