'Enough!' Pamela smacked her hands onto her knees before standing up. 'This, I have to see. Lead the way.'

I followed them into the studio. Work had been so all-consuming that I hadn't found time to sit and watch Kit painting. I missed those companionable evenings.

Pamela glanced up at Sibella's portrait. 'Morning, ma'am,' she said. 'Now, you are a vision of loveliness. Though I wouldn't like to find myself on the wrong side of you, I think. There's flint in those eyes.'

No wine bottles in sight, full or empty. I'd seen Kit making a frame for a vast canvas, and there it was against one wall. His work in progress stretched towards the ceiling and was perhaps four feet wide. The three of us walked around to stand in front of it.

We were looking out of an open window-with a sill and a frame- and straight into the dense understorey of a rainforest so real that I could almost smell the lichen; yet the effect was produced by light and colour. I was spellbound. It was somehow more real than reality.

'How long have you spent on this?' asked Pamela, examining a mirrored water droplet that glittered on a fern.

'Eighty, ninety hours so far. Martha and I have been two ships pa.s.sing in the night.'

The pair of them began to discuss technicalities: working with such a large canvas, getting it safely to Dublin, sourcing wooden shutters to complete the window effect.

'Might try vineyards next,' said Kit, pulling out a sketch. 'Think what you could do with those mathematical patterns!' He was about to expand on the thought when Finn shot through the doorway, hands gripped around an imaginary steering wheel and Formula 1 noises bubbling through pursed lips.

'Wanted on the phone, wanted on the phone, Kit McNamara. Will a Mr Kit McNamara please come to the phone? It's Granny from Ireland.' Then he made a handbrake turn and accelerated out again. I heard him changing gear on the verandah. Kit waved an apology to Pamela, and trotted off.

'Kit's mother,' I explained, as Pamela and I followed at a more dignified pace. 'She can't sleep, and then she's bored. So she phones Kit.'

'Your man is exceptionally talented,' said Pamela. 'Did you realise that? If I had a fraction of his ability I'd be singing from the rooftops.'

'New Zealand inspires him.'

'Just wait until the autumn. Oh, such colours!'

We strolled onto the lawn, and I asked Pamela's advice about some shrivelling of the leaves on our citrus bush. But there was an elephant in the garden. I couldn't ignore it.

'I'm so sorry about your son,' I said.

She patted my arm. 'I'll tell you the rest of the story, but another time. People don't usually want to hear. It spoils their day.'

When we reached the glossy shade of the walnut tree, she leaned across the back of the truck and let her dogs off their chains. 'You don't get over it, you know. You never do. But if you're very lucky, you get through it.'

I watched my neighbour drive down the track in a confident whirlwind of dust. The dead sheep slid around on the flatbed of the truck, and dogs raced alongside with maniacal joie de vivre. She looked the archetypal competent woman. Everything in her world obeyed Pamela Colbert: the husband, the dogs, the sheep, the garden.

Well, no. Not everything. Even she couldn't control Death.

Sacha arrived home soon after Pamela had left. She'd made her own way up from the road gate, a bottle of Coca-Cola in one hand, and burst in as I was wrestling with a pile of ironing.

'Don't panic!' she crowed, as the door hit the wall with a plaster-shattering crack. 'I'm back!'

'I'd have collected you from the road,' I said, crossing the kitchen to hug her.

'Mmwah!' She gave me a noisy kiss on the cheek, dropping her backpack onto the floor. 'Where is everyone?'

'Have you been dragged through a hedge backwards? That's the wildest hairdo I've ever seen. It'll take hours to get the tangles out.'

She touched her head vaguely, then did that intensely annoying teenage thing-wrenched at the fridge door and stood looking at the shelves. I once read a statistic about how many weeks of our lives we spend looking into fridges. It was horrifying.

'Why are you drinking c.o.ke?' I asked. 'You don't even like it.'

'Shows what you know about me.'

'We've got leftover lasagne there, on the top shelf.'

'I haven't eaten a thing today,' she said, putting the bowl into the microwave. 'D'you think the diet's working yet?' She turned side-on to me and inhaled sharply. 'Tabby's given me some of her clothes.'

'I think it's time to forget the diet. You're overdoing it. Tabby was born a different shape from you.'

'Oh my G.o.d, I forgot to set the microwave going.' She pressed the start b.u.t.ton and stood watching the plate doing its wobbly dance on the turntable. 'I wonder what it's like to be in a microwave?'

'Fatal, unless you're a plate of lasagne. So you've had a good time?'

'Yep. Ting! That was quick.'

Giving up on the ironing-surely a metaphor for all that is fruitless and sterile in the modern world-I joined her at the table and asked about her evening at Bianka's house, which seemed to consist of listening to music and talking all night.

'Any reason why you're so jolly?' I wondered whether I really wanted to know. I had a nasty feeling it might be to do with Jani. No parent of a sixteen-year-old girl likes to imagine . . . well, you know.

She shrugged. A burnished strand of her hair fell into the cheese sauce.

I tried again. 'I hope you didn't, er, didn't go too far.'

'You mean did I screw Jani?'

'No!' I was tight-lipped. 'Um, well . . . I mean, I hope you're making good choices.'

'Oh I am,' she said, laughing uproariously. 'I am. I'm fantastic at making good choices! I'm a legend in my own lifetime. No, Mum, I didn't sleep with Jani. Chill. Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go and see who's on Facebook.'

'You haven't got to do anything of the kind. You've got to finish that lasagne-you've hardly eaten any.'

She bent over the table, held her hair back with one hand, and piled the whole lot into her mouth. 'Happy?'

'Go on, then,' I sighed, and the next moment she and her backpack had gone. I strode into the hall, calling after her, 'Have a shower! You look like a tramp.'

Her head appeared over the banisters. 'Now, Mum, that's not PC, as you ought to know. We don't call them tramps, we call them homeless persons.'

'Get away with you,' I said, laughing. 'Don't forget to scrub behind your ears.'

The bathroom door slammed shut.

Why d'you think she's locked herself in there? I hadn't heard from my mother in a while; I'd almost missed the old boot.

'To have a shower, of course.'

Really? Not to throw up all that lasagne you've just made her eat?

'You're paranoid,' I snapped. 'Silly woman.'

At some appalling hour the next morning, Finn and Charlie tottered into our room with tea in bed-well, tepid water with tea leaves floating in it. They were b.u.t.tering us up, they said, so we'd take them to explore the rock pools for intergalactic starfish.

'We're going to the beach,' I announced, throwing open Sacha's window. The sky was airforce blue. 'Coming?' Her head dipped below the duvet, and I huffed. 'I'll take that as a no, then.'

Kit chortled when I complained. 'What teenager have you ever met that leaps out of bed at seven o'clock on a Sunday morning? You don't know how lucky you are. Our girl's an angel.'

The seash.o.r.e was deserted except for an elderly strolling couple, holding hands, picking their way around the foot of Hinemoana's hill.

'That'll be us one day,' said Kit. He sounded happy about the idea.

It was low tide. Charlie and Finn waded into rock pools, leaning on one another for support while keeping up an almost superhuman babble of nonsense about intergalactic life forms. We'd been on the beach half an hour when, feeling a sudden gust, I glanced behind us. Hinemoana's hill had disappeared.

'Don't look now,' I said, squeezing Kit's arm. 'But I think we're about to get very wet.'

Murky shadow slanted out of the clouds and spread far across the sea. It was alarmingly beautiful. The water had become an unearthly ma.s.s, a weird, luminous creme de menthe flecked with whitecaps, and a fretful wind tugged at our clothes.

'Better run for it.' Kit cupped his hands to his mouth. 'Guys!'

By the time the twins were on dry land the squall was upon us, driving horizontally from the south. The day grew thin and spectral as the sky dissolved. Sand whipped up and stung our legs. In the end Kit and I turned around and walked backwards, leaning against the wind, cradling a boy each in our arms. I've never been so pleased to see a big white people carrier.

'That was wicked,' yelped Finn, somersaulting onto the back seat.

'Does this mean the drought's over?' I gasped.

Kit started the engine just as a rainbow appeared in the sky, arching from one horizon to another. It seemed to have been illuminated with the flick of a switch, like a neon sign. Behind and beneath it, the horizon merged into gloom.

'Hot chocolate?' suggested Charlie hopefully.

'And pancakes?' added Finn.

'And coffee,' said Kit, as he flicked on the wipers.

That first squall was swiftly followed by another. I made pancakes with Finn's help while Charlie spun plastic plates across the table like frisbees, howling the theme tune to Dam Busters. Sacha was up, dressed and trying to work the espresso machine. Meanwhile Kit hunted through the dresser drawers.

'Where's my camera? I want a photo of that ma.s.sive cloud with the rainbow.'

'Um . . . is it plugged into the computer?'

'Hang on, I'll check . . . Nope. Guys, anyone seen my camera?'

The rest of us looked blank. The twins had begun squirting syrup over their pancakes, over the table, over the floor.

'Coffee, Kit?' asked Sacha, handing him a cup. 'I think I got it right.'

'Looks perfect!' Kit took an appreciative sip, then went to fetch his older camera from our bedroom. He spent the next half hour striding around in the garden, taking photographs of the strange storm light.

'So weird,' said Sacha, looking out of the window. 'It's not our garden any more. It's kind of alien.'

I stood at her shoulder. 'Spooky, isn't it? Like a solar eclipse.'

'Do you ever feel a bit . . . you know, funny about this house?'

I pantomimed quivering horror, but she didn't smile. 'Do you?' I asked.

She nodded. She looked quite strained, with bluish shadows along her eye sockets. 'Sometimes I feel as though we're being watched.'

'You mean by people?'

'It freaks me out the way it's so totally dark at night. It sort of presses on your eyeb.a.l.l.s. Don't you feel as though the bush is . . . I don't know, alive? Like there's something out there?'

'You've been listening to Ira's scary stories,' I said lightly. 'Now-to more pressing matters. Where's my coffee?'

The weather moved on during the evening, leaving a sulky night. At nine o'clock I poured myself a gla.s.s of merlot and sat on the porch steps. Sacha had turned in early, complaining of a headache. Kit was working. The light from his window spread a ghostly eiderdown on the dark lawn.

There were no stars. No moon. No other dwellings. Just the blackness. I was wondering uneasily about the silver cow jug and Kit's camera, Sacha's precious locket and my missing cash. I remembered the patupaiarehe who crept down from the hills in the night, their sharp fingers reaching through the windows. They stole things, even people. I imagined a pale being tiptoeing up behind me with a leer of cunning. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

Suddenly, I stopped breathing.

There was something in the magnolia, right above my head. Something quite big, and very furtive. Rustle, rustle. I stared wildly up into the shadows.

A long silence. The calm deepened, and slowly I relaxed. Must have been a bird. I heard a lamb bleat, and its mother answered. I picked up my gla.s.s.

Then my heart burst right through my chest as an unearthly din tore the silence: a rasping, demonic hiss. It was like nothing I'd ever heard in my life before. I was on my feet and halfway across the porch before I'd had time to make a conscious decision.

Yelling for Kit, I grabbed a torch from the table and swung the beam into the upper branches of the tree. A pair of eyes gleamed, and that terrible hiss broke off as a lithe shadow ran along the branch and onto our roof. I heard footsteps skittering on the tiles.

'Possum,' said Kit's voice. 'Cute.'

'Possum?' My heart was still beating wildly. I was covered in spilled wine. The gla.s.s lay on the lawn where I'd dropped it. 'How d'you know it was a frigging possum? It sounded like the devil himself.'

Kit walked down the verandah. 'Jean showed me one the other night. The bush is overrun with them, and they're death to the native trees. They're vermin- that's what all those plastic bait stations are about. The Colbert boys used to earn pocket money by shooting possums. They'd head out at night with torches, shine light into their eyes and-bang! They skinned 'em. Got paid ten bucks for every pelt.'

'For G.o.d's sake. This country is barbaric.' Tonight, I agreed with Sacha. I wished we could see other lights, hear some man-made sound. A road, a pub, a party: anything but this endless blinding blackness. There was nothing; just an alien canopy of sky and the gloomy ma.s.s of the bush. Waiting. Watching.

I shone my torch along the roof. 'If that thing can climb the tree and get onto the house, then so can any other creature.'

'Yes, indeed. And New Zealand is swarming with man-eating sheep.'

'People, Kit. People can be man-eaters.'

He put his arm around my shoulders. 'Martha, when did we last even lock the front door? There are no villains here.'

'I miss Milton Keynes,' I whispered. 'I miss the M1 and that twenty-four-hour Tesco and the horrid orange streetlights that shone right into our bedroom. I miss the juggernauts rattling our house.'

'Careful,' warned Kit. 'No sane woman would talk like that.'

'I keep thinking about things . . . the silver jug, your camera. Sacha's locket.'