The uneasy thought that had been growing in my mind could now no longer be set aside. Even before Rick had come to my aid, I’d started to wonder if the Sun’s resting place really was inside the barn itself. Of course, I’d been the one, not Josie, who’d first suggested such a thing, that time we’d gazed out together from the rear window, so any such error was entirely my own. Certainly, there was no question of Josie having misled me at any stage. Even so, it was a discouraging thought that the Sun was about to descend not into the place I was making such an effort to reach, but somewhere further away still.

What I now observed obliged me to accept that my fear was justified. Mr McBain’s barn was unlike any building I’d seen. It resembled the outer shell of a house the men hadn’t yet finished. There was a gray roof with a facing triangle in the usual manner, supported to the left and right by walls of a darker shade. But apart from the sections enclosing the roof, the structure had no walls front or rear. The wind, I knew, was even then blowing right the way through with barely any obstruction. And the Sun, I saw, had now fallen behind the barn’s structure, and was sending his rays through the rear opening back out to us as we approached.

We’d meanwhile come into a clearing not unlike the one upon which Rick’s house was built. There was grass here, but it had been cut, perhaps by Mr McBain himself, to just above feet level. The cutting had been performed skillfully, so that a pattern could be seen weaving towards the barn entrance, and because the Sun was now shining straight through the barn, its shadow was spreading across the grass towards us.

Though it seemed discourteous, I signaled urgently to Rick by tightening my arms and legs. ‘Please stop!’ I whispered into his ear. ‘Stop! Please let me down!’

He lowered me carefully, and we both gazed at the scene before us. Although I now had to accept the barn couldn’t be the Sun’s actual resting place, I allowed myself an encouraging possibility: that regardless of where the Sun ultimately settled, Mr McBain’s barn was a place he made a point of calling at last thing each evening, just as Josie always visited her en suite before retiring to bed.

‘I’m so grateful,’ I said, keeping my voice low, despite the outdoor acoustics. ‘But from here, it’s best Rick leaves me and I go alone.’

‘Whatever you say. If you like, I’ll wait here for you. How long do you suppose you’ll be?’

‘It’s best Rick returns to his house. Miss Helen will worry otherwise.’

‘Mum will be fine. I think I’d better wait. Remember how it was going before I came on the scene? And your journey back will probably be in the dark.’

‘I’ll have to manage. Rick has been too kind already. And it’s best I enter alone. As it is, standing here like this, it might already be stealing too much privacy.’

Rick looked again at Mr McBain’s barn, then shrugged. ‘Okay. I’ll leave you to it. Whatever this is you have to do.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Good luck, Klara. I mean it.’

He turned and walked back into the tall grass, and soon I could no longer see him.

Once alone, I began to place my thoughts fully on the task before me. It occurred to me that if a passer-by had stood directly before the barn even five minutes earlier, they would have been able to see not only the evening sky through the rear, and the continuation of the field, but also a lot more of the barn’s shadowy interior. But now, with the Sun’s rays coming straight towards me, I could make out only some blurred box-like shapes stacked one on top of the other. And the thought returned to me with more certainty than ever that, even accounting for the Sun’s great generosity, what I was about to do carried risk, and would require all my concentration. I heard behind me the breeze in the grass and the cries of distant birds, and ordering my thoughts, I walked across the cut grass towards Mr McBain’s barn.

* * *

—

The interior was filled with orange light. There were particles of hay drifting in the air like evening insects, and his patterns were falling all across the barn’s wooden floor. When I glanced behind me my own shadow looked like a tall thin tree ready to break in the wind.

There were some curious features about my surroundings. On first entering the barn, I’d encountered such sharply contrasting divisions of brightness and shadow that my sight had taken a few moments to adjust. Nevertheless, I’d established quickly that the blocks of hay, whose shapes I’d noted from outside, were now to my left, stacked one on top of the other to form a kind of platform – one as tall as my shoulders – upon which passers-by could climb or even lie down and rest. But the hay blocks had been stacked so as to allow a gap between them and the wall behind – perhaps so that Mr McBain could gain access from that side. Peering over the hay platform, I now saw, fixed to this wall and running all along it, the Red Shelves from our store, complete with the ceramic coffee cups displayed upside down and in a line.

On my other side – to my right – where the shadows were at their deepest, I saw a section of wall almost identical to the front alcove. In fact I felt sure that if I went over to it, I’d discover amidst the shadows an AF standing there proudly at the spot where – no matter what else was said – customers were most likely to look first.

Also on my right, though not as far over as the alcove, was the only item in the barn that could be counted as furniture: a small metal foldaway chair, now in its open position, at present bisected by a diagonal separating its brightly lit area from its shadowy one. This chair too was reminiscent of the chairs Manager kept in the back room and occasionally unfolded in the store, except that its paint had started to flake, revealing patches of metal underneath.

I decided, after some reflection, that it wouldn’t be discourteous to sit down on this chair while waiting for the Sun. When I did so, I fully expected to see a revised picture of my surroundings due to the altered angle, but was surprised to find that everything had instead become partitioned – and not just into the usual boxes, but into segments of irregular shape. Inside some segments I could see certain parts of Mr McBain’s farming tools – a spade handle, the lower half of a metal ladder. In another segment was what I knew to be the mouths of two plastic buckets placed side by side, but owing perhaps to the difficult light conditions, they were presented simply as two intersecting ovals.

I knew the Sun was now very near me, and although I thought at times I should stand up, as when receiving a customer, something else suggested I would steal less privacy – and be less likely to cause annoyance – if I remained seated. So I aligned my own shape as closely as I could with that of the foldaway chair and waited. The Sun’s shafts became more pronounced, and more orange, and I even thought these shafts might be causing pieces of hay to come loose from their blocks and float into the air, for there were now many more drifting particles in front of me.