After he’d finished at the ruined house, he walked west for an entire morning, until he arrived at a pub. He ordered chips and sat on a bench outside and ate them, accompanied by a lone Muscovy duck. In a church foyer, farther up the lane the pub was on, he found a pile of free paperbacks, and put one in his rucksack. His feet ached and one of the soles had come loose from his left boot. On a bigger road, he waited for close to two hours, until a car pulling a caravan stopped for him. He sat in the back seat beside a child called Matthew with a bubble of snot in one nostril who stared at him the whole way, sucking a thumb. He got out within a mile of the village and went straight to Dick Warner’s woodyard, but there was no sign of him. Outside the door to the kitchen was a trail of cold baked beans and many of the beans were stuck to the door itself. Within a swift breeze that whipped around the logs there was the aroma of wood and crow and something dead but briefly revived and not quite identifiable. When he finally reached the cottage Mrs Nicholas was out. He found some tape in a drawer and applied it to his shoe, threw his remaining possessions into his rucksack, and left the paperback and the remaining rent he owed on the kitchen table.