Without allowing myself to think too hard about it, I strolled across the gravel yard to a gate leading into some sort of garden beyond. Ensuring the gate was closed behind me, I followed a track into a field of scrubby grass peppered with short, twisty-looking trees, their bare branches like bony fingers stretching out against the sharp chill. I had to duck my head a few times, to avoid some of the thickest boughs, keeping one eye up while the other watched for the tendrils of bramble snaking across the earth and the clumps of nettles. My hunch that this was some sort of orchard was confirmed when I stepped in a rotten apple, and suddenly started spotting them everywhere. Apples, and what appeared to have been plums – or more likely damsons, I supposed.

I flicked through my memories for mentions of an orchard in Charlie’s many conversations about the farm, soon recollecting stories about picnics under the trees, how her job had been to carefully wrap the picked fruit in newspaper, layering it in crates to store during the winter. Maybe she’d strung up a hammock and used to read here?

However, like the rest of the farm, this was nothing like her stories. While winter may have been partly responsible for the orchard being so austere, devoid of any life save the sleeping trees, the silence here seemed deeper than merely the seasonal lull. Like a long-forgotten enchanted wood, with the echoes of past pleasures frozen in time. I half expected to stumble across a statue of Mr Tumnus hiding in amongst the trunks. Only, instead what I found as I wound through the undergrowth, boots squelching into the mud, was the bees.

Or, more precisely, two figures covered from head to toe in beekeeping gear. Either that or there’d been a serious radioactive leak no one had bothered to mention.

No – definitely bees. I quickly spied a row of hives lined up a couple of metres from the far fence, and to my horror, one of the safe and securely dressed beekeepers was in the process of lifting the lid off one of them. I couldn’t decide whether to move closer so that they spotted me in time, or turn and flee. I assumed bees could catch me up in seconds, so I plumped for yelling and waving my arms instead.

‘Hello!’

Great. They clearly couldn’t hear me while enveloped in their nice, safe, sting-preventing suits. I darted a few steps closer, pausing a few metres away as I dodged the handful of bees now buzzing around. ‘Hello!’ I cried, louder this time, before swiftly retreating again.

Both figures jerked their heads towards me, the one holding the lid scanning around before finding me lurking beside a clump of brown bracken, as if that could protect me from a swarm of angry insects. They hurriedly placed the lid back on the hive, before both of the beekeepers pulled back their hoods.

I recognised the person by the hive as the doctor, Ziva.