^Fry took the cassette from her glove compartment and slipped it into her pocket. Tanita Tikaram's 'Ancient Heart'. He had asked about it, and said he liked it. Maybe, just maybe, it would help to bring back some more memories.

Cooper turned as she got out of the car. His face was a picture of amazement.

‘Diane — is something wrong?'

‘No, Ben. It's a social call.'

‘I see.' He seemed suddenly flustered and looked at his brother. 'This is Matt, by the way. Matt — Diane Fry. A colleague.'

‘Nice to meet you,' said Matt, with a smile and a strange sideways look at his brother. 'Sorry I can't stop to chat, though. There's a lot of work to do. I'll see you later, Ben.'

‘Our mother's home,' said Cooper, as if it explained everything. But it meant nothing. Fry had never known his mother was away.

They stood and looked at each other in front of the barn. She had worked out what she was going to say, but now the words didn't seem to spring so easily to her lips. She was suddenly full of doubt. There was something about the way he had introduced her to his brother as 'a colleague' that didn't sound right. In the end, it was Cooper who broke the uneasy silence.

‘How was your meeting with the superintendent?' he asked. 'A pat on the back, was it?’

She took a breath, clutching the cassette case in her pocket for luck. 'Actually, he's asked me if I'll put in for the sergeant's job when they interview again next month,' she said. 'I thought I ought to tell you myself.’

Before she could read his expression, Cooper had turned away to put his shotgun in the Land Rover, where he locked it into a steel box. Though she couldn't see his face, she could tell that his shoulders were rigid and arched with tension.

A tractor engine coughed into life in the field beyond the barn. A sudden clattering of machinery sent a flock of rooks spiralling into the air, where they wheeled against the distant silhouettes of the Camphill gliders. The hoarse, mocking calls of the birds drew echoes from the barns and the cattle sheds, and the noise multiplied and swelled until it seemed to fill the entire farmyard.

‘I'm very pleased for you,' said Cooper, with his back still turned. 'I'm sure you'll make a very good detective sergeant, Diane. Always in control. Always doing the right thing. You'll get on fast. You'll shoot up that promotion ladder.' He slammed the Land Rover door too hard. 'Like you've got a rocket up your arse.’

Fry winced. She had rarely heard him swear. Only once before had he spoken to her in that tone. It had been in the bar of the Unicorn, when he had been consumed with drunken rage. He had called her a bitch then, but somehow she had persuaded herself it was only the beer speaking.

Now she felt the conversation was drifting away from her badly. This was not the way it was supposed to have been. Desperately, she cast round for something to say and finally nodded towards the dog.

‘Is she taking to it well?'

‘Connie? Yes, she's a natural. Very loyal.’

A good companion, I suppose.’

Cooper patted the head of the Border collie, who looked up at him adoringly. 'Connie's more than a companion,' he said pointedly. 'A friend.’

Fry turned at a sound behind her. Another car had pulled into the yard, one that she vaguely recognized. The door opened and a woman got out of the driver's seat, but hesitated and remained standing by the car, waiting for Ben. It was Helen Milner. Fry felt a chill run under her skin and seep into her arms, even as a flush started in her neck, and she knew she had made a fool of herself.

‘Well. It looks as though your other friend's come for you, Ben. Better not keep her waiting.’

Cooper turned angrily at the sneer in her voice, but controlled himself with a visible effort, remembering the superintendent's warning about emotional outbursts. He strode a few paces across the yard towards Helen's car before he stopped and faced Fry again. By now he was calm, and his words were chosen with care.

‘You may not understand this. But we all need friends sometimes, Diane.’

Then he turned and left her standing in the shadow of the barn. Fry found she had been squeezing the cassette in her pocket so tightly that its sharp edges were digging into the palm of her hand, and the pain was making her eyes water. She spoke then, but in a voice so quiet that Cooper could not possibly have heard.

‘So they tell me, Ben,' she said. And she watched him walk away.

*

A kestrel hung in a hot up-current of air, searching for moving prey among the limestone crags high in the daleside. In this valley, most of the lower fields had been turned to rye-grass leys and silage pasture. But halfway up the hill towards Great Hucklow there was still a single meadow full of wild flowers, ox-eye daisies and marjoram, their colours contrasting with the uniform green of the pastures.

They had almost reached the meadow when Ben Cooper asked Helen to pull into a gateway. She looked at him curiously, wondering what could have gone wrong. But she turned off the engine and wound down the window, and for a few moments they watched a glider that was slipping silently across the valley, tilting its wings against the sun before disappearing over Durham Edge.

They were on their way to have lunch together at the Light House, because it had seemed like the natural thing to do. But for Cooper, it was more than that. He felt as though he was on the point of emerging from the darkness into another world, a moment to be tasted and savoured. As Helen leaned out of the car window to track the movement of the glider, her hair caught the sunlight and turned it into an elusive, coppery haze that he could have watched for ever.

But finally; his eyes were drawn back down the valley, where Bridge End Farm lay half in the shadow of the hill against a curtain of wych-elm woods. He could see the windows of the cool, dark rooms, where his mother lay asleep, dreaming drug-assisted dreams, escaping from a strangely altered reality. He could see, at the back of the house, his brother's tractor trailing a cloud of dust as it dragged a disc harrow across the top field. And he could just make out Diane Fry's black Peugeot as it began to crawl up the track to the road, hesitating at every pothole as if nervous of falling in. The face of the driver was invisible behind the reflection from the windscreen.

Then the echo of a bark drifted up the hillside. In the farmyard, waiting patiently by the gate, lay the Border collie that had once belonged to Wilford Cutts. The dog turned its head into the shade to follow the tyres of the Peugeot, and the wiry texture of its fur softened and faded for a moment, darkening its outline against the dusty ground. But then the collie stirred again and looked up the hill, as if sensing Cooper's presence. Now the white patches on its face and flanks sparkled and shimmered as they picked up the glare of the sun from the limestone walls.

For Ben Cooper, it was all perfectly clear. From here, in this light, at this moment in his life, there was no way that he could make a mistake. He could see no black dog.

THE END