The gutted farmhouse appeared, silvered by the moon. Uncanny lights could have blazed in the windows, but they did not. A black rook or crow sat in the hedge, as if to challenge her. She saw the glitter of its eye. All things here were Scarabae. But the rook paid her no attention, did not fly at her crying in a human voice Go back!

How the night worked on her imagination.

The village might be gone, or dead, or all the inhabitants turned to stone like the houses.

No, the village was only that. It obeyed the laws of normal things. There were telephones, and they would answer if she knocked loudly enough.

She had only to follow the road now.

Nothing walked or ebbed behind her.

The moon was setting, the cloud like streaming hair or bubbling steam.

She did not recall that wood there by the road. Could she somehow have taken a wrong turning on the straight, unbranching surface? Had part of the land been lifted up and spirited away?

But there, she remembered that derelict wall. Beyond that rise, the village would be. Probably.

She achieved the crest of the road and saw it spill over, and the village in the bottom of the valley, silent as if drowned a hundred years beneath a lake.

The door to the pub called The Armitage was of thick wood, lacking a bell or knocker. A side door was streakily painted and had two sorry pots of weeds beside it, and a bell and letterbox.

The sky was higher and the stars had lost their clockwork effulgence. Dawn was near. Wakey wakey.

She rang the bell brutishly, keeping her hand on it, and flapped the lid of the letterbox.

After a long while muffled sounds came from above. A window lighted.

As she had supposed, it had been best to take them by surprise.

The window went up. A bald but tousled head poked out.

Is that you, Sandy?’

Rachaela cleared her throat.

‘No. I need your help. An emergency. Your telephone.’

There’s a telephone up the way,’ said the aggrieved being above.

‘Vandalized,’ said Rachaela. As if the bastard doesn’t know. ‘Please. It’s urgent. I’ll pay you for the use.’

This time of night,’ said the man.

‘Please,’ said Rachaela.

‘Are you from the farm?’

‘No.’

‘Just wait there.’

The sky was bluish-grey, vast films of darkness seeping out of it.

From outposts of the dirty village, wild birds began to sing their lawless aubade.

She pictured the man stamping down through his pub, irate and duty-bound. Who was ‘Sandy’? Another who knocked them up before daylight.

The door was unlocked and scraped open.

‘Now what is it you want?’

‘Your telephone.’

‘I don’t know. Who are you?’

‘It’s very urgent. I must call a car.’

‘A car? What do you want with a car?’

The man, she had noticed, had a London accent, like the van people. Another outsider.