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'I didn't say anything.'

'No, you just sit there giving me looks as if you wished I'd curl up and die.'

'You're so moody all the time. Why can't you just relax like other people?'

'Dear God, I'm doing my best.'

'Yeah, right.'

'What?'

'The atmosphere in this place ... I don't know what's wrong with you.'

'With me? I've kept my side of the bargain. How could I possibly try any harder - tell me, I'd love to know.'

'You never calm down. Never.'

Jenny opened her mouth to reply, but the words caught in her throat and she felt her eyes welling.

'See what I mean?'

'Ross-'

He shook his head and went back through the door to join his girlfriend.

Jenny hid in her study trying to stifle the tears that wouldn't dry up, wanting desperately to go and make peace but with no way of doing so without appearing red-eyed in front of Karen. Trapped, she listened to them clear the table and load the dishwasher, then leave quietly through the back door so as not to risk meeting her on their way out.

The sky was bluer and sharper than it ever was in summer. The brook at the end of the garden beyond the tumbledown mill was clear and deep. Tiny brown trout gathered in a pool of sunlight to soak up the first warming rays of the year, and along the shale banks fragile crocuses and snowdrops burst through the cold earth. It had been a revelation to her that nature didn't sleep through the winter. When she lived in the city she had only noticed the trees as they came into leaf in April. Living among them during a whole winter, she had seen how even as the last of the leaves fell in late December, new buds were forming. There was no time of stillness. Life was in constant, unstoppable rotation.

She comforted herself with these thoughts as she drifted around her third of an acre, trying to absorb its peace before returning to her desk. She ran her fingers over soft, deep moss on the mill shed's crumbling stone wall and felt the tenderness of fresh holly leaves on a tiny sapling which had sprung from the decaying lime mortar. Everything old and rotten was fertile ground for something new.

As pricks of hope slowly began to pierce her veil of melancholy, she allowed herself to believe that Ross was merely going through another inevitable and necessary phase; that to grow into an individual in his own right he had to reject her with or without just cause; that if she could only understand, it would be bearable. He'd move away, find his feet, and one day soon would return again as a sure and confident young man. It wasn't her he objected to, or her atmosphere; he was tugging against the chains of childhood. She wished him more luck than she had had: heading into middle age and still in mental shackles that seemed to grow tighter the older and rustier they became.

There was a sound of breath and rushing feet behind her. She turned to see Alfie bounding across the grass from the old cart track at the side of the house. He plunged into the stream and snapped at the rushing water as he lapped at it. Steve followed some moments behind, dressed only in T-shirt and jeans, a sweater knotted over his shoulders.

'Beautiful day,' he said, wandering over. 'Am I interrupting?'

'No.'

He came to the stream's edge and stood alongside her. 'Busy week?'

'Yes . . . you?'

'Had to look at a job we're pitching for in Manchester. Hated it. Architect's curse - you want to tear everything down and start again.'

'I wondered where you were.'

'I was going to call you —’

'You don't have to.'

'But maybe I should?' He glanced at her with a smile that seemed somehow expectant.

She shrugged, wishing she could be more expansive, but feeling her delicate equilibrium tip and the emotion which she thought had washed through her rise up again.

'You OK?'

'Yes.' She glanced away over the wall to the three-acre meadow and woodland rising behind it. Several sheep, uncomfortably pregnant, stood in ankle-deep mud.

She felt his warm hand slide over her shoulders, another loop round her waist. He stood behind her and held her close. And as he leaned her weight against him, he touched her hair and face, saying nothing as he felt her tears.

She wiped her eyes with the cuff of her coat. 'I'm sorry.'

'Do you want to talk about it?'

She moved round to face him and shook her head. He leaned forward and kissed her gently.

Later, they sat at the scrub-top table on the lawn, wrapped in sweaters, drinking tea. Steve smoked a skinny roll up and Jenny stole puffs as she grudgingly confessed that her old symptoms had come back to haunt her since her last session with Dr Allen. He listened in silence, letting her talk herself out while he rolled a second cigarette.

When she'd finished, he said, 'You had these dreams when you were what, twenty?'

'About that.'

'Just becoming an adult. Have you ever thought it could be as simple as grief for lost childhood?'

'My childhood wasn't bad. Not blissful, but not particularly sad, either. Not until my mum went at least, and I was nearly a teenager by then.'

'That still fits. It's innocence that vanishes in your dream.

It's one of the many human tragedies: once you've lost it, there's no way back.'

'So why doesn't everyone feel it?'

'We can all get stuck at a certain point, God knows, I did - ten years hiding in the woods.'

'So where am I stuck, Dr Freud?'

'You married a domineering man when you were still very young.'

'David was not a father substitute.'

'I'll bet you've got to know yourself a lot better since you left him.'

'I'll give you that.'

'And for all of your marriage you worked with troubled kids.'

'And your theory is?'

'I'm still working on it.' He lit his cigarette with the antique brass lighter she had given him as a birthday present. 'It all gets on top of you, you break down—'

'Yes . . .' she said, sceptically.

'And then . . . then to recover from all this stored-up crap, you get yourself a career trying to find out how people died.'

'Which means?'

'Part of you died?'

Jenny sighed. It was all territory she'd visited before in one way or another. 'My first psychiatrist, Dr Travis - I know he was convinced someone had abused me. I don't know how many times I've thought about it, but I know it didn't happen. It just didn't.'

'Can I say one more thing? Do you think this job is right for you? I mean, do you think part of you is trying to do the impossible, bring the dead back to life when really you should be letting life move on?'

She fell still. His words were well meant but they landed like a wounding accusation.

'That sounded harsher than it was meant to —’

'Actually, people tell me I'm pretty good at what I do.'

'All I'm saying is maybe there's room for more joy in your life, if you'd just let it in.'

'What was this afternoon?'

'A start.' He smiled. 'But you know, however you're feeling inside, you're looking fine.'

Something inside her sank. She hated being told that. He might as well have said she was making a fuss over nothing.

He reached over and stroked the soft side of her wrist, a gesture which meant he was angling to take her back to bed.

She drew her hands back under her arms and shivered. 'I'd better get on.'

A little hurt, Steve said, 'Sure.' He stood up from the table and whistled to Alfie, who bounded over from where he'd been scratching for mice behind the mill. Pulling on his sweater, Steve looked over at the ash trees silhouetted against the twilit sky, and said, 'I've told you before - you live in a beautiful place. Listen to it, it might be telling you something.' He touched her lightly on the cheek as he passed and left her to her thoughts.

Back at her desk, she took out her journal and tried to put her confusion into words, but they wouldn't come. There was no reasoning it out. She had gone round and round in the same circles for over three years and gained no insight other than a twenty-year-old dream and a few snatches of uncomfortable but far from life-shattering childhood memories. For all her agonizing, and for all her attempts to improve her situation and career, nothing had shone a light into the dark place. Looking into herself only seemed to make it worse. She felt as if she were crossing a marsh: walk quickly and the ground might hold you, but stop for a moment and the mud would suck you under.