Early on Sunday morning, the great room of House 2 belonged entirely to Angie. The long kitchen island, so often a hive of activity, stretched out like a dark, calm lake. Silence hung in every corner, punctured periodically by the distant startup of the tank chillers. The air was thick and still, the world suspended.

She sat in a corner of the couch, her knees drawn up, drinking tea and looking at the kachelofen. It was Mama B’s pride and joy in this room: Tee got her claro-walnut island and Bee got her kachelofen. Angie, visiting from Princeton the Christmas before last, had walked in to find Bee tip-toeing around a layout of dozens of bottle-green kacheln, the special ceramic blocks that make up the tiled facia. She was experimenting endlessly with patterns and immediately got Angie to help. It’d been fun . . .

A thought – very small and alien – unfurled. 

She couldn’t remember ever having thought it before.

Unnerved, she got up and went to the kitchen. Almost put the kettle on, but didn’t, and stood staring out the bifold windows. 

Lights were on at the stables. Bella’s default was that the horses were always tacked-up by seven, so anyone who wanted to go out just had to send a ticket to claim a ride. Angie wasn’t on the system, but it’d be nice to walk out to the stables anyway. She went upstairs to dress (telling herself she just imagined the ‘sounds’ from her mothers’ room) and then to the boot room for Bee’s sheepskin coat and shitkickers. 

And what a morning it was. The Temecula Valley was a painting in motion. The cool, fifty-degree stillness bit pleasantly at her cheeks as she passed October vines rising up like low walls of stained glass, their autumn colours – vibrant ambers, rustic crimsons and fading greens – blazing in the slanting sun. As she walked, the soft thud of her feet against the dirt felt like an anchor of the best kind: steady, rooted. 

‘Hey!’ 

Bella waved as Angie approached. She was a beautiful young woman, not long turned seventeen, with short black hair and large, sloping brown eyes like her brother’s.

‘Hi,’ said Angie. ‘I, uh . . . Is anyone on Penny today?’