The blade entered his body through the velvet and through the white shirt. Red spilled down his front. Corinne caught her breath. She tried to remember that this was make-believe. He would have something secreted under his clothes to contain the blood – some kind of bladder they wore to hold the gore; Kensington gore, that’s what they called it, didn’t they? It was very convincing.

The man clutched the sword, plucking at the blade as his assailant pulled it out, his fingers stickily trying to hold together the hole in his clothes, to stop the blood, the gore, seeping out. With an awful expression on his face, he fell to his knees on the grass. The others looked round. They seemed horrified. Stunned. And the one whose sword it had been looked at the bloody weapon in his hand for a moment as though he couldn’t believe that it were there. Then he dropped it on the grass and ran, passing within a few feet of her as he headed towards the house and out of sight among the trees.

Embarrassed, Corinne waited. Did they expect her to applaud? What did people do under these circumstances? What was supposed to happen next? Her mouth had gone dry. She couldn’t move. She wanted to go back to the house, have tea and surround herself with people, but was trapped.

The three remaining men stood huddled over their companion, awkwardly hunched on the ground. There was a moment’s silence, then one looked up at the others. ‘He’s dead.’ The words, stark, modern or ancient, without embroidery, echoed in the quiet of the orchard. She held her breath. What were they going to do now? The man who had spoken bent over his fallen friend, touched his shoulder and rolled his body over. It flopped, convincingly inert, and sprawled at their feet.

As she watched, the three of them lifted him clumsily. He was heavy. His cloak dragged on the ground. One shoe fell from his foot. They heaved their awkward bundle up and began to run with it towards the trees in the distance. In a moment they had gone.

Released at last to move, Corinne hesitated. She wasn’t sure what to do. Suddenly she didn’t feel like being with other people after all. She had been caught up for however short a time in the drama of the moment. Openly now, she walked forward, composing herself.

She went quickly to the spot where they had been. It would be there – the great red stain – and she would be able to tell now that it had all been an act, part of a play. She looked around in the grass. It must be the wrong place. She moved forward, looking for the shoe which she had seen fall from the man’s foot. There was no sign of it. She went to the next tree and the next, but the ground was untouched, the long grass uncrushed; there was no sign of the sword, no sign of the shoe, no sign of the blood which had so copiously flowed from the man’s chest. There was nothing.

A strange shiver swept over her and she realised that she was feeling very cold. This was odd. Nothing felt right.

Almost without meaning to she followed the way they had gone, away from the path through the nettles and the long grass. There was no sign of anyone having come this way, never mind three men, encumbered by cloaks, dragging a heavy burden. She stared into the shadows beyond the boundary hedges. Where had they gone? She saw now that there was rabbit fencing round the orchard, and on the far side of the hedge an electric fence and beyond that a field of grazing cattle. Of course the men could have vaulted the hedge and fences. Once out of her sight they could have put down their burden, and he, miraculously alive again, could have run with them lightly tiptoeing, probably laughing, out of sight of their audience.

She walked back again, searching meticulously, more thoroughly now, determined to find at least a trace of them. There was a tiny core inside her, growing steadily more afraid. She walked up to the corner of the orchard, along the back hedge, looking at each tree, quartering the ground. She did the whole thing twice, gridding backwards and forwards beneath the tall, old-fashioned, ancient apple trees heading back towards the house. Of the sword, the shoe, anything at all in fact, she found no trace. There was nothing in the orchard.

She began to retrace her steps back towards the open sunlight and the tourists and the people in their costumes, enacting scenes from a Tudor past, and looked at them suddenly with different eyes, knowing in some inner part of herself that she alone of all the people there had had a glimpse of the real thing…

‘Corinne?’ The voice behind her stopped her in her tracks. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

She turned.

The lover. Repentant. Charming. Rueful. ‘Please?’ He held out his hand.

She was still a little shocked. Still slightly shaky, she realised, suddenly. Had it not been for that, she might not so easily have decided that she needed someone to have tea with.

Anyone, as long as he belonged to the present.

The Cottage Kitchen

When Roz first saw Fen Cottage it seemed like home. The kitchen was the only thing which stopped her from making an instant offer. The rest of the cottage was idyllic. It had low beams, thatch, three small charming bedrooms with tiny windows, a pretty sitting room which looked out onto a flower-smothered terrace and a dining room with a large inglenook fireplace. The kitchen was a lean-to. It was long, narrow, dark and basic. She thought, made a few sketches, did some calculations, crossed her fingers – the numbers didn’t quite add up – and made an offer. It was accepted at once.

It was eight weeks after that first enchanted viewing that she closed the door for the last time on her London flat, took a deep breath and headed for the country. It was only six months before that, that she’d first realised she wanted to leave London at all. Thanks to modern technology – she worked from home as a PR consultant – she could live where she liked. Nothing was keeping her in town except habit. Certainly not men. Her last relationship had gone the way of the others before it – fun while it lasted, but somehow not completely satisfying. She had not, she supposed, met her true soul mate yet, and perhaps now she wasn’t going to. The thought, to her surprise, did not worry her. In fact, she felt a sudden sense of freedom.

She turned one of the bedrooms – the nicest – into an office. It had a view across the wild, tangled garden (a future project, that) and over the hedge towards the fields. She established contact with the rest of the world via phone, fax and modem, and in the evenings began work on the dining room. It was going to be the new kitchen.