But something clearly had not worked out right. Meredith said, “So you didn’t talk to…well, to him? She didn’t say anything about what might have been going on at home? And you didn’t ring her there?”

Lexie shook her head. “Just reckoned she di’n’t want me,” the girl replied. “No one gen’rally does.”

SO, REALLY, SHE had to go to Jemima’s home. There was nothing else for it. Meredith didn’t actually like this idea because she felt it gave Jemima a sort of advantage over her in the conversation that was to come. But she knew that if she was going to be serious about making up with her friend, then she was going to have to do what it took.

Jemima lived with her partner between Sway and Mount Pleasant. There, she and Gordon Jossie had somehow lucked their way into the rights of a commoner, so there was land attached to the holding. True there was not a lot of it but, still, twelve acres were nothing to sniff at. There were buildings as well: an old cob cottage, a barn, and a shed. Part of the land comprised ancient paddocks to serve the needs of the holding’s ponies should they get out of condition during the winter. The rest of it was vacant land, characterised largely by a heath that, in the distance, gave way to woodland, which was not part of the holding.

The buildings on the property were shaded by sweet chestnut trees, all of them pollarded long ago so that now their branches grew above head height from the bulbous remains of those early amputations, which had saved the trees in their youth from the hungry mouths of animals. They were huge, those chestnuts. In summer, they lowered the temperature around the cottage and they scented the air with a heady fragrance.