‘Well, congratulations,’ Lol said. ‘You’ve found a new ley line.’

‘ Ley,’ Jane snapped. ‘Alfred Watkins called them leys. Ley lines – that’s just a term that’s been adopted in almost a disparaging way by so-called experts who say they don’t exist. And, OK, some of them you can draw the line by circling the sites on the map, but when you go there you can’t really see it. But this…’

‘Textbook,’ Lol said. ‘I suppose.’

‘I mean, I can’t claim any credit – except maybe for rediscovering it. This side of the hill’s been more or less hidden away for years, probably since the orchards went into decline. And, oh yeah, you know what this field’s called? Coleman’s Meadow. Geddit? The field where the track was laid out by the Cole -man, the shaman, the wizard…? And you can feel it, can’t you?’ Jane stamped a foot. ‘Come on, Lol. You’re an artist, a poet. Do not tell me you cannot feel it.’

‘Well…’

‘You stand on the track and you’re, like, totally connected with the landscape. And with the ancestors who lived here and marked out the sacred paths. Thousands of years ago when people were more in contact with the elements? So like whether or not you believe the leys channelled some form of mystical life-force through the land, or they were spirit paths where you could walk with the dead, or whatever… I don’t care. I don’t need to understand the science. I just need to know that I can stand here and feel I’m, you know, part of something… bigger. Belong.’

‘It’s probably the most any of us can ever hope for,’ Lol said. ‘To belong somewhere.’

They stood quietly for a few seconds. You could hear neither the sounds of the village nor the traffic on the main road, only birdsong and the grass wrenched from the meadow in the jaws of the Herefords.

The sun was already high. Caught in its glare, Jane, in her yellow crop-top, looked young and uncertain.