Banks refilled his wineglass and replaced Lana Del Rey with Mark Knopfler’s Tracking. There was a pleasant cross breeze, but he still felt his T-shirt sticking to him. It was that time of day he loved, between sunset and dark—the gloaming, as the Anglo-Saxons called it—when the swifts had returned to their nests and the bats had yet to come out. The light seemed to possess an ethereal, ineffable quality, perhaps intensified by its transience, and Knopfler’s smooth vocals and flowing melodic guitar work provided a fitting accompaniment.

It never got truly dark for long in the northern summers, and Banks had found himself adapting his routine to the cycle of the day. It meant he didn’t get as much sleep, as he found it difficult to drop off while it was still light outside, so he tended to stop up later. But he rose early, and he stayed late at the office most evenings and ate a sandwich while he finished the day’s paperwork. Once home, he’d do exactly what he was doing now, if he didn’t nip down to the Dog and Gun for a quick pint and a chat with Penny Cartwright, or whoever happened to be there from the folk crowd.

He didn’t have much of a back garden, and, though he sometimes went out front and climbed over the wall to sit on the banks of Gratly Beck by the terraced falls, as often as not he spent his evenings in the conservatory. With the windows open, it was almost like being outside. There had been too few evenings spent this way since his promotion. So often he had been stuck with extra paperwork or away overnight on a course or at a conference. Where he was sitting, he could smell the sweetness of the honeysuckle clinging to its trellis, watch the shadows darken on the slopes of Tetchley Fell and the setting sun paint the sky orange and purple along the valley in the west. Times like this, he wondered how he had managed to live in Eastvale at all, let alone London. He imagined Linda Palmer sitting in her garden by the river composing poems. He wished he had that talent, or any writing ability at all. At least, he thought, he should read some of hers. And maybe also Ariel and Dart.