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for a while.
    Quiet, that is, except for the muffled thumps and howls as Bess alternately throws herself at the kitchen door and vociferates her desire to be with me, and the deafening silence from Toby the parrot, building himself up for the wild eldritch shrieks my eventual appearance will generate.
    I can deal with Toby. He can – and often does – manage to open his cage door and escape, but let me see him fight his way out of two layers of candlewick bedspread, that’s all I can say.
    As for Bess, her idea of silent sympathy is to stuff her wet, germy black nose into my hand, which breaks up the train of thought, since I then have to go and wash the said hand. A dog’s nose is so unsanitary: if they haven’t got it stuck up another dog’s rear they’ve got it stuck up their own.
    It’s odd how the mundane weaves its way in among your thoughts when you’ve had a shock, isn’t it?
    Thoughts of Bess, and not having defrosted anything for dinner, and what time James would arrive back from seeing his client in Worcester, and whether the spirit would move the extremely evangelical born-again Christian girl on the third floor to try once more to convert me tonight, all performed a sort of mournful morris dance through my mind, bells muffled.
    I could always get Bess to drool the girl to death. Death by Drooling would probably make a saint of her. In stained-glass windows she could be depicted dripping, with the sort of wholesome, earnest, sincere expression that makes you want to take pot shots with an air gun …
    After a while I became aware of the flashing light on the answerphone, reached over and pressed the playback button.
    ‘Hi, James, this is Vanessa. You forgot your Filofax. I’ll just drop it in tomorrow morning in case you need it over the weekend. It’s no bother – I’m practically round the corner now. Around ten? Byeee!’
    ‘Find your own husband, you cow!’ I told the answerphone, and it bleeped thoughtfully.
    ‘Merry and Little!’ boasted a gratingly cheery voice.
    ‘Wrong, buster: big and miserable.’
    But the next words made me sit up.
    ‘This is Merry and Little estate agents, regarding your offer for 2 Dower Houses, Nutthill. I’m pleased to say your offer has been accepted. Could you call us back at your earliest convenience?’
    The cottage?
    My
cottage?
    Part of my brain began to function cohesively. The vendor had accepted the offer we’d made for the cottage – an offer James insisted we made ludicrously low, in the hope, I’m sure, of having it rejected out of hand.
    And I had let him, spineless wet object that I am!
    It seems to me that rather than going all out for things I want, I’ve just been passively letting things happen to me. Except for the novels, of course. I’m determined enough there, though I always imagined myself as a writer living in the country, and now the realisation of that ambition is within my grasp.
    A rosy vision of Eden beckons enticingly: James, his interest in gardening rekindled, growing vegetables; myself inside, writing busily by the light of a log fire, and a sleeping baby in an antique wooden cradle at my feet. A clock ticking, distant sounds of cows going to be milked, birdsong …
    A room of my own, even.
    Not just a corner of table to work on in a dark dining room, but a whole room just for me. The little bedroom with the gable window, I think, looking out at the park.
    It’s time to put the past behind me and go forward, with James, towards the future we wanted.
    Only it seems to have taken a hell of a long time to get here.
    Lost as I was in this healing Elysian dream the sudden clicking on of the light was a painfully dazzling intrusion.
    James stood in the doorway, looking almost as startled as I felt.
    ‘Tish? Why are you sitting in the dark? And why is Bess howling in the kitchen?’
    As usual he let his coat and briefcase drop where he stood for the little fairies to come and pick up. They do, too: I must be mad.
    ‘Oh –