Chandler increased his pace. As he stalked closer, struggling to keep his balance, he could see that they were forestry shacks, maybe even military shacks left over from manoeuvres undertaken out here many years ago in preparation for a war that was real or imagined. Four shacks in total. The explosion of hope cramped his stomach. He could see the same hope spread over Mitch’s face.

‘I’ll take the two on the left,’ spluttered Chandler, fighting a mouth that was suddenly as dry as the air he breathed. He started running.

‘Okay, but watch out,’ said Mitch. ‘These have been here a while. Who knows what’s in them.’

Chandler ran over to the first of the sheds, the corrugated iron worn and curled from the summer heat. He touched the door expecting to be burned by it but found an icy coldness. Undoing the bolt lock Chandler held his breath. The door opened with a prescient crack, the hinges rusted and dry, unused in a long while. Pulling harder he wrenched it open, the beam of his head torch filling the small space. He was met by a litter of electronic equipment and machinery from the seventies that had decayed to dust, a bevy of tiny insects scurrying across the floor and table tops to flee the predator invading their home.

No Sarah and Jasper. Hope rushed from his heart and flowed out the soles of his feet to the dirt floor.

But there were three other buildings.

‘Chandler . . .’

Mitch’s voice was unsure, brushed with an urgency that seemed to border on disturbed.

As Chandler exited and sprinted across to him, Mitch stood by the door of a shed, the tin similarly worn and rusted, abandoned for years. His old colleague was shaking and sobbing, his mouth opening but no words issuing forth. Something beyond the reach of words had occurred.

The torchlight that had been directed inside the shed swung around to shine into Chandler’s face, blinding him.

Chandler moved towards the light.

Acknowledgements

I want to first of all thank my mum and dad for instilling a sense of independence and honesty in all of us from an early age and for raising us in a place where imagination and creativity was central to our upbringing. I thank my brothers and their wives for being supportive, smart and inspirational, my good friends Dave, Pete, Simon and Michael for their insight and the laughs and to my wider family for reading and advising on early drafts of this novel, giving helpful advice and, on occasion, not so helpful advice. And I would especially like to thank my wife for she is my compassion, intelligence and fortitude multiplied by a thousand. She has to be given the frequent late nights drafting this manuscript and the subsequent snoring. Mine, I’d like to point out, not hers.