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be another little girl, a nuisance. Both of them visibly quaked at catching this unexpected sight of each other; not with attraction immediately but with shock at this encounter with one of their own kind – young – in this place where they had both been resigned to being singular, and even relieved by it. The encounter added interest to the whole situation, most definitely, but also pressure. They passed in silence, Kasim on his way to the bathroom and Molly to her bedroom. He carried away her image – delicate little cat’s impertinent muzzle, little springy high breasts – imprinted on his mind’s eye and digested it afterwards while taking a piss, not too noisily, in case she was listening. Running the cold tap, splashing water on his face, he stared into the mirror above the sink and saw himself differently because she’d seen him; he knew that now, alone in her room, she was digesting his image too.
    On her way home from birdwatching Harriet crossed a tussocky field, a narrow wedge shape between two stretches of woodland, rising steeply to where it was closed in by more woods at the top. After the woods with their equivocal shade, the strong sunlight was startling when the path opened onto this gap; a red kite ambled in the sky above, small birds scuffled in the undergrowth, too hot to sing, and a pigeon broke out from the trees with a wooden clatter of wing beats. A stream ran down the field, bisecting it, conversing urgently with itself, its cleft bitten disproportionately deep into the stony ground and marked against the field’s rough grass by the tangle of brambles that grew luxuriantly all along it, profuse as fur, still showing a few late white flowers limp like damp tissue, and heavy with berries too sour and green to pick yet, humming with flies.
    Harriet followed the sound of the stream’s boiling and deep chuckle up the field to a place where it tumbled over a stone and fell to foam in a dark pool below, all out of the sunlight, hidden under its thick fringe of growth. Crouching, she reached out her hand to break the water’s fall; it bore away from the stone lip in a perfect glassy curve, vividly cold. She wanted to taste it but thought that wasn’t sensible – who knew what pesticides they used on these fields? On her solitary walks she was ambushed occasionally by this fear of accidents: what if she fell, and no one knew where she was? So she touched her wet hand to her forehead instead, and the water dried against her skin as she walked towards home, through the woods down to the road and past the restored mill which sold handmade paper to London artists, then onto the disused road which climbed again, along the side of the hill to Kington at the top.
    Roland’s Jaguar, when she got there, was pulled up between her car and Fran’s, and luggage was left on the cobbles – so much good-looking luggage, expensive suitcases and briefcases and laptops, and a lovely straw basket, lined with cotton print, a billowing scarf tied round the leather handles. Harriet stood hesitating – she could hear excited voices, mostly Alice’s, coming from the back garden. Entering into that high-pitched sociability would be like breaking through a skin, all eyes would turn on her and see how she was hot and dishevelled from her walk. Harriet dreaded the effort that would have to be made, getting to know Roland’s new wife: a stranger was a fearful and impregnable unknown country. Even this luggage intimidated her, with its aura of life lived according to a high, intolerant code that she would never master.
    She lingered in the pregnant quiet of the empty yard, until Arthur came wading out from the scullery in cobwebby walking boots, huge on him, that must have once belonged to her grandfather. He didn’t seem surprised to find her skulking there.
    â€” You should come round, he said. — They’re all here now.
    â€” I suppose I