"Eve listens. Files the information away. Looks up at the smudge of grey clouds and can't help wondering whether she could ever have tolerated a life like this. She reckons she could probably still play the role of farmer's wife - she has the strong forearms and the round, red cheeks that she associates with the cartoon caricature version of the role. She just isn't sure about the making jam and the beating eggs and making packed lunches for some taciturn husband. Can't see herself rubbing blood and afterbirth off a new lamb with a fistful of damp straw. Can't imagine tweezing white hairs from the black face of a champion tup. She'd rather just get on with what she's good at.

Get on with being a copper; a thief-taker. Not that her single-mindedness hasn't cost her dear. Her last three lovers have all told her she's too much like hard work. She's felt sorrow at the end of each relationship but she has never felt regret. She's twenty-nine, a detective sergeant, a respected copper with a record that shows more commendations than black marks. She had to move to this little corner of England to take a step up the career ladder but she doesn't view it as a sacrifice. She's learning to love it here, in this dull brown blob in the top left-hand corner of the map. It's only forty miles from one side to the other but the variety is such that on any given day she could be called to locations as different in character as the sun and the moon.

Cottages; castles; urban sink estates glaring out into the sea. She'd thought that all mountains looked the same. Now she feels able to recognise the different fells from description alone. She favours the wilder lands; the rugged mountaintops with their serrated edges and hidden hazards; sudden drops and concealed mineshafts; waterfalls that pound the rocks with a cold, endless fury. She's starting to fit in".