Chantelle remembered how she’d barked at a runner on the shoot to get her a bowl of cold seawater to soothe her feet, tearing into the poor kid when the best he could find was a old bucket, sending him out to find something better. He’d come back with a grimy washing-up basin taken from the only nearby café and she’d ordered him fired.

His look of hurt and disbelief as the director was forced to send him away … It had haunted Chantelle so many times since.

And she could almost feel that runner’s eyes boring into her now as she trudged across the blazing sands of this godforsaken place, her exposed skin dry and burnt tight, feet stinging, shoes red-black with congealed blood. Oh, God, for a single drop of cold water now. For any relief or comfort. Anything.

The sinister building they’d been walking towards for so long was looming ahead of them. Kim’s hand brushed against hers as they staggered along together. She took it without thinking, without looking up; she couldn’t bear looking at the other weird creatures scuffling along in their ragged, limping scrum. She pretended for a couple of moments that he was that boy she’d dismissed so curtly: I’m sorry, she wanted to say. See, I’ve never known when I’m well off, and now …

A handful of Ratts were clustered around the building, pushing the new arrivals towards little booths cut into the pumice walls.

‘Why didn’t they bring us straight here?’ Chantelle said quietly. ‘Why make us walk all the way over when it’s so hard?’

‘I was wondering that too,’ Kim said. ‘I guess to ram it home that we can’t run away and there’s nowhere to go, even if we could. They probably want to crush all the hope from us. Makes us, you know, easier to handle.’

‘Right,’ Chantelle sighed. ‘Because we know we’re as good as dead.’

‘They can’t have gone to all this trouble just to kill us,’ Kim reasoned.

Now she glowered at him. ‘You think they’re throwing us a cocktail party?’

A Ratt bore down on them and shoved them towards one of the little nooks in the wall. Inside, one of the twisted rodent-like creatures sat, shielded by shadow from the relentless suns, with a pile of what looked to be plexiglass sheets. With filthy, long-nailed hands he shoved one at Chantelle.

‘Pass,’ he hissed with stinking breath. ‘Look and blink.’

She looked at him, blank and fearful. ‘Excuse me?’

He rolled his yellow eyes. ‘This is your pass to the shelter. Hold it up to your eyes and blink once to confirm you came willingly and accept all terms and conditions of entry.’

Automatically, Chantelle lifted it towards her face.

Kim batted down her hand. ‘No, wait. We didn’t come willingly.’