She switched on the windscreen wipers and created a mental note that they would have to be replaced, sooner rather than later. It wasn’t enough to tell herself that spring led to summer and windscreen wipers wouldn’t actually be necessary at that point. Late April was so far being as notoriously unpredictable as usual and while May was generally pleasant in Cornwall, June could be a weather nightmare. So she decided then and there that she had to get new wipers, and she considered where she might purchase them. She was grateful for this mental diversion. It allowed her to push from her mind all consideration of the fact that, at the end of this journey south, she was feeling nothing. No dismay, confusion, anger, resentment, or compassion, and not an ounce of grief.

The grief part didn’t worry her. Who honestly could have expected her to feel it? But the rest of it…to have been bled of every possible emotion in a situation where at least marginal feeling was called for…That concerned her. In part it reminded her of what she’d heard too many times from too many lovers. In part it indicated a regression to a self she thought she’d put behind her.

So the nugatory movement of the windscreen wipers and the resulting smear they left in their wake distracted her. She cast about for potential purveyors of auto parts: In Casvelyn? Possibly. Alsperyl? Hardly. Perhaps she’d have to go all the way to Launceton.

She made a cautious approach to the cottage. The lane was narrow, and while she didn’t expect to meet another car, there was always the possibility that a visitor to the cove and its thin strip of beach might barrel along, departing in a rush and assuming no one else would be out here in this kind of weather.

To her right rose a hillside where gorse and yellow wort made a tangled coverlet. To her left the Polcare valley spread out, an enormous green thumbprint of meadow bisected by a stream that flowed down from Stowe Wood, on higher ground.