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sight.’
    ‘Not many cottages changing hands these days. Old Mrs Beerston lived there – oh, as long as anyone can remember. Died a couple o’ months back. She’ll get a lot more insects round that cottage than up on the hill.’
    ‘Better her than me, then.’
    Jack got back into the van. The engine groaned intolife, sounding much the same as before the accident. His headlights illuminated the damage to the thick tree-bole, but where the hell were the moths?
    ‘Thanks for your help!’ he called out as he reversed on to the road.
    The breeze through the open window as he drove should have worked wonders for his aching head but it didn’t. All the way back to Chiswick the pain over his eyes nagged him relentlessly.
    Then – once back at the flat – the unaccustomed silence scratched at his nerves. Even when Ginny had taken to sleeping in the next room there had always been some sound to remind him she was still about. A creaking board. A tap turned on, or left dripping. A cupboard opened.
    Now there was nothing.
    Emptiness.
    He hunted for the paracetamol, couldn’t find it, assumed she must have packed it with her things, so poured himself a large Scotch instead. Ice from the fridge. Two lumps in his glass. The rest he wrapped in a shower cap she’d left behind. Sinking back into an armchair, he balanced it over the swelling on his temple.
    Bloody moths.
    It was a rum story all right. Constable Chivers sat on the edge of his bed the following morning, lacing up his shoe and thinking it over. The evidence was there on the road too. After the man had gone he’d scraped up the remains of one moth and popped it in a transparent plastic bag for examination. But then actors could spin a few when they were in the mood!
    ‘George! Your breakfast is getting cold!’
    ‘Ay, all right!’ he called back, reaching for the other shoe.
    He was about to put it on when he spotted the caterpillar:a hairy green thing, five or six inches at least. With the shoe in his hand he clumped downstairs.
    ‘Here, Sue – take a look at this!’
    ‘Urgh, how did that get in the bedroom? I only cleaned there yesterday. You’d better kill it.’
    ‘It’s not harming anyone.’
    Placing his shoe on the tiled kitchen window ledge where he could keep an eye on it, he sat down first to eat his bacon and fried bread. When he’d finished, he pulled on his gumboots and took the shoe out through the garden gate into the field beyond where he tipped the caterpillar out into a nettle patch.

2
    A fortnight or more passed before Ginny plucked up enough courage to discuss the moths with her sister Lesley. She tried explaining how a visitation like that had to be a good omen.
    ‘A visitation?
Moths
?’ Lesley snorted, her laughter erupting uncontrollably. ‘Oh Ginny, you’re not serious?’
    Lesley had that impulsive way of blurting out whatever came into her head, sweeping across other people’s sensitivities like a gust of cold wind. Not that anyone took offence, ever. She was completely frank and open, and had a generous, warm laugh. It was impossible not to like her. Three years older than Ginny, too. Taller – and louder – she was endowed with beautiful auburn tresses which she left to tumble freely over her freckled shoulders, though sometimes she’d put them up for formal occasions.
    In reality they were only half-sisters, but as children they had been so close, it was unbelievable. Their mother had been twice married: first to Lesley’s father who waskilled in a climbing accident a few months after the wedding, then to a faintly-remembered solicitor who lasted just long enough to sire Ginny before being discarded. His considerable trust fund had made it possible for her to buy the cottage, but the man himself had died of lung cancer years earlier. Ginny had never met him. Now her mother had moved to Australia, she scarcely ever saw her either.
    ‘I’m not saying I believe it but –’
    ‘I should hope not!’ Lesley