Stephen had been too busy and too often away to get up there and unblock it, but someone was going to have to. Perhaps she and Jon could do it on Sunday. She lay, her head uncomfortably heavy on the pillow, still half-asleep, picturing Jon’s tall figure at the top of the ladder, herself at the bottom, holding it on wet grass; she was looking up at Jon, leaning precariously into the gutter, at the mossy tiles and rainwashed morning sky above him, and she shifted her position on the shining grass and slipped, jerking the ladder, hearing – no! – Jon’s sudden shout and then his fall, unstoppable, eternal, and silence. Miriam’s body was shot through with one of the spasms she sometimes had between sleeping and waking, limbs jerked out, heart missing beats. But she was fully awake now, her hands clammy, mouth dry, remembering the phone-call, and the sleepless hour that had followed, lying in wait for the sound of the motorbike, coming back from Woodburgh, where Jon had been visiting Mike Baldry.
