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Maggie’s presence, too. The walls of their houses seemed irrelevant, flimsy. She thought of Maggie trembling on the doorstep. It had been a long time since Louisa had provoked anger in another person, a long time since she had elicited emotion of any kind.
    *    *    *
    Training a falcon is unlike training a dog because a falcon does not – and will never – care for its owner. That was always the first thing Louisa said at falconry displays. The falcon comes from a world beyond society or hierarchy, and depends upon nobody. When she first received a falcon, Louisa would watch it bate from the glove, so sickened by her proximity that it would rather die than look at her. In practice, this mentality rendered punishment and censure utterly useless as training tools. The only way to proceed was to reduce the weight of the bird until it relented to the falconer as a source of food. Louisa had seen overweight hawks take off, even after several seasons, never to return.
    People at the displays often asked Louisa what was in it for her. Falcons are so ungiving, they said. It’s a one-way relationship. She replied that they worked together. When they went out on the moor, and her dog was on point, and Diamond rose to his pitch – even if Louisa could not see him through the cloud or the glare – they knew each other. She gave the signal, the grouse were flushed, and there he was, head over feet, plummeting. It was a privilege.
    Diamond would come off the kill for her, and if that was because she was holding meat, then so what? If the respect was grudging, then it was earned. If you think human relationships aren’t based on power, Louisa told the doubters, then maybe it’s you who wants your head looking at. At least a falcon doesn’t lie about it.
    That week she received and trained a new lanner. On the Friday she looked down at the table in her kitchen, the needles and coping tools, the green stars of shit, the towels for swaddling, and the immature falcon. She realised she had not given the bird a name. There had been no need, for they were the only two beings in the house. If she was not talking to the lanner, she was talking to herself. Excepting those commands made to her dogs and birds, she had spoken perhaps forty words since the argument with Maggie on the doorstep almost a week ago. She read Maggie’s postcard again, and thought of the ibex’s neck, hot against her face. She picked up the phone and dialled.
    ‘I want to invite you and Christopher over for a short display. No, no trouble. It won’t be anything special. He’ll be fine. Can’t be any crazier than me.’

F OUR
     
    At that time of year, nature blended the boundaries. Leaves from the hilltop churchyard blew across the animal enclosures and onto Louisa’s land. Wasps crawled drunk from grounded apples in the acidic fizz of afternoon light.
    Louisa stood on the weathering lawn and watched Christopher and Maggie crossing the field towards her. Christopher wore a long waxed jacket which may have been his father’s, and marched with his usual forward lean. Maggie looked small, steadying herself against him in the mud. Her voice carried in shards. Louisa had arranged Diamond and the new lanner, hooded, on Arab perches on the lawn, and put the Harris hawks, Fred and Harold, out of the way on bow perches. The hawks turned their heads, one after the other, to watch Maggie and Christopher approach.
    ‘Well, hello there,’ Maggie said to the birds, before smiling at Louisa without a hint of animosity. Louisa had braced herself for tension after the other night’s rant, but there was none. Christopher sipped from a can of Fanta and eyed the hawks suspiciously.
    ‘I need your help with this one, Christopher,’ Louisa said, pointing to the lanner.
    ‘I’m not touching it,’ said Christopher.
    ‘You don’t have to. He doesn’t have a name, that’s all. I wondered if you could help me name him.’
    Christopher looked at the bird for a