At the time, it had seemed an innocuous enough piece of information. I’ve joined Hare and Hounds, Daddy. But he managed to turn it into yet another display of his devotion to her. Just as he did when he got hold of her essays prior to supervisions. He’d read them, brow furrowed, his posture and expression both declaring: Look how concerned I am, see how much I love you, note how I treasure having you back in my life, I’ll never leave you again, my darling. And then he’d critique them, guiding her through introductions and conclusions and points to be clarified, bringing her stepmother in for further assistance, sitting back in his leather chair with his eyes shining earnestly. See what a happy family we are? It made her skin crawl.

Her breath steamed the air. She’d waited more than a minute. Still no one emerged from the grey soup of Laundress Lane.

Stuff it, she thought, and ran back to the bridge. On the Mill Pool beyond her, swans and ducks etched out their shapes in the gauzy air while on the southwest bank of the pool itself a willow wept branches into the water. Elena gave one final glance over her shoulder, but no one was running to meet her, so she herself ran on.

Descending the slope of the weir, she misjudged the angle and felt the slight pull of a muscle in her leg. She winced, but kept going. Her time was shot to hell-not that she knew what her time was in the first place-but she might be able to make up a few seconds once she reached the causeway. She picked up her pace.

The pavement narrowed to a strip of tarmac with the river on its left and the wide, mist-shrouded expanse of Sheep’s Green to its right. Here, the hulking silhouettes of trees rose out of the fog, and the handrails of footbridges made horizontal slashes of white where the occasional lights from across the river managed to cut through the gloom. As she ran, ducks plopped silently from the bank into the water, and Elena reached into her pocket for the last wedge of morning toast which she crumbled and tossed their way.