She’d been dreaming about James. He was kneeling by some kind of pond or pool. It was very hot. The water was a strange colour, almost green, and he kept dipping his hands in it, cupping the liquid, offering it to her the way he’d sometimes come into the kitchen as a child, carrying trophies from the garden. His expression was childlike, too, the purest delight. I did this, he seemed to be telling her. Mine. My efforts. All my own work. Molly peered into the darkness, at last recognising the noise at the window. Since they’d gone to bed the wind had got up and now it was raining hard, the kind of rain that drove at the cottage across the bare, flat fields. One of the gutters beneath the big lime tree had become blocked with leaves and she could hear the water spilling over, splashing onto the flagstones below. She thought of James again by his pond, and she eased carefully out of bed, knowing that there was no possibility of getting back to sleep. Giles began to stir and for a moment she thought she’d woken him up.
