The boundary walls were strong, and he poured more and more of himself into them, feeling Jack’s dark wildness flashing around him.

Sometimes they would lie with flasks of fresh fruit juice that Kit made, under the spreading branches of the great oak tree, side by side, almost touching, and Kit would sing. He had a low, unearthly voice, with sad, lilting songs of a sort that Tom had never heard before.

‘Where did you learn those?’ Tom asked him one day.

Kit smiled. ‘Mother did sing to me.’

For a while, everything was still and quiet. The summer solstice had long passed, but though the days were shortening, the evenings were long and clear, and Jack had his meals in his rooms, which Kit or Zita brought to him on a tray and cleared away for him, when he ate at all. Tom lived for the evenings, when he and Kit and Zita would sit by the side of the moat, dangling their legs down over the bank, sharing a roast chicken or some sausages. He did not see Jack; did not seek him out in his rooms.

Most days, Zita wafted through the house, putting records onto the gramophone, reading out from her collection of plays and making things from herbs and mosses and other plants. These, Tom realised now, were draughts to restore their energy after they had worked, as well as other kinds whose purpose he did not dare to guess at. Tom noticed that it was Zita who dealt with paperwork, letters and bills. It surprised him to see her one morning laboriously making out a cheque for the electricity company. Everything was in Zita’s name; she had control of the accounts. Jack did sometimes get post, in a handwritten envelope, from a solicitor in the local market town, and Tom filed away this information, thinking that he should write to the firm or maybe even try to visit it.

Tom realised he hadn’t looked at his mobile phone in days; it had run out of battery, and when he managed to charge it, there was still no reception.

A letter arrived from Fletcher, asking him if he needed anything, which Tom answered briefly but politely. He simply wrote that he was all right, and that if he did need anything, he’d be in touch. Somehow, the things he was encountering were too big and difficult to put into banal words on the page.

Kit offered to post it for him, as he took the horse and cart to the village shop every week, and Zita would occasionally accompany him to deal with things. As she put it one morning, ‘Lolly, darling. Moolah.’ Zita, it seemed, was allowed to go as far as the market town when necessary, about twice or three times a year.