Joxie tugged up the sleeves of his army shirt to show Doctor Sot the abscesses that had formed around old needle holes. Doctor Sot said that he’d be as well to come down to the practice and there they could have a closer look, there would be no charge for it. He said if anyone else needed to come down, that could also be arranged. Joxie decided to rant. One of the hanks of hair battered some tom-tom drums, and Joxie launched into a half-sung, half-shouted diatribe. It was all Greek to Doctor Sot, though he recognised that there were repeated references to ‘Jah Rastafari’, the number ‘23’, and, more aggressively, to ‘George Bush’.

Evening came among them. Doctor Sot sat back in the trailer and, woozily, he faded into and from the moment. A hand placed before him a saucer of curried vegetables.

‘A wonderful idea,’ he said.

He ate the food. It put sense in him. Mag had not appeared, and so he picked up his satchel. The dogs and children and adults were all around him in the dark as he clambered into the Megane.

‘It’s, ah … it’s been an education,’ said Joxie.

They all laughed, Doctor Sot as hard as the rest of them, and indeed until he wept. His eyes were full of tears as he started up Elizabeth. He immediately drove her into a ravine. He sobered at once, with the impact, and the travellers helped him from the car. It was the end of the eleven-year-old Megane – its remains fumed slowly in the dark, the smoke of its last breaths rose in a dense tangling. Gingerly, Sot fetched out the rest of the naggins and the chocolate cake that he had bought earlier for Sal but had forgotten to give her. He sat on the hard-packed soil of the camp, with a handkerchief held to his bleeding head.

‘Poor Liz,’ he sighed. ‘Poor Sal.’

There was some of the relief that accompanies an old parent’s death.

‘Hell we gonna do with you?’ said Joxie.

‘Perhaps you’d run me down the mountain, Joxie,’ Sot said. ‘Your van?’

‘No lights,’ Joxie said.

It would be next morning before he could be brought down safely. He would need to stay the night. The travellers found their way around the camp’s darkness by the glow of their mobile phones. Each was a pin-prick of light against the mountain black. He used his own phone to call Sal.

‘Darling?’ he said. ‘There’s some bad news. I’m afraid it’s Elizabeth …’