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R ob cooked the meat for Sky and brought it over to Rose’s. Sky was still curled up in the armchair but at least she’d stopped shaking and no longer looked as if she was going to be sick.

‘It was an awful mistake,’ Rose whispered. ‘She hasn’t said a word. I can’t even imagine what a shock it must have been.’

‘Kirkglen’s hardly a metropolis,’ Rob whispered back.

‘No, but if all you’ve ever known is a small group of family and a forest…’

Rob raised his eyebrows and conceded. Then he left.

At the table, Rose and Sky picked at their respective meals, forcing food down on the grounds of necessity rather than hunger.

Afterwards, Rose put the TV on and wondered why.

Half the programmes seemed pointless enough to her, it was hard to imagine what Sky, her head pulled back and a look of suspicious incomprehension on her face, was making of them.

When Rose laughed at a comedian, Sky looked affronted and even the wildlife programmes seemed to just baffle her.

But then she had no knowledge of any of the creatures or their habitats. In the end, Rose turned it off.

‘What’s it like being a female human?’ said Sky. Outside it was raining again. It lashed against the windows and the patio doors rattled. Simon had rung but Sky had told Rose not to mention her presence.

Rose opened her mouth to say, but ‘Right now you are a human woman, can’t you tell?’ and realised it was a wider question than she knew how to answer.

What was it like? No two humans who considered themselves female were the same. There might be things that most held in common, but even then, there were so many differences from woman to woman.

She decided to pass the question back. ‘What’s it like being a female wolf? ’

Sky sat up straighter in the chair. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘It’s like trying to explain the beyond . You only know you.’

‘Yes.’

‘The rhythm like the moon waxing and waning inside me, is different now,’ said Sky. ‘Neither better nor worse. Just different.’

‘Most women’s bodies wax and wane,’ said Rose. ‘But everyone’s rhythm is their own, and for some women it doesn’t happen at all.’

‘That is true for wolves too.’

‘Yes. And if your body does wax and wane and you live long enough it stops. It’s quite hard to explain. I suppose it’s similar for wolves, but I don’t know enough to compare.’

‘I think I understand,’ said Sky. ‘Yes it’s similar. But the waxing and waning isn’t all there is. What else makes you a female human? As a wolf I know what my place is, what the rules are. I know when to break the rules, when to keep them.’

How could Rose encapsulate human womanhood in a few sentences? It was tied up in society, culture, and unwritten rules and filters which led you to choose friends like Sam or friends like Iseult.

It was being the sort that who knew about hair and clothes or didn’t; the sort who liked being in a herd or a flock, jostling for position over cappuccino or gin, or who preferred one or two friends and honesty. Or a mixture of those things.

It was the knowledge of society’s expectation that your role was to nurture a child, but the reality that you might not want to or be good at it.

It was being on a spectrum between tom-boy or girly-girl with elements of both.

It was the choice between being what your society or culture considered good or bad: daughter, girl, woman, wife, sister, lover, mother, friend. The mother, the maiden, the crone.

Rose was neither mother nor maiden. Did that make her the crone? Everything ran through her mind like treacle but when she focussed on Sky again, Sky was nodding.

‘Can you read my mind?’ said Rose.

‘A little,’ said Sky. ‘I’m more wolf than human. But I can feel what humans have in their heads.’

‘Poor you.’

Sky made one of her derisive snorts. ‘It’s all decisions and questions and worries. It’s exhausting. You spend all your time worrying about rules that make no sense.’

‘It’s confusing being a human,’ agreed Rose. ‘And we can’t always read each other’s minds, even when we like each other very much.’

‘You like Rob, don’t you?’

Rose started to demur and realised there was no point. White lies made no sense to Sky. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I like him very much.’

‘Can humans want two people at the same time?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re mourning your man aren’t you?’ Sky pointed at the wedding photograph. ‘But you want Rob. That’s true isn’t it?’

Rose shifted in her chair.

‘So you don’t know what to do.’

‘I don’t think I want to do anything. Or rather, I do…’

‘Mate.’

Rose felt her face burn. How could she explain? ‘Rob’s my friend. I don’t want to spoil that. I still love David. Rob… I don’t want to… not without… there’s love, desire, friendship, specialness. I…’

Rose tailed off into incoherence. Sky was silent for a moment then reached up for the photograph of Rose and the cello.

‘The one good thing about humans is music and art. It’s a shame they can’t make as much sense with words.’

‘Sky,’ said Rose, ‘Do you believe in God, life after death, all that sort of thing?’

‘God?’

‘Something bigger than us, all of us, the world, nature, the universe.’

‘Humans talk all the time, but they don’t seem to understand anything.

Even the little mice and the midges and the grass and the trees know universe has a heart beat, a rhythm.

You make music, so you understand inside, but you don’t realise it.

Things appear and grow and die and seem to disappear and yet you do not forget them and life comes again and the disappeared things become part of the art and the air. ’

Sky sat back with the photograph and compared Rose’s face in it with the one in front of her.

‘It was a few years back,’ said Rose. ‘I was thinner. And younger.’

Sky looked at it again and shook her head. ‘It’s you. I don’t understand how you think it can be more or less you. It’s just you.’

‘Sky,’ Rose started again. ‘I was going to go out this evening. I don’t have to.

Or you could come too. It’s why I was asking about God.

I was going to go to the church for an evening service.

It’ll be very quiet, or rather, peaceful.

I hope. I haven’t been to church since David died.

And before that, I hadn’t been for a long time.

I don’t really know about God. But I feel like trying to connect to that rhythm that you understand and I don’t. ’

Sky uncurled herself. ‘I’ll come.’