She knew how to set a fire – pour the petrol, throw a match on it – but not how to build one out of raw materials, how to nurture it from tiny flame to crackling bonfire, how to feed it and with what. Neither did she know what to do with the fish: it had always come in either batter or breadcrumbs, never glistening and whole, and certainly never at her face.

And neither did the turbaned kid, which was almost gratifying, but Mama did, using a small knife that the kid had. It was blunt, and she’d said so, and he said it was never meant to be used, but she and the Chinese woman – Grace – went down by the river to ‘clean’ the fish, and by that she had to assume they meant cut them open and scrape their guts out.

That made her queasy, but she was also hungry.

Nothing was making sense to Mary, and the other six survivors seemed to be coping far better than her with what was going on. Even whatever-his-name-was, the kid with the turban, seemed to have shut up about being dead.

So she sat with her back to a tree, like she was in one of the local parks, and watched those around her. That was only good for a while, and she became bored. Little was happening: everyone seemed content just to stare into the fire and feel the warmth of it against their skin. It reminded her too much of the tunnels, and she got up to walk away.

‘Hey. Where are you going?’

Stanislav had the top half of his boilersuit tied around his waist, baring a grey-looking vest spilling muscle and tufts of grey chest hair. To her, it looked grotesque. Old men were supposed to keep everything covered up.

‘You don’t get to tell me what to do,’ she said.

The turbaned kid looked up. ‘I’ll go with her.’ He was still barefoot, but he reached for his socks.

‘Oh, fuck off.’

Stanislav, his stubbly head glistening from work, put the end of the branch he carried on the floor, then pressed his foot against it a third of the way up. It bent, and snapped with a sharp crack. ‘We do not know what is out there. We have seen one monster already, there may be more.’

‘That was in the sea. And I was just going for a walk.’

‘No one will go and look for you when you do not return.’

‘I wouldn’t want them to.’

Stanislav shrugged, reduced the branch further, and threw all three pieces on to the growing pile where they landed in a hollow clatter.

‘As you say, I do not tell you what to do. In return, you cannot expect us to do what you want.’

‘Whatever. Later.’ She walked between the trees, waving her hand over her shoulder.