A dog walker
He sits alone at the summit of a hill, supported by the weathered wood of an ancient bench.
Ahead, a patchwork of bright green stretches out under a March sky that has only a smattering of clouds.
Between him and the Cotswolds hills, his dog, sniffing about in search of snack wrappers left by other walkers who were here brighter and earlier.
He hears the children first. The dog hears them, too, his pointed ears pricking up in apprehension, then delight.
People to play with. The three boys arrive as one, a cartoon cloud of grazed knees and unruly hair, tugging at each other’s collars and tumbling towards the rest area.
Behind them, a little girl with a pale face and tangled ginger hair that blows in all directions.
She has her hands stuffed into the pockets of an anorak, gives the dog walker a look older than her years.
A roll of the eyes says boys will be boys.
The adults lag behind, but the dog walker can hear their conversation carrying up the hill.
‘I still can’t believe he’d just leave,’ the first woman is saying.
‘Can’t you?’ says the second woman. ‘It’s what he does.’
‘And you have no idea where he is?’ the first woman says. ‘Augie?’
A man’s voice pipes up, defensive. ‘Woah,’ he says. ‘I don’t have some secret line of communication with him.’
The first woman comes into view. Her tight ponytail hangs from the back of a baseball cap. She wears durable leggings, a breathable zip hoodie tied around her muscular waist. The ascent doesn’t seem to have fazed her at all.
‘How long has it been?’ she says.
The second woman is struggling considerably more. She is not dressed for hiking, clad in jeans and Doc Martens. At the top, she catches her breath, wipes a sweaty brow beneath hair even more unruly than that of the little girl ahead of her.
‘Ten months,’ she says. ‘Give or take.’ An exhausted smile. ‘Who’s counting?’
‘I’ll kill him,’ says the first woman.
‘He used to say you were the only person in the world he was scared of,’ says the second. She sounds like she’s remembering something both funny and sad.
‘A lot of people say that about me,’ says the first woman, with a serious nod.
They look like siblings, these two. The same slight shoulders, the same dark-blond hair, the same sharp features.
Laughter arrives behind them, and a man with it. Old trainers, a moth-eaten jumper, a threadbare rucksack. A familiar, elfin face. Augie, they’d called him. The youngest, if the walker is making a guess.
Ahead of them, the kids are clambering all over the massive stone marker. The walker’s dog has joined them, is circling the plinth and yapping with delight. The siblings nod hello, then survey the view.
‘It’s funny,’ says the younger sister. ‘I feel a clarity about it now. Maybe it’s the new year. Or the film being finished. Getting it all out of my system.’ She takes a long inhale through her nose. ‘I’ve accepted that it’s over. I’m not going to waste any more time being sad about Seb.’
The other two share a look. She watches them do so.
‘I mean it,’ she says. ‘I’m done. I actually do think I deserve better, and it’s taken me a long time to realise that.
’ She watches the children laughing, tumbling, picking themselves up.
‘We had our chance, and it passed us by, and I’ve made peace with it.
At this age. With so many good things in my life. ’
Augie rests his head on her shoulder.
She smiles a half-smile. ‘Besides,’ she says. ‘I think I was looking at it all wrong. My whole life, the big, long story of it. I don’t think it was ever about me and Seb.’
‘What was it about?’ the older sister asks.
The younger sister takes her hand. She takes her brother’s hand, too. ‘This,’ she says. ‘All of this.’
They share a moment. Then, still smiling, the younger sister begins to cry.
‘Oh, Clara,’ Augie says, folding her into a hug.
The older sister looks sympathetic, an expression the walker suspects she doesn’t wear often.
‘It was a bit about you and Seb, wasn’t it?’ she says.
Clara nods through her tears. ‘A little bit.’
Over at the marker, the kids are laughing. While Clara wipes her tears, Augie reaches into his rucksack and pulls out a Tupperware. He hands it to the oldest sister.
‘You do the honours, Cee.’
She unclasps the lid. All three of them stare down into its powdery grey contents. It doesn’t take too much imagination for the dog walker to connect the dots.
‘Does Dad know we’re doing this?’ Augie asks.
‘He doesn’t know much of anything any more,’ Cee answers.
‘Just think of this as us liberating her,’ Clara says.
A long silence. Three half-smiles.
‘I can’t believe it’s taken us so long,’ Cee says.
‘Why here?’ Augie asks. ‘Did it mean something to her?’
Both sisters look at him.
‘She took us up here once,’ Clara says. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘No,’ Augie says, quietly. ‘She doesn’t seem the type.’
Cee nods. ‘People can surprise you.’
The siblings share a look, and they huddle together. Then they move away, for privacy, to find the perfect spot. The walker watches from a distance, hears Augie says, bye, Mum. He sees them throw their mother to the wind.
Up here, the kids are taking it in turns to climb the stone plinth. Each boy takes his place, one after the other, and roars as loudly as he can, desperate to outdo the brother before. The girl shakes her head at them. But when it’s her turn, she still begins her scrabble to the top.
The grown-ups have returned, dusting off their hands, wiping their eyes.
‘That looks like fun,’ says Augie, nodding at the children.
Then he takes a long, deep breath, and lets out an even longer, impossibly loud howl.
The sound echoes, and he ululates the dying notes to make himself sound as wolf-like as possible.
The sisters look shocked. The kids are loving it.
The walker’s dog is howling in imitation, and the walker himself can’t help but crack a smile.
Augie grins. ‘Your turn, Cee.’
Cee doesn’t look keen. She adjusts her hat, her ponytail, lets out a half-hearted ‘Aaaah.’ Her brother says that won’t cut it.
So she grits her teeth, clenches her fists, summons a noise from the base of her diaphragm and bellows, deeply, loudly, a commanding sound that carries.
It shuts the boys up. Augie grins. Clara is shaking her head.
But the little ginger girl is on top of the plinth now, is holding her eye.
She smiles. She roars like a wild thing. And so her mother roars, too.