Back in 2020, I published The Covenant, whose story begins in 1883 with two girls walking home as a thunderstorm approaches…

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The passage is intended to presage a storm of a very different sort that was about to engulf the Owen family, but I was drawing on my memories of being caught by a rapidly advancing storm many years ago. After writing it, I did wonder if my memories had gained a life of their own and exaggerated over the years. Could a storm really sweep on so swiftly? Could it end quite so abruptly? I decided that meteorological exactitude wasn’t really important. It was the imagery that counted.

Then the day before yesterday, I experienced exactly the same. Lightning was flashing somewhere over in the south-west for hours, with no rumble of thunder, so it must be far away. I walked as the wind began…