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said.
    “It’s not always warm and soft. We’ve got on our company manners.” She turned to face me. “It’s not always what it seems, is it?”
    “Perhaps not. Still, I like watching the three of you.”
    “You have any children, Jack Stone?”
    “No.”
    “Watching you with Terry this afternoon, I thought, you’d make a good father.”
    “More like a grandfather at my age.”
    “Rubbish. He likes you. You don’t talk down to him the way most adults do with children.”
    “He’s a smart boy.”
    “He is.” There was a subtle change in her voice. “I suspect his father was like that in this house when he was that age. It’s a shame we can’t freeze them so they can’t change.”
    I lay awake for a long time that night, unable to sleep, listening to the bleating of Robbie’s sheep. He was right. They seemed to be talking to each other in some strange language, crying out, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m over here,” as if afraid that light would come again and they would be alone.

10.
    The next morning I slept in so that once again Robbie and Terry were gone when I finally came down.
    “You’re keeping banker’s hours, mister Jack Stone,” Maggie said, pouring me a cup of tea. A weak sun slanted in through the open curtain at the window above the sink.
    She offered to fix what she called a proper breakfast but I told her no, I was late and she needn’t bother, just some toast and a piece of cheese.
    “What’s on your menu today? The sun is out, first time in weeks, it feels like. Off for a walk?”
    “What will you do?”
    “Take a bit of a walk, take a bath, straighten up the house, have something ready to eat when those two come back all covered with mud.” She lifted her hair with both hands, stretching it back behind her head, and began to tie it into a knot.
    Invite me to walk with you, I thought, but she said, “You’ll be wanting to write now, won’t you? You’ll have the house to yourself for a bit. We’ll all be out of your way. Take your tea up to the room if you want, or bring your machine down here. The Rayburn keeps this room warm.” I must have looked puzzled, since she added, “The cooker,” gesturing toward the big old stove. She went to the hallway at the back door and took a jacket off a hook.
    “If you decide to go out, don’t worry about locking up,” and she closed the door after her.
    I went back up to my room and stood at the window and watched her go across the farmyard, disappear around the end of the shed and emerge a few seconds later in the field, walking toward the rise above the farm. I watched as her figure grew smaller until she topped the rise, turned and stood, facing the farm. I wondered if she could see me standing there at the window. Then she disappeared over the rise and I sat at the laptop and wrote out a paragraph describing Maggie breaking off a piece of the crust of the pie, her lips closing over her fingertips, only I kept writing, following her finger as she touched the neck of her sweater, watched as she slipped her hand down inside her sweater, cupped her breast in her hand, turned to look directly at me, as if inviting me to touch her as well, and when I had finished the page I realized that I was writing erotica, and I deleted it and wrote another scene in which a woman crosses behind a stone wall and walks up a field and I thought, I should have asked her if I could walk with her.
    I tried again to write but nothing came and finally I went downstairs, put on my jacket and went out. I thought of following in the direction Maggie had gone, perhaps finding her somewhere on the hillside, but instead I walked along the road until I came to the village. I went into the post office store, bought a cellophane-wrapped sausage roll and a soft drink in a plastic bottle and went back onto the road, walking through the village, until I came to a crossroads. I sat on the stone wall and ate the sausage roll, a foul thing that tasted of sawdust and