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I f in doubt cook. Rose might not be domestic, but she could manage pasta sauce. Chopping the onions used up a bit of tension and balancing the seasoning occupied the mind.

‘Spicy or not spicy?’ she asked Sky.

‘I guess,’ said Sky, as if she was answering a different question. She sat at the kitchen table, her hands between her knees, peering round at the walls and door and up at the ceiling and up into the corners where a large cobweb wafted in the draught.

‘Spiders. Nice,’ she said. Rose stared at her looking for sarcasm but there didn’t appear to be any. She just seemed to like spiders.

Rose put the two bowls of pasta down on the table and passed Sky a fork which she turned over and balanced on her fingers.

‘Is this worms?’ Sky looked hopeful.

Trust Simon. He either attracted weird women or annoying ones.

‘No. It’s spaghetti with tomatoes and a bit of chilli.’

‘What’s the meat?’ asked Sky, poking clumsily at it with her fork.

‘I’m a vegetarian,’ Rose answered. ‘Sorry. I’ve got some meat for Simon, but that’s for tomorrow.’

Sky sighed. ‘I’m not really that hungry anyway.’

Rose wasn’t hungry either, but she needed the energy.

Where to start with Sky? There were so many questions struggling for precedence.

If Sky had been there when the incident happened - what had she seen?

Why hadn’t anyone mentioned her or referred to her in the coroner’s report on David’s death?

Rose still couldn’t process any of it. She coped only by acting as if David had died in a simple shooting accident, as if Simon suffered post traumatic shock resulting in migraine.

No one at any point had asked Rose what she needed to know or how it affected her, and somehow she’d preferred to stay ignorant.

If Sky explained, would the reality overwhelm Rose and tip her off balance completely?

How could she care for Simon if she didn’t force herself, every day, to get up, shower, make breakfast, go to the supermarket and so on and so on to the end of each wearying day, smiling, smiling, resisting at every step the urge to go back to bed and pull the covers back over forever?

She had to be practical. Sky had agreed to leave Simon sleeping his drugged sleep and eat dinner but now sat silent, offering nothing to work into a conversation.

‘So,’ Rose started. ‘Why are you naked? Where did you come from? If you want to stay until tomorrow, then you’re welcome.’

She didn’t really mean it. And she hadn’t meant it to come out in that order either.

Sky shook her head. She picked up the fork and poked at the pasta inexpertly and put a cold portion of spaghetti into her mouth, her face, as she chewed, a mixture of bafflement and (presumably encountering some chilli) shock.

It went down eventually, although Sky looked at the empty plate as if she couldn’t believe she’d eaten it and wished it really had been worms instead.

‘I’m sort of from over there,’ she indicated vaguely in the direction of the forest. ‘I had to leave my family …. It’s complicated.

We’ve come from somewhere else, although somehow, this forest feels like it belongs to me.

I can’t explain. Can I borrow these clothes? For when I go back in a moment?’

‘Yes of course, but you really can stay over till tomorrow if you like. We’ve got a spare room. It won’t take long to make up the bed. There are spiders.’ Might as well offer a bit of temptation.

‘I can’t. It’s no good. I can only be here today. Today and the next today. The next time it happens I’ll be back. I can’t come any other time. I have to go back in the next hour or so. My family are waiting.’

Rose gave up making any sense out of what Sky said and started the washing up, looking out at the dusk. All the other questions burned and she tried to formulate them. ‘That day…’ she started.

The door bell rang. Sky jumped to her feet and stood frozen and wide eyed.

It was that bloody Mrs McPherson again. And now she had someone with her. A scrawny youngish woman with limp hair shoulder length hair and a sensible coat designed for someone thirty years older.

Rose did not ask them in. She simply said: ‘Hello?’

She was aware of Sky in the background, out of sight, swaying slightly.

‘Hello,’ smiled Mrs McPherson, ‘we were just passing. This is our Guild secretary, Hester. I thought you’d like to meet her. Just to see that we have young women like you too, in case you’d thought I was making it up.’

Just passing on the way to where? Rose thought.

Kirkglen was five miles away in one direction, the next town forty miles away in the other.

Hester didn’t seem that interested to be acquainted with Rose.

She seemed to be trying to peer round her, her nose slightly elevated as if she was smelling the pasta sauce and finding it wanting.

‘Nice to meet you Hester,’ Rose said. ‘I’m sure when my brother comes to give the Guild a talk, I’ll see you again. Bye Mrs McPherson, I promise I’ll give Simon your details as soon as he’s well, which isn’t now.’ She started to close the door but found a foot in the way.

‘Och Miss Henderson,’ simpered Mrs McPherson. ‘It’s been a long way from Kirkglen, Hester could really do with… you know.’

Honestly, was there an endemic bladder problem?

How do you refuse to let someone use the loo?

Is it a legal right, like asking for a glass of water?

Rose tried hard not to glance round at Sky but was aware of her, fists clenched, out of the corner of her eye, swaying.

Rose opened her mouth, frantically thinking of a polite reason to refuse entry.

Mrs McPherson’s stout shoe pushed more insistently against the opening.

All the while she smiled and Hester was now staring intently at Rose as if she wanted to burn a hole in her face.

There was a sudden blast of unworldly music and a rectangle of light appeared across the way.

‘Oy, Hester!’ shouted a male voice. Mrs McPherson and Hester span round and Mrs McPherson unbalanced slightly, enabling Rose to push her foot back over the door step and get her own in its place.

She’d forgotten the neighbours. What must they be thinking as she grappled two local women out of her home.

‘Mr Bailie!’ bellowed Mrs McPherson. ‘We’ve had this conversation before. That kind of music is not appreciated round here. Your band is an abomination!’

‘Just practicing for the ceilidh!’ the voice called back. ‘I did put up the sound proofing like you asked. Come over and tell me where we’re going wrong.’

‘There you go,’ said Rose. ‘Mr Bailie is sure to have a nicer bathroom than we’ve got.

See you sometime soon. In town. Goodnight.

’ She slammed the door with somewhat more force than she intended, bolted it, turned out all the lights and rushed into her dark bedroom to peep through the gap in the curtains to watch the two women swallowed for a few minutes into the other bungalow and then spewed back out with a brief flash of light and loud music to march stiffly to Mrs McPherson’s car and then draw away.

Rose put the lights back on and went to look for Sky. ‘They’ve gone’ she called out. But the patio doors were open and Sky had gone too.

Something about Sky’s wordless song had stirred something that Rose had forgotten. She called for a while, then took her cello to the sitting room and took it from its case.

She couldn’t recall the last time she had played.

She had carried the cello about for years, always meaning to get back into performing, always meaning to reclaim that part of herself, always too busy with arranging publicity and book launches for David and Simon.

She had needed space, yearned for time on her own, time to make the mistakes she needed to make until she had regained her skills; time to start composing again.

And now she had had the space and the time for twelve long months, yet she had never done more than dust the cello off and tune it, play a few long remembered snatches of music, feel inadequate and put it back.

But here she was, itchy with distress.

She felt lost at sea in the middle of nowhere, the bungalow a ship lolling without wind, in a huge ocean of countryside, her only remaining companion unconscious.

Rose tuned the cello and played familiar pieces. Long remembered, long loved; stopping and changing when she had forgotten the next note or felt that her mood was ruining the phrasing.

She started to improvise, the adrenalin of shock, the confusion of doubt, the low agony of loss until Sky’s song came into her head and she incorporated that, the strange blood thrumming rhythm of it, the lullaby, the blessing.

Then she stopped and started to cry, her head on the shoulder of the cello, her arms hugging it, her bow dangling from her fingers.