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bed to be anywhere but pushed against the wall with the window that had the best view. The sun was shining, sparkling on the river, and the wind was blowing the clouds and making their shadows run across the slopes of the high hills. A train whistled from somewhere out of sight and came into her view from out of the tunnel. She climbed onto a chair to look out of the window that overlooked the gateway and the little castle.
    There was never anyone there. There was never anyone to be seen but Mother, the milkman and the postman in the morning, and Mr. Frost on his tractor on certain afternoons. Sometimes a car came down on its way to the bridge. Mostly the lane was empty and all that showed its face in the barn on the other side was the white owl, so seeing the man made her jump. He was holding on to one of the gates and looking toward Shrove, a tall man in blue jeans and a pullover and brown leather jacket and with a canvas bag on his back.
    Suddenly he looked up in the direction of her window and saw her there between the curtains. She knew he saw her and it frightened her. She couldn’t have said why it did, but it was something to do with his face, not a nice face, not the kind she had ever seen before. It was masked in yellow-brown hair all over it, great bushes of curly hair from which eyes stared and the nose poked out. Later she wondered if she had thought the face not nice because of the beard, which was new to her. She never saw another until the day Bruno and Mother took her shopping in the town.
    She was afraid he was coming to the gatehouse and would get in and come to get her. Ducking down from the window and wriggling across the floor and hiding under the bed couldn’t stop that and she knew it. She knew it even then. Under the bed she didn’t feel safe, only a bit safer, and she thought it might be a little while before he found her. Mother had locked the door of her room and the front door of the gatehouse, but that didn’t make Liza think the man wouldn’t be able to find her.
    A long time went by and Mother came back. She pulled Liza out and hugged her and said she hadn’t seen any man and if there was one he was probably harmless. If he wasn’t she’d set Heidi and Rudi on him.
    “How will you know?” Liza said.
    “I know everything.”
    Liza believed that was true.
    Late that afternoon there was a knock at the front door and when Mother went to answer it the man with the beard was on the step, asking for a glass of water. Liza thought Mother would say no, she hung on to Mother’s skirt, peering around her until Mother said to let go, not to be so stupid. The man said he hoped he wasn’t a nuisance.
    “Go and fetch some water, please, Liza,” Mother said. “Not a glass, a mug. You know how to do it.”
    Liza knew. In some ways Mother had brought her up to be independent. Only in some, of course. For a long while she had fetched her own water when she wanted a drink, climbing up onto the chair by the sink, taking a mug from the shelf, turning on the tap, and filling the mug and then being very careful to turn the tap off again. She did this now, filling the mug that had a picture on it of a lady in a crown, and carrying it back to the front door. Some of it spilled on the way, but she couldn’t help that.
    The man drank the water. She saw so few people she noticed everything about the ones she did see. He held the mug in his left hand, not his right like Liza and Mother did, and on the third finger of that hand was a wide gold ring. That was the first time she had ever seen a ring on anyone’s hand, for Mother wore none.
    He said to Liza, “Thank you, darling,” and gave her back the mug. “Is there anywhere around here doing B and B?” he said to Mother.
    “Doing what?”
    “B and B. Bed and breakfast.”
    “There’s nowhere around here doing anything,” Mother said, sounding glad to say it. She took a step outside, making him step backward, and spread out her arms. “What you see