Four for the Weekend

Blinks has decided that the best place to spend Friday afternoon is inside the cupboard where Maddie keeps the spare towels.

This would be less of a problem if Maddie hadn't chosen Friday afternoon to find the spare towels.

"You've got the rest of the house," she tells the cupboard.

A pair of eyes looks out between a folded bath sheet and a hand towel that has been washed so many times it has become more of a suggestion.

"I don't mind sharing. I just need one."

Blinks settles farther back.

Maddie leaves the cupboard open. Negotiations can resume later.

Gabi and Toby are coming for the weekend, although they won't be sleeping at the cottage. Carol has booked them two rooms and breakfast at the Fox and Sty. Maddie's home has space for herself, Blinks, an unreasonable number of books and one additional human being at a time. Lou is taking the fold-out sofa in the upstairs office, having seen a photograph and replied, I have slept on much worse at your house.

Maddie hadn't been sure whether to feel reassured.

Gabi and Toby are twins. Gabi is older by two minutes, a fact she has retained with great care and Toby has spent much of his life pretending not to notice. They met Maddie and Lou during their first term at university, in circumstances none of them remembers quite the same way.

Gabi had sent Maddie a message that morning.

We're on our way. Toby has brought three jackets and a very important-looking folder.

A minute later, Toby sent one of his own.

Gabi has brought one jacket and most of the car boot.

Then Gabi again.

Don't listen to him. It's magazines.

Maddie puts her phone on the kitchen table and surveys the room. It is tidy enough. The mugs have been washed, the table cleared and the pile of books beside the sofa reduced to something that might, if approached kindly, be described as a small pile. Upstairs, her work computers have been shut down for the weekend. She has resisted the temptation to investigate a message about a software update, chiefly because experience suggests that a simple update can be a very good way to lose Saturday.

The kettle clicks off.

There is still a cat in the towel cupboard.

She makes tea and goes into the garden.

The afternoon is bright but cool. Beyond the hedge, the field is a patchwork of damp green and the first yellowing edges of autumn. A rook lands in the forked tree. Another arrives and sits a respectful distance away.

Maddie has been back from Crete for long enough that the little bottle of Beth's olive oil is empty. She's washed it and placed it on the kitchen windowsill. It looks rather nice there, catching the light.

Her phone buzzes.

At the pub, writes Gabi. Toby has inspected the fire exit plan. I have ordered cider.

Maddie smiles. The weekend appears to have begun.

---

Lou arrives at half past five with an overnight bag, a packet of crisps and a loaf of bread.

"Why bread?" Maddie asks.

"You said you were low."

"I said that on Wednesday."

"Have you bought any since?"

"No."

Lou places the loaf on the counter without comment.

Blinks emerges from the towel cupboard just as Lou goes upstairs with her bag. The cat passes Maddie, pauses beside the bread and heads for the kitchen door. A moment later the flap makes its familiar hollow sound.

"You're welcome," Maddie calls after it.

From upstairs Lou says, "Was that to me?"

"You can have it too."

They have booked a taxi for the journey to the Fox and Sty. The pub is a pleasant walk in daylight, about three-quarters of an hour along lanes and paths, but the evenings have begun to draw in and neither of them particularly fancies navigating the darker stretch after several drinks.

Lou comes downstairs, smoothing the front of her jumper.

"Ready?"

"I think so."

"You haven't started anything at work, have you?"

"No."

"Good."

"I considered it."

"I assumed you would."

Maddie finds her coat and checks her phone. Gabi has sent a photograph of two glasses on a pub table, one half full and one entirely empty. Toby has replied beneath it: Mine was water.

They've been friends for long enough that nobody believes this.

The Fox and Sty is warm when they arrive. Its windows are lit against the early dusk, and smoke curls from a chimney at the far end of the roof. The garden gate, Maddie notices, is secured with the chain Jim brought after the visit from his cows. Carol has also put a sign on the post asking people not to feed animals over the fence. It is probably aimed at the customers, although Maddie wouldn't entirely put it past the cows to read it.

Inside, Carol is carrying plates from the kitchen. She recognises Maddie and nods towards the back room.

"Your lot's in there."

"How do you know they're my lot?"

"I've met them."

This seems reasonable.

Gabi rises when she sees them. She has dark hair cut just below her chin, an excellent coat draped over the chair and the look of someone who has spent the journey discussing three things at once and enjoyed all of them. She hugs Lou first, then Maddie, holding on a moment longer than necessary.

"Look at you. Both exactly the same."

"You saw us last spring," Lou says.

"I know. It's reassuring."

Toby stands to greet them, moving aside the carefully folded newspaper he has been reading. He is a little taller than Gabi and has the same dark eyes, though he uses them quite differently. Gabi's tend to settle on a face and stay there until she has heard everything. Toby's move around a room, as if quietly checking that the furniture has been correctly assembled.

"Hello, trouble," he says to Lou.

"Hello, bigger trouble."

They hug, comfortably and without ceremony.

At university, Lou and Toby had gone out together, broken up, started again and repeated the arrangement often enough for Gabi to ask whether they intended to take out a subscription. The final break-up had remained final. They'd been friends ever since, without either of them appearing to consider this an unfinished piece of business.

Maddie hadn't been consulted on any of the earlier decisions, though she'd had opinions.

They sit. There is cider for Maddie, wine for Lou, something red for Gabi and a pint for Toby. He raises it a little when Maddie looks at him.

"Not water," he admits.

The conversation begins in several places at once. Gabi wants to hear about Crete. Lou asks about Gabi's latest trip for work. Toby mentions a train delay earlier in the week that somehow involved two replacement buses and a timetable which appeared to refer to an entirely different county.

Gabi works as a journalist for a publishing group with a fashion house and several magazines. She likes the people, the interviews and the strange privilege of seeing the work that goes into things most people encounter only as finished photographs. She has also learnt, she says, that people will discuss almost anything while waiting for a photographer to change a lens.

"This week I interviewed a designer in a room full of shoes I wasn't allowed to touch," she tells them.

"Why weren't you allowed?" Maddie asks.

"They were for a shoot. Everything was exactly where it needed to be."

"But shoes are meant to go on feet."

"These ones were meant to go in a magazine first. I asked him whether he ever wore any of them. He said he had one pair he took the dog out in."

"That's the bit I'd put in the article," Lou says.

"It's in the article," Gabi replies. "He looked happier talking about the dog than anything else."

She asks Maddie about the little fishing boat they'd been on in Crete, and listens so closely that Maddie finds herself describing the smell of the ropes, something she hasn't thought about since she came home.

Toby works in law and accountancy for a banking organisation whose structure is difficult to explain, and whose name sounds, according to Gabi, like two respectable companies have accidentally sat on one another. He has tried explaining his job to the others before. Maddie understands the broad outlines. The detailed version has several committees in it and ends with the unsettling discovery that no one seems entirely sure who is responsible for the biscuits.

"And how's the bank?" Lou asks.

"Still there," Toby says. "We've just changed the process for approving changes to the process."

"Does that count as progress?"

"Not until it's approved."

Gabi reaches for her glass. "He's happy, though. Which is the worrying part."

"I like people who care about getting things right," Toby says.

Maddie lifts her cider. "Well, that's a relief."

Their food arrives before any further examination of Toby's career can take place. Carol brings bowls of chips and plates that make the table seem suddenly too small. From the corner Frank looks up briefly from his newspaper. His dog is asleep beneath his chair, apparently maintaining its policy of contributing nothing useful to public events.

For a while they eat.

Then Gabi looks from Maddie to Lou and says, "Do you know what I remembered on the drive? The first time we met."

"Oh no," Lou says.

"Oh yes."

"You only remember that because you keep telling it incorrectly," Toby says.

"I remember it because somebody was conducting a public inquiry into a salt cellar."

Maddie puts down a chip.

"It was a disciplinary hearing."

"You'd made name cards," Toby says.

"They were proper proceedings," Lou says.

Gabi reaches for the salt cellar in the middle of the pub table and sets it on the napkin beside her plate. The thing is quite ordinary. The one in the student union had been square, with a chipped corner, and Maddie can still picture the rain moving down the windows behind it.

---

By their second week at university, Maddie and Lou had learnt three useful things: the library stayed open later than the student café, the heating in their halls made unpredictable noises, and the dining room put salt and pepper on every table even when the food provided little reason to use either.

On the day they met the twins, rain had been falling since breakfast. Maddie and Lou were sitting in the student union with a plate of chips between them, waiting for a talk that had been moved twice without anyone saying where it had moved to.

Lou had accused the salt cellar of laying claim to all the chips.

Maddie, who was in no mood to defend it, appointed herself the chair of a disciplinary hearing. She tore a discarded envelope into strips, wrote CHAIR on one and PROSECUTION on another, and arranged them around the chips.

They had reached the question of whether the pepper cellar was a reliable witness when two people approached the table.

"Are these seats taken?" the girl asked.

"Only by the jury," Maddie said.

The girl looked at the empty chairs, then at the salt cellar. Rather than walk away, she sat down.

"What's he accused of?"

"Overreach," Lou said.

The boy beside her considered the plate of chips.

"Have you got evidence?"

"The chips are the evidence," Maddie said.

"Ah," said the boy, sitting down. "Very serious."

Maddie found another piece of envelope and wrote CLERK OF THE CRISPS across it for the girl. The boy offered to represent the accused before anyone had thought to ask for a defence.

That was how Gabi and Toby joined the hearing, though to this day they disagree about whether they were introduced before or after the salt cellar was found guilty.

"He wasn't guilty," Toby insists, back at the Fox and Sty, reaching for another chip. "There was no proof he'd taken any."

"He was making unreasonable demands," Lou says.

"That's not a crime."

"It was in our jurisdiction."

"You made up the jurisdiction."

"Yes," Maddie says. "We were very efficient."

"Did he ever get a name?" Gabi asks, looking at the salt cellar on her napkin.

"Much later," Maddie says. "Gerald. We gave him a face out of a napkin at Lou's birthday dinner."

"You gave my client a name without informing me?" Toby asks.

"You haven't represented him since the first hearing."

"There's no statute of limitations on chips."

Gabi laughs into her napkin. It takes them several attempts to remember which course they'd all been pretending to understand that week, and who first suggested meeting for coffee afterwards. The details refuse to arrange themselves into one reliable version.

Maddie remembers walking back through the rain with people she'd known for only two hours and feeling that she might have known them much longer.

In the pub, the glasses are refilled. Outside the window the road has gone dark and the garden lights have come on. Gabi asks after Blinks, whom she has only seen in photographs. Toby wants to know whether Maddie's work still involves the machine she once described as a dishwasher for moving pictures.

"It was never a dishwasher," Maddie says.

"You said it made noise, took ages and sometimes gave everything back slightly wrong."

"That's not an unreasonable description," she admits.

Later, when Maddie and Lou's taxi is due, the four of them stand in the hall of the pub deciding what time they should meet the next morning. This takes longer than expected, not because anyone is being difficult, but because they are still talking about other things.

"Ten?" Lou suggests.

"Ten," says Gabi.

"At Maddie's?" Toby asks.

"Yes. The walk's marked on your phone."

"I've got it," Gabi says.

"And I've got the address," Toby adds.

"It's one cottage," Maddie says. "You probably won't mistake it for a shopping centre."

They hug again before separating for the night. Toby assures Gabi that he has not forgotten the injustice done to the salt cellar. Gabi tells him it is almost certainly asleep by now.

The taxi drives Maddie and Lou through dark hedges and along roads with very little traffic. Back at the cottage, Blinks is asleep in Maddie's usual chair.

"Good evening," Maddie says.

Blinks opens one eye.

Lou goes upstairs to unfold the sofa bed, and Maddie puts the kettle on. There is no particular reason for another cup of tea, except that they're not quite ready to stop talking. Halfway through making it, Lou starts laughing about the name cards again. They spend several minutes trying to remember whether the pepper cellar was called as a witness or appointed to the jury. Maddie thinks it may have been both.

---

Saturday morning begins with sunlight in the kitchen and a message from Gabi.

We are on our way. Toby is insisting this road has more uphill bits than the map indicates.

Maddie looks out at the field. It's still damp beneath the hedge, but the sky is clear and the trees are moving gently. Blinks has eaten breakfast and disappeared through the cat flap.

Lou is at the table making a list.

"I thought we weren't organising," Maddie says.

"It's a shopping list."

"That can be a gateway activity."

"We're nearly out of tomatoes."

"We've got enough for lunch."

"I'm thinking ahead."

"That's how it starts."

By the time the twins arrive, Lou has made coffee and Maddie has discovered a packet of biscuits she'd forgotten she owned. Gabi comes through the garden gate carrying pastries from the pub's breakfast counter. Toby follows with a backpack and a careful expression, as if he has just completed a climb worthy of special recognition.

"It's a lovely walk," Gabi says.

"Mostly uphill," Toby says.

"You can walk downhill when you go back," Maddie tells him.

"I've been promised that before."

The cottage is immediately smaller with four people inside, but not unpleasantly so. Jackets hang over the backs of chairs. Bags settle in corners. Somebody moves the bread tin to make space for the pastries.

Gabi looks round at the kitchen and then through the open door to the garden.

"This is lovely," she says.

"It's very good at being a cottage," Maddie replies.

Blinks appears ten minutes later, attracted perhaps by the sound of four people trying to decide whether to eat the pastries before lunch. The cat enters through the flap, surveys the new shoes beneath the kitchen table and walks directly between Toby's feet.

"Hello," Toby says.

Blinks takes no notice.

"I see we've been introduced."

Gabi crouches and holds out a hand. Blinks pauses just beyond her reach, considers it for a moment, and goes upstairs.

"Doesn't like me," she says.

"Blinks hasn't decided whether you're furniture yet," Maddie tells her. "Give it time."

They take their drinks into the garden. Toby, who has spent most of the week in offices with windows that don't open, stands for a little while looking across the field. Gabi settles on a chair with her coffee, her coat folded beneath her because the wood is cool.

"You've got rooks," Toby says, looking up at the big tree.

"Two regulars," Maddie tells him. "Sometimes more."

"They sound as if they've got a lot to complain about."

"How do you know they're rooks?" Gabi asks.

"Look at the beak. You can tell them from crows."

"Since when are you a bird expert?"

"Since I found out I can see them from the kitchen window at home."

"He's been keeping a list," Gabi tells Maddie. "Not a work list. An actual list of birds."

"It's three pages," Toby says. "It's hardly a life-consuming enterprise."

"Four pages. You showed me the fourth one yesterday."

"I was going to let you have that one when you're older," he says.

"I am older."

"By two minutes."

"A valuable two minutes. I've used them well."

Maddie has prepared nothing elaborate for the day. There's bread, cheese, tomatoes and soup for lunch, and a pleasant walk if the weather holds. Gabi and Toby have both said they'd be happy doing very little. Maddie believes them. At university, between lectures and part-time jobs and relationships that seemed to require constant rearrangement, the four of them had spent entire afternoons sitting in the same room, occupied with different things, occasionally making one another laugh.

Lou asks Toby about his journey while Gabi tells Maddie about a photograph that didn't make it into a magazine because a wind machine had blown half the set into the wrong place. Maddie asks whether they tried it without the wind machine.

"They did," Gabi says. "It was better."

"I like a machine that knows when to stop."

"This one didn't. Someone unplugged it."

Through the kitchen window, Gabi notices the empty olive-oil bottle on the sill.

"Is that from Crete?" she asks.

"Beth's. I kept it because I liked the shape."

"It looks good there," Gabi says, and finishes her coffee.

They stay outside until the air becomes cool enough to make lunch attractive.

Blinks settles on the rug near the kitchen door as Maddie brings the soup to the table.

After eating, they wash up together. Toby dries. Lou puts things away in cupboards she has opened before and remembers. Gabi finds herself holding the lid of a saucepan and asks where it lives.

"I don't know," Maddie says.

They consider this.

"Let's choose somewhere sensible," Gabi suggests.

The lid goes into the cupboard beside the hob. Maddie suspects she may spend next Tuesday looking for it, but for the moment it seems a perfectly good home.

Gabi dries her hands and looks round the kitchen. "I'd like a photograph of the four of us before we leave."

"You took one last spring," Lou says.

"I took one of three coats and the back of Toby's head. I thought I'd improve on that."

"We'll need a bigger room," Maddie says.

"Or outside. There's that path by the field."

"I can hold the camera," Toby offers.

"No," Gabi says. "That's how we end up with more pictures of the back of your head."

They collect their coats. Lou checks the forecast, Toby offers to carry the biscuits nobody has finished, and Maddie checks whether Blinks has somehow returned to the towel cupboard. The cupboard is empty.

---

In the afternoon they walk out along the field boundary and into the lanes beyond the cottage.

The trees are beginning to turn. There are berries in the hedge and fallen leaves collected in the corners of old stone walls. From somewhere farther down the valley comes the sound of farm machinery working steadily out of sight. A gate stands open to a field where sheep graze with the absolute concentration of animals who have discovered the purpose of being alive.

Maddie and Gabi walk ahead for a while. Gabi wants to know about the media production house, whether Maddie still enjoys working from home and if the old systems really are as peculiar as she's described.

"Some of them," Maddie says. "But the old ones aren't always the problem. Sometimes the new thing arrives and assumes everyone else ought to change."

"That sounds familiar," Gabi says.

"From magazines?"

"From everywhere."

They walk on without needing to settle the matter.

Behind them, Lou and Toby are talking about a university flat Toby once shared with three other people. The front door had needed a particular lift before it would shut, and the sofa had been too wide for the stairs.

"We should never have tried to move it," Lou says.

"You drew a diagram."

"I drew three diagrams."

"None of them included the ceiling."

"We were young."

"We were twenty-two."

"Exactly. Practically babies."

They laugh. Maddie glances back. Lou is giving Toby the same look she once gave him when he tried to assemble a bookcase without the instructions; Toby appears to be enjoying it.

At a bend in the path they stop beside a low wall. Below them, a stream runs beneath the trees. The water is shallow enough to show the stones on the bottom and dark enough in the deeper places to reflect the branches overhead.

"Here," Gabi says. "Photograph. Everyone stand together."

She finds a broad fence post with a flat top and props her phone against Toby's folded scarf. On the screen the four of them fit into the frame, provided nobody stands too near the edge.

"I'll set the timer," she says. "Ten seconds."

"What do we do for ten seconds?" Maddie asks.

"Look normal."

This turns out to be surprisingly difficult. Lou doesn't know what to do with her hands. Toby is standing as straight as a man having his passport photograph taken. Maddie finds herself wondering whether her face usually looks like this, which isn't helpful.

"You're all making it worse," Gabi says, hurrying back from the fence post.

"You're the one who said normal," Lou replies.

The phone makes a small sound just as Gabi joins them. They hold their expressions for another moment.

"Did it take?" Toby asks.

Gabi goes to check. The picture shows four adults standing solemnly beside a wall, with a perfectly good view of the countryside behind them. Someone has closed their eyes. Two of the adults are holding their arms in the same unnatural position.

"We look like a committee inspecting a drainage problem," Maddie says.

"I thought we were supposed to look normal," Toby says.

"You look as though you're about to announce the findings," Lou tells him.

"There would be findings. The drainage is unacceptable."

"One more," Gabi says, already resetting the timer.

This time Toby starts talking about whether a committee would need a chairman. Lou tells him it would need somebody who understood drainage. Maddie suggests appointing the stream, which is at least qualified.

Gabi is hurrying back from the fence post when Lou demands to know who would appoint a stream. She laughs so suddenly she has to catch Toby by the sleeve. Maddie starts laughing at Gabi, and the phone takes its photograph while nobody is facing it properly.

Gabi studies the result.

"Well?" Maddie asks.

"That's more like us," Gabi says, and puts the phone away before the others can demand another attempt.

They walk back by the lane, rather than retracing every step. Toby spots a bird in the hedge and identifies it before Gabi can ask. Lou checks the time and reminds them they have a taxi booked for the pub later.

"We'll need to get a move on," she says.

"How late are we?" asks Maddie.

"Not late. I would just prefer not to start getting ready at the exact moment the driver arrives."

"That does narrow the possibilities," Maddie says.

---

They arrive at the Fox and Sty with enough time to order drinks and find a table before the evening crowd settles in. Lou has already arranged for a taxi to take her and Maddie home later.

The pub is busier than it was on Friday. Carol has put extra candles on the tables, and a sheet of paper near the bar announces a quiz at eight. The prize is modest and the entry fee goes towards repairing something at the village hall.

Maddie reads the notice while Gabi orders drinks.

"A quiz," she says.

"No," Lou replies at once.

"You haven't heard my argument."

"I know the argument."

Toby comes to look at the notice. "Four to a team."

"We're four," Maddie says.

"I can count," Lou tells her.

"You might be very useful, then."

They enter under the name Gerald's Appeal, which Gabi writes on the sheet before anybody can think of anything more sensible.

Carol reads the questions from behind the bar. Frank is at his usual table with the newspaper folded beside him, and his dog sleeps through the opening round. Other teams have gathered under names that suggest old rivalries and extremely low expectations.

The first round is general knowledge. Gabi knows the name of a designer none of the others has heard of. Lou identifies a European capital by its river. Maddie supplies an answer about an animal she'd read about while looking for something else entirely. Nobody is sure whether to trust her until Carol reads out the answers and it turns out to be correct.

"How did you know that?" Toby asks.

"I was meant to be looking up a printer driver."

No one asks for the rest of the story.

In the picture round Carol hands out a sheet of buildings, faces and animals. The fourth photograph shows a small dark bird, perched on a rail, with a lighter patch behind its head.

"Crow," Gabi says.

"Jackdaw," says Toby.

"You say that because you've started keeping a list," Gabi replies.

"I say that because it's a jackdaw. Look at the neck."

Maddie leans over the sheet. "It's not one of my rooks. I'm sure of that much."

"We're doing remarkably well," Lou says. "We've ruled out a bird that isn't there."

"Jackdaw," Toby repeats, but this time he isn't at all solemn about it. "If I'm wrong you can take the fourth page of my list away."

Gabi takes the pencil from Lou and draws a tiny scarf around the bird's neck.

"There," she says. "Now we know it's Toby."

Lou snatches back the pencil before the photograph acquires a briefcase. They write jackdaw, although Gabi insists they are only doing it to protect Toby's dignity.

The next photograph is a historic building none of them can identify with confidence. Lou makes them choose one answer before the discussion becomes a planning inquiry.

In the music round Lou recognises a tune almost immediately. Toby is two years out on the release date of another song and makes a small mark beside their answer.

"A record of my error," he explains when Gabi notices.

"It's a pub quiz, Toby."

"That's why I've only made one mark."

When Carol confirms jackdaw, Toby raises his glass without speaking. Gabi makes a show of confiscating the imaginary fourth page of his bird list anyway.

They finish somewhere in the middle. The winning team collects a small hamper and receives the prize with considerable satisfaction. Carol announces the total raised for the village hall and thanks everyone for coming. Frank's dog wakes briefly when the room applauds, then decides the matter is settled.

At the table, Toby examines their answer sheet.

"We could have done better in the picture round."

"We could have done worse," Lou says.

"True."

"And we got the bird," Maddie adds.

"We did get the bird."

Gabi lifts her glass. "To Gerald. Wronged in his youth and still bringing people together."

"He wasn't wronged," Toby says.

"You would say that," Lou replies.

"I was his legal representative."

They drink to Gerald anyway.

Afterwards they take their glasses into the garden for a little fresh air. The benches are damp, so they stand beside the wall looking over the fields. Beyond the chained gate, the pasture is dark and quiet. For once there are no cows in the pub garden, and Maddie thinks Carol probably considers that a perfectly respectable result.

The pub windows glow behind them. They can hear people still talking inside, and someone moving chairs across the floor. Gabi rests her elbows on the wall.

"We should do this more often," she says.

"We always say that," Toby replies.

"I know."

"Doesn't make it untrue," Lou says.

The air smells of damp leaves and woodsmoke. Somewhere in the fields an owl calls once, then again from farther away.

They remain outside a little longer before going back in for coats and goodnights. Their taxi comes as they are leaving the bar; Maddie and Lou wave to the twins from the back seat and make their way home through the quiet lanes. Lou tries to remember the title of the song Toby got wrong. Maddie remembers the chorus but not the name, which is no help at all.

At the cottage, Blinks comes in through the cat flap just as Maddie is hanging up her coat. Lou offers the cat a goodnight. Blinks continues on to the stairs.

"Busy day," Maddie says.

"For all of us," Lou replies.

---

On Sunday morning Maddie wakes to the sound of Blinks asking to be let into a room that the cat has decided is important precisely because its door is shut.

The office sofa bed is still made up. Lou's bag stands beside it. From the landing Maddie can hear her friend moving around downstairs, putting the kettle on.

"Morning," Maddie says when she reaches the kitchen.

"Morning. There's tea."

"You're a good person."

"I've been told."

Blinks passes between them and goes out through the cat flap.

Lou drives them to the Fox and Sty for breakfast, leaving her overnight bag upstairs at the cottage to collect afterwards. By the time they arrive, the twins are already at a table in the back room. Carol brings coffee, toast and eggs in quantities that suggest she thinks travelling should not be attempted on an empty stomach.

Toby says he has a call on Monday morning that he has been trying not to think about. Gabi has a deadline next week and a pile of notes she has almost certainly brought in her bag, though nobody has seen them. Lou asks after a mutual friend from university.

Then Gabi finds the photographs from the walk. In the first, the four of them look faintly alarmed. In the second, Gabi is half turning away, Lou has her mouth open in protest, Toby is laughing at something no longer recoverable and Maddie is looking at Toby rather than the camera. Behind them the stream continues about its business.

"I prefer that one," Maddie says.

"Obviously," Gabi says. "It's the only one where any of us looks alive."

She sends it to the other three. Maddie's phone announces its arrival under the table as Carol returns with more coffee.

When it's time to go, the twins collect their coats and bags from their rooms upstairs. Gabi hugs Maddie tightly.

"Thank you," she says. "It was lovely."

"Come back."

"We will."

Toby embraces Lou, then Maddie. He has left the important-looking folder in the car all weekend. Maddie is pleased about this without knowing why.

"Say goodbye to Blinks," he tells her.

"I'll pass it on."

"Won't mean anything," Gabi says.

"Probably not."

They wave as Gabi's car pulls away from the pub, Toby in the passenger seat holding a takeaway coffee and looking as if he might be reading the road signs for errors.

Maddie and Lou stand together for another moment as the car disappears down the road.

"Ready?" Lou asks.

"Yes."

They drive back to the cottage, passing the stretch of lane where Toby had complained about the hill. Lou parks outside while Maddie goes to put the kettle on. There's no hurry now, so Lou collects her bag from the upstairs office and folds the blanket that has slipped to the floor.

They drink tea in the kitchen. Lou shows Maddie the photograph once more, and Maddie enlarges it to see whether the small shape beside Toby's shoe is a leaf or a bird. Neither of them can decide. They leave the question unsettled.

When Lou finally leaves, Maddie stands at the door until her car has gone round the bend. The cottage is quiet again. Two mugs sit on the kitchen table, and sunlight has reached the far side of the garden, where the hedge casts a long, uneven shadow.

Blinks comes through the cat flap, pauses beside the shoes Maddie has left near the door, and looks up at her.

"They've gone," Maddie says.

Blinks continues towards the water bowl.

Maddie washes the mugs and puts the kitchen straight. The saucepan lid is still in the cupboard beside the hob, exactly where Gabi decided it should live. She leaves it there.