Even when one is stricken, much remains – often creature things: drinking good tea from a thin porcelain cup; hot baths; the smell of a wood fire; the warmth of firelight and candlelight. The sound of a stream can be consolation, thinks Mrs Quin, or the shape of a tree; even stricken, she can enjoy those. To hold a skeleton leaf, see its structure, can safely lift one away from grief for a moment, marvelling; and sunrises help, she thinks, though sunsets are dangerous, and moon and stars; they stir too much. Shells are safe, and birds and most little animals, kittens or foals especially, for they are not sentimental. Dogs sometimes know too much, though it is then, after Tracy, that she gets a new puppy, Bumble. ‘I have been happy in food,’ Mrs Quin is able to say. How ridiculous to find consolation in food, but it is true, and when one is taking those first steps back, bruised and wounded, one can read certain books: Hans Christian Andersen, and the Psalms, Jane Austen, a few other novels. Helped by those things, life reasserts itself, as it must, even when one knows one will be stricken again: Tracy, Stace, Borowis, those are her private deepest names.