Meanwhile…

  A few miles away…

  The countryside, near Thrimp

  Wiltshire

  United Kingdom

  Earth

  -Amanda-

  Amanda Poffingsworth was standing on the gravel in front of her house, which her parents more accurately called their house. It was the kind of large, picturesque house rarely seen by people who don’t live in them, as they can only be found by driving down the sort of bumpy mud-track that destroys city cars before suddenlyrevealing itself to be be the property of someone with a shotgun. The house and grounds—for it had grounds—would not have looked out of place on an old-fashioned biscuit-tin.

  The gravel on which she stood was expansive, but discoloured; its purpose was to make a welcoming crunching noise under the wheels of a rusty-but-trustworthy old Range Rover, rather than to look nice. It was the perfect spot for enjoying a cigarette while looking at the sky and the surrounding expanse of fields (only some of which belonged to the Poffingsworths), which is exactly what Amanda was doing.

  The tall, unkempt form of Timothy Poffingsworth, whom Amanda reluctantly acknowledged as her younger brother, was blinking in the sun whilst trying to coax a long-dead lighter into lighting his own cigarette, having coincidentally popped out for the very same purpose at the same time as Amanda, to their mutual disappointment.

  ‘Lighter, Vit?’ he called to Amanda, perhaps louder than necessary. She threw one at him without looking, which he caught with a deft jerk of the torso and rapid extension of an unsettlingly long arm from a much-stained sleeveless t-shirt.

  Kylie Onions—whom Amanda insisted on referring to as her friend, much to Kylie’s consternation—once again found herself with little better to do than spectate upon the smoking siblings. She sat on the grass and hugged her knees with one arm; the other arm half-heartedly beckoned Heathcliffe, the possibly-part-Labrador. Heathcliffe and the other two dogs’ attention was intractable, however, being committed utterly to the two Poffingsworths and the possibility that one of them might throw something. Kylie gave up and lay down in the sun.

  Heathcliffe, Mr. Darcy and Ronaldo were an eclectic trio of dogs, rescued as pups from the local centre and each named by one of the Poffingsworth children some years prior. Genevieve, the eldest child, had been in a phase of cultivating a disaffected teenage affinity for classical literature at the time, hence Heathcliffe; Amanda, meanwhile, had been going through a phase of copying Genevieve, hence Mr. Darcy; and nine-year-old Timothy had been left with the foul-tempered Dachsund and was not going to let the dog’s breed or sex prevent him from calling her Ronaldo.

  Amanda looked down at Kylie, exhaling. Leaves dancing in the wind traced their shadows over her recumbent form. Amanda let her gaze rest there, enjoying the sight of her lover supine and unguarded in the grass. She granted herself a moment to luxuriate in the sensation of stirring lust.

  ‘Why are you only wearing one sock?’ Kylie asked Tim, with whose feet she was now at eye-level.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  ‘Ah,’ began Tim, raising a finger in the certain manner of one who knows the answer.

  ‘And no shoes,’ added Kylie. ‘Outside.’

  ‘I could only find one,’ said Tim. He exhaled smokily, the answer given.

  ‘On gravel.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘You don’t—’

  ‘Ah, no, no, no, I tell a lie. I was wearing two socks earlier!’ exclaimed Tim, waggling the finger. ‘But I started taking them off!’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Wearing socks indoors isn’t very good for your feet,’ he explained.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I got distracted halfway through. And then, when I was going to come outside, I had a look for the other sock to put it back on, but I couldn’t find it.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Kylie. ‘And the shoes?’

  ‘I think they’re in the garden.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘One of them definitely is.’

  ‘Didn’t want to look for them before you came out?’

  ‘No. Shoes and no socks, Kylie,’ said Tim, inclining his head sagaciously, ‘is a recipe for a stink.’

  ‘You don’t want that,’ said Kylie weakly.

  Amanda looked on and smoked impassively.

  ‘No!’ said Tim with enthusiasm. ‘I learned that lesson the hard way. I lost a pair of good Adidases to raw foot smell.’

  ‘Do you mean… bare foot smell?’ asked Kylie, but the conversation seemed to have gotten away from her by this point and there seemed little hope of re-establishing herself.

  ‘Vit, you remember my old Adidases that had to go out because of the smell,’ he urged Amanda.

  Amanda exhaled.

  ‘Why do you call her- oh, good morning!’ said Kylie. The sudden outburst of politeness was addressed to Mr. Poffingsworth, father to the assembled Poffingsworths, who had come out of the front door and showed every intention of walking straight past the small gathering on his gravel.

  Mr. Poffingsworth—a man whose spirit animal was immediately identifiable as a rhinoceros and whose cholesterol-induced redness gave the impression of violent sunburn on even the greyest winter day—gave Kylie a withering look.

  ‘Smoking,’ he said matter-of-factly, before continuing towards the annexe that housed his office.

  ‘I’m not-’ began Kylie, but he was gone. She looked around in exasperation. ‘I’m literally the only one not smoking.’

  ‘Ooh. Must be off,’ said Tim. He flicked his cigarette butt at a rotund terracotta pot, which it missed and joined a disparate multitude of its weather-faded brethren on the stones beneath. He headed off after his father.

  Amanda crunched over to the same pot and dropped her own cigarette butt into it.

  She lit another.

  ‘Two?’ said Kylie plaintively.

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Amanda. ‘It's that sort of morning.’

  After a few contemplative drags, she stooped to pick up a badly deformed plastic frisbee, and by some practiced subversion of physics, hurled it perfectly straight out into the field behind the house, sending Heathcliffe and Ronaldo flying off after it in a flurry of growling. Mr. Darcy remained on the sun-warmed gravel, easing his troubled hips, his tongue lolling contemplatively in the mild morning breeze.

  ‘Good boy,’ Amanda mumbled absently, bending down to scratch him in his favourite spot behind the ears.

  Some moments passed, in which Kylie sensed it would be improper of her to interrupt the sacred communion between dog, woman and cigarette.

  ‘I need to go into town later,’ said Amanda.

  ‘Oh. What’s going on in town?’ asked Kylie.

  ‘Need to do some bank stuff for my parents.’

  ‘Don’t they do their own banking?’

  ‘Haven’t got a clue about money.’

  They don’t do badly at earning it, thought Kylie.

  ‘Surely you’ve got internet banking,’ she said instead.

  ‘Been meaning to set it up. Haven’t got round to it yet.’

  ‘It would literally take less time than driving into Thrimp and going to the bank. You could even do it when you’re there. Then you’ll never have to go again.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said.

  Kylie knew that she wouldn’t. She could even set it up for her, and she wouldn’t use it.

  ‘Alright. Well I suppose I’ll head off in a bit then,’ said Kylie.

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘Heading off?’ called Mr. Poffingsworth, emerging from the distant annexe.

  ‘What?’ said Kylie to Amanda. ‘He can’t hear us from over there, can he?’

  Amanda shrugged.

  ‘Oh, er, yes,’ Kylie called back. ‘I’m just going to-’

  ‘Nonsense! You’ll stay for lunch,’ called Mr. Poffingsworth.

  ‘Oh, I’m alright, thank you,’ called Kylie, but the figure had disappeared again.

  ‘I don’t-’ she began. ‘Should I… stay? For lunch?’

  Amanda shrugged. ‘He’s invited you now.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Er. Is that alright?’ Kylie asked hesitantly.

  Amanda shrugged again.