Down below, he had stood at the bedroom window looking outside while the sounds of footsteps and trunks being dragged across the floor above came to him. It had been pitch black outside, without the slightest illumination spilling outside from this room, this room with uncurtained windows.

Quite suddenly he felt vulnerable in the most dreadful way as if dissolution was imminent. Layers of ice formed within him; his teeth began to chatter. The torch beam shook. His mind became totally possessed with the transient nature of life and the certainty of the grave’s final cold embrace. He was a man utterly lost, drained of every scrap of hope, afraid for his very soul’s existence.

A vision of Carol lying downstairs flashed before his mind. The fear of the torch failing and leaving him in total darkness up here suddenly overwhelmed him. A tiny, isolated bit of him listened amazedly to someone whimper – himself – before he turned and fled the icy room, padded as fast as he could to the head of the narrow flight of stairs and descended, slippers slap-slapping on the bare treads, to hasten in mindless terror back to his bedroom.

Carol still slept. Panting like a dog, his heart thumping within his chest, he shut the door, crossed to the oil-lamp and turned it up to brighten the room. He threw off dressing-gown and slippers, slid into bed and lay down, taking care his trembling body did not touch Carol’s. His feet, two blocks of ice, sought the comfort of the hot-water bottle, still warm. Great fits of shivering shook his frame. In the semi-darkness his eyes searched the ceiling. There was absolute quiet up there now.

What in God’s name have we got into? he thought.

With no hope of achieving sleep, he tried to relax to control the endlessly cycling constructs of his overwrought imagination, to wait out the last long hours of the night. Gradually warmth came to him again and he fell into an exhausted, disturbed sleep just before the first grey light of dawn began to filter through the dirty panes of the window he had left uncurtained.

4

4 Journey in an Empty Landscape

The sound of knocking wakened him. Disorientated with lack of sleep, he lay trying to place the source of the noise. He felt his mind tinged with that vague sense of anxiety so often associated with the brain’s return to consciousness after an unpleasant dream.

The knocking was repeated. Carol stirred beside him and he finally realized it came from the door.

‘Mr and Mrs Wilson? Good morning! Breakfast downstairs in twenty minutes. Okay?’

Was it Meredith? The thick door so muffled the voice that he couldn’t be sure.

‘All right,’ he called back. ‘Thank you. We’ll be down.’