‘No one knows. It could have been an inner chamber. There was a small dig undertaken in the nineteenth century, apparently ruling out a burial. What do you think, Connor?’

‘I think it was an altar.’

‘How did they mark it out?’ Callum wondered at the regularity of the circle and Joe smiled.

‘The sun and moon both align to some of the stones at certain times of the year too,’ he said.

‘Like Stonehenge?’

‘Yes.’

The dark turned from purple to grey and Joe pointed to the horizon. The night had been crisp and clear, and the sky turned quickly from purple to red. The sun was coming. The outline of the mountains surrounding them became clearer and they tried to name the peaks they’d climbed. They picked out Helvellyn, which was clear on top. Joe wasn’t a spiritual man, as such, but he believed in ancient souls, and he could feel the allure and the magic of the place. He tried to imagine how Neolithic man might have felt trading or praying here, or perhaps even offering sacrifices.

A cry startled them, and they turned to the west.

‘What was that?’ Annie asked.

‘A sheep?’

They heard it again. Callum strode to a stone that was leaning to one side, after thousands of years of abuse from the weather.

‘Did you hear something, Callum?’ Annie shouted after her son.

Callum stopped and turned around, and yelled with a breaking voice.

‘Mum! Dad! Come here now!’

Annie recognised the cry as one of a child in distress and, before Joe reacted, she was sprinting to her son. She arrived by his side, breathless and wide eyed, and almost crashed into him to break her speed.

‘Oh my God! Joe! Come here. Callum! Stay back!’

Annie bent over and Callum watched his mother. Behind the great stone, shining ghoulish in the early dawn light, a girl crouched and shivered, naked and terrified. Callum couldn’t take his eyes off her skin. It glowed blue-white and appeared like some phantom before him. Annie took her jacket off and covered the girl, speaking to her, soothing her and asking a thousand questions. She barked orders.

‘Callum, go to the car and find blankets, food, water, anything that might warm someone up. Callum? Go!’

Callum finally responded to his mother’s orders and turned and ran to the parked vehicle, taking his brother with him. Connor babbled questions at his older sibling and tried to keep up. Behind them, they saw their parents’ tenderness towards the stranger.

Joe reached his wife and immediately took his phone out of his pocket to dial 999.

‘Damn! No signal! Wait, I’ll stand on a stone.’ In the circumstances, it might seem to an outsider an odd statement, but Annie knew it was their only chance, apart from driving around in the car. Joe wafted his phone in the air and straddled two huge monoliths. Annie comforted the girl.