Twenty past nine, and the gravel behind Marrowfield is blue under the yard light. Dinner is over: the plates gone, the folder back in the drawer, Augustine's car idling at the front of the house with its headlights on the hedge, waiting to take you down to the village if you want to go.
Julius has the tailgate down and the blanket box open, and he has not looked at the house once. He takes his keys out and sets them on the tailgate between you, the way he does before he says something he cannot take back.
"You can take his car,"
he says.
"It's warm, it's got a driver, and it gets you home in fifty minutes. Nobody would think anything of it."
He turns the ring over once with one finger.
"I would."
Behind you the porch light goes off. Ettrick is locking the kitchen end of the house the way she has for thirty years, and the car at the front idles on.
"He's going to offer you the cottage again on Thursday,"
Julius says.
"In writing. He does everything in writing. There's a lease for it already. I had Ormerod draw it in June, with your name on it and nobody else's, and I did not tell you, and I know exactly how that sounds."
He picks the keys up, puts them in your hand, and closes your fingers over them with both of his.
"I'm not asking the table,"
he says.
"I'm asking you. Take the truck, take his car, take the lease or leave it in the field. But you're not getting driven out of here by somebody else's driver. Get in. I'll go around."