I asked Miranda what time she’d be getting back, but she wasn’t able to tell me. I said I’d probably go out for a walk, as it was such a nice day, and she told me not to hurry back. I decided to go and pick some autumn flowers for my room – dahlias or cyclamen or begonias or maybe some wild crocuses if I could find any. I rambled away on my own from the big house and down past the gardens and the grounds to the fields beyond. It was a pleasant day, with an early October sun slanting across the Warwickshire countryside and shining low into my eyes. I didn’t want to pick any of the flowers from the gardens around the house, in case I got into trouble with the groundsmen, so I was searching out some feral spot that was uncultivated and untended and unlikely to cause any furore if I took a few blooms from it. After walking for a while, I could see a copse or an area of woodland about a hundred yards away across an open field. I climbed over the wooden fence and started to make my way across the wide space that sloped up to the crest of a hill where the sun was hovering, and blinding me to any view in that direction.
