All obstacles were simply there to be overcome.

Laura clumsily shrugged out of her backpack, freeing up her sore arms. She dug around inside for her small first-aid kit, thankful that she had thought to bring it. There were other things inside the pack: a small trowel, two large bottles of water, a torch, a folded tarpaulin, energy bars, a plastic bag inside of which a bundle of letters lay, bunched tightly together with elastic bands. There was something else at the bottom, too, rolled inside an old towel, something heavy and compact, but she couldn’t think about that, now. She scrabbled through the bag’s contents and seized the hard green case with a white cross stamped on it, and then, on thinking about it, a bottle of water, and the flashlight. Basic tenets of first-aid, she thought, blearily. Act fast, keep it clean, and apply pressure. She set the items down carefully on the ground, and then reached for her pocket knife, stashed in her left trouser pocket. She unfolded the blade, switched on the torch, and gripped it between her teeth so that the light shone onto her ankle. It was not yet fully dark, but gloomy enough that she needed the extra beam of light to better see the extent of her injury. The torch revealed a sharp, dry branch from a pine tree, the type that is stripped of bark and comes to a naturally lethal point, like a stake. It stuck out of her skin at an absurd angle, almost jaunty, taunting. Her blood shone bright in the torchlight.

Laura whined and closed her eyes, fighting back nausea. As she did so, a little string of numbers swam beneath her eyelids, teasing her. You’re so close, they said, excitedly. Don’t give up now!

She carefully uncapped the lid from the bottle of water and set it to one side. Then she found antiseptic wipes and a wound dressing in the first-aid kit, and set those aside too.

Think of Bobby, she told herself, shrinking from the task at hand.

Bobby.

She leaned forward, gently seized the wood in her right hand, and carefully brought her pocket knife blade to rest against it, intending to lever it away from her ankle if she could not find the strength to yank it out.

Laura counted to ten, chomped down on the torch so hard she thought her teeth would break, squeezed her eyes shut, and pulled.

Her screams echoed around the forest, and birds, huddled together in the trees all around, took flight.

4.

When thirteen-year-old Laura returned to the bus stop, Bobby was talking to a man she didn’t know through the open window of a dark blue van that was also unfamiliar. Later, she would recognize the model as a Ford Transit, but at the time, it was just a dark blue van parked up on the curb, engine still idling. The man in the driver’s seat was talking, and Bobby was listening, and laughing, a little uncomfortable, as young people are when they are humouring adults. Bobby had been brought up well. He was a nice, polite boy. They were from a nice, polite neighbourhood.