Not a problem. I still have so much work to do, anyway! You wouldn’t believe it! Plus I’m going to take the opportunity to catch up with some of my frie…’ ‘Jennifer, shut up.’ ‘How dare you?’ ‘You need to do exactly what I say. Get dressed in some warm clothes, come out of your cottage and head for the copse behind it. You know the one I mean.’ ‘James, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.’ ‘I’ve had a bit of an accident.’ ‘You… what?’ Jennifer stood up, felt giddy and immediately sat back down. Every nerve in her body had gone into sudden, panicked overdrive. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘There were some high winds here a couple of days ago. Just before you came. Some fallen branches in the copse behind the cottage and a tree that’s about to go and is dangerously close to one of the overhead cables.’ ‘You tripped over a branch on your way here?’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous! How feeble do you think I am? After I left you earlier, I got back to the house, did some work and then thought that I might as well see if I could bring the tree down, get it clear of the overhead power lines.’ In a flashback springing from nowhere, she had a vivid memory of him as a young boy not yet sixteen, strapped halfway up one of the towering trees that bordered the house, chainsaw in one hand, reaching for a branch that had broken, while underneath his parents yelled for him to get down immediately.
