He was lucky, too. If he wasn’t there, she would be moving over this landscape alone, and she would be making slightly better progress because she wouldn’t have stopped to talk. She might be half a kilometre further on, and if she paused to turn and look backwards she would not see an awkward man, sweating already in a bright red coat. The landscape would be empty of him, and it would be only her.

Where would he be, if things had turned out differently?

He would be in some place he didn’t want to think about, because it was impossible to visualise. Something stopped him seeing himself broken and discoloured, and the idea of him being cut to pieces was simply beyond imagination… was the brain wired so it couldn’t process such a thing? A mortuary in Crewe, or Bromsgrove – Preston, even. Accrington – where the nurses were forced to put on gloves to move him? They hadn’t had to touch the Muslim man’s father. He had been surrounded by family.

He tried to imagine the darkness of a closed box, or a zipped-up bag – and he couldn’t. Instead, he walked on and let the wind surge around him. His boots were getting slightly heavier, and they were rising steadily into the gale, towards a twisted thorn tree – there was nothing else. The tree trembled in the wind, and when they got closer they saw there were actually three sheep huddled under it, which broke cover and ran bleating away. Soon, it was behind them, and they reached the undramatic crest of the hill, where a shallow dip took them through boggy ground towards a peak that was higher. Up they went. The same path continued in the same single furrow.

The brown slopes folded into each other, and if your legs kept working you could walk them for ever – Michael could walk right across England. In the far distance they spotted a little stone hut, and Maria stopped.

‘The shepherd’s store,’ she said in his ear.

‘I think so,’ he replied. ‘You see? You don’t need me.’

She laughed.

‘I do,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me! But when we get there we should have something to eat.’

‘That sounds sensible.’

‘What?’

‘I said that’s a good idea.’

‘Are you tired?’

‘No. Are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought you were fit.’

‘I thought so too. You’re fitter than me. How old are you, Michael?’

‘Fifty-six.’

‘Thirty-three. Are you married?’

‘No. I’m like you, I think – obstinately single.’

She screwed up her eyes.

‘Obstinate means…?’

‘Stubborn. Someone who knows what they want. Do you think you’ll marry, when you go home? One day, perhaps?’

‘I don’t understand you,’ she said.

‘Will you marry? One day?’

‘I’m married already.’

The wind took her words away, and he had to move closer.

‘Say that again,’ he cried.

She pulled the flaps of her hood open.