James woke to a silence that didn’t feel clean. The countryside mornings were meant to be simple: birdcalls at the hedgerows, a dampness clinging to the grass, the sound of Penelope moving quietly downstairs. But this silence was weighted. It wasn’t absence but a kind of presence. As though something had pressed itself against the house in the night and was still standing there, waiting.
He lay still in the narrow bed. The estate was meant to be their retreat, a place outside the city’s noise and Charles’s shadow, yet the walls seemed thinner each day. He could almost hear the breathing of the place, or of whoever watched it.
Downstairs, he caught the faint scrape of a chair. Penelope. That was grounding, though it didn’t loosen the band across his chest. He got up, dressed without much
