She shrieked and fell over. The fish jerked away, back towards the river, but Luiza pounced and scooped it up, flinging it into the scrub.

‘What do you want me to do with it?’

‘Break its neck, or something,’ he called.

‘You hit me!’ said the brown girl. ‘With a fucking fish!’

‘I did say you should move.’

Luiza was still chasing through the grasses, so Elena went to help: not the prone girl, still wiping slime and scales from her face, but her cousin wrestling the fish.

In the stream, between his bare feet, the shoal had returned after the disturbance, seemingly unconcerned that one of their number was now gasping, open-gilled, on dry land. He was ready to go again.

The girl was lifted to her feet at last by Mama, furious with him, with everyone, while he was on the verge of smiling for the first time since they’d stepped through the Down Street door. He was doing something useful. He was doing something right. He looked at her, her balled fists and narrowed eyes, and perhaps he frowned at her, because she turned on her heel and stamped away.

He returned his attention to the fish, and he lowered his hands gently into the water, ready to catch another. If they could make a fire, then they could eat. Even if they couldn’t, they could still eat, but fire was the next step, and then shelter.

Five minutes ago they had no food. Maybe they’d got lucky, but it was almost as if wherever-they-were was trying to feed them. Perhaps it would give them the other things they needed too. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all, making the most of their time before they got to go home.

Another fish lazed its way across his open fingers, and he tensed, the corners of his mouth turning ever so slightly upwards.

5

5

The East European man had a lighter, a big heavy slab of steel that looked like it had been through a war. It produced a tail of smoky orange flame whenever the flint was struck. He used it to catch alight a pile of dry leaves and twigs, and he’d clearly made fires before: he knew exactly what he was doing, and wasted no effort in telling the others what to do. Despite the exertions and the novelty of the day draining everyone, Stanislav was still working, still breaking fallen branches against his knee, still hauling wood back to the tree line where they’d set up a temporary camp.

Mary didn’t help. She didn’t know how to help. She was a city girl, who knew all sorts of tricks and scams, but none of them seemed useful here, where there were only trees and grass and water and rock and soil and sky.