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saw Maggie coming from some way off. She wore a big red padded jacket. Louisa waited for her to knock and left it a moment before rising from her chair. When she opened the door, she saw that Maggie’s hair was wet. Her eyes were wet, too, and a little wild. She looked, to Louisa, disproportionately pleased to be on her neighbour’s doorstep. Perhaps she was drunk.
    ‘Hiya, Lou. Did you get my note?’
    ‘Yes. Thank you.’ She pulled the cheque from her back pocket and returned it to Maggie. ‘I don’t need this.’
    ‘Oh, come on. I wrecked your van. I insist.’ Maggie pushed the cheque back but Louisa shook her head.
    ‘I don’t need it. I know a man who will do it cheap.’
    ‘Right.’ Maggie looked over Louisa’s shoulder into the house. ‘It’s cold tonight.’
    ‘You should wear a hat,’ Louisa said.
    ‘Yeah.’ Maggie looked down at the cheque. ‘Let’s go and spend this,’ she said.
    ‘What?’ Louisa said.
    ‘It’s quiz night at the White Hart.’
    Louisa gave a derisive sniff. The irony of looking for answers in that place was crushing.
    ‘Do you fancy coming down?’ Maggie said. The wind flexed as she spoke, so that she had to shout, sounding more urgent than she probably intended. Louisa looked around. The moon was big and close, and the trees gave a crisp hiss.
    ‘Can’t really,’ Louisa said.
    ‘You busy, eh?’
    ‘It’s not so much that.’
    ‘No. Me neither. I’m pretty busy in the day. Night-time? Not so very busy, I must say.’
    Louisa did not speak.
    ‘Come on. Christopher’s out. Two hours. An hour. I’m buying. We need to get off this hill.’
    ‘I just bathed.’
    ‘And I just had a shower. Perfect. Sisters looking hot.’
    Louisa found that remark distasteful, in many ways. ‘No. Thank you. Anyway, I’d have thought you’d be staying at home in the evenings, after those break-ins.’
    Maggie nodded, squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Are you okay?’ she said.
    ‘Me? I’m fine,’ Louisa said.
    ‘Oh, that’s good. I’m not fine, to be honest. And I don’t much want to go down into the village and drink with those old buggers, but I quite fancied a drink with you .’
    Louisa had no time for emotional blackmail. ‘Listen. I don’t expect you’ve ever been turned down. I’ll put it down to inexperience, but you have this knack of only turning up here when you want something, so I can’t help feeling like the bottom of the barrel. It’s not a pleasant sensation, being scraped. I told your husband the same.’
    Maggie shook her head and choked back some tears. She pointed to her house. ‘I am in that . . . fucking place on my jacks, waiting to be broken into. And I don’t think my company is so poor that I’d be the only one to gain from us having a chat. And I know exactly what you told my husband. I just wonder what you tell your fucking self.’
    She walked away. Louisa made sure she slammed the door quickly. The bloodrush made her giddy. She shut the lights off and watched Maggie through the window. Sixty paces from the house she was nothing more than that red coat lit by the moon. Headless, legless. It was about then that Maggie screamed, ‘For fuck’s sake!’ She didn’t hold back on the volume.
    Sleep proved difficult that night. Apart from the adrenal pump of the argument, Louisa panicked over what David had told Maggie. Had he told her about the second day of their hunting challenge, back when they were teenagers? Their silent, breathless walk through the glades and fields? It was the last day of February, and the last moment of pure beauty that Louisa could remember experiencing with another human. It was more likely he had told her of the moments following the walk, their lives split in two like rotten wood. She thought of David stumbling away from the hedgerow. She drifted off, and woke to find the moon so strong she thought it was afternoon.
    At that moment, Louisa was truly aware of the exposed location of her cottage. And she could feel