‘So you believe,’ said Stanislav. ‘What if they do?’

‘I don’t know. We can’t go back, because we’ve nowhere back to go to. We can go in a different direction, but then we’re more lost than we are already, which would be saying something. At least we have a destination at the moment.’

‘Which the wolfman gave us.’

Mary bent down and pulled at the bark tiles: the original floor, like the walls, was made of split logs, but these were flat side up. As she exposed more, she started to find things that had been protected from the elements. A wooden platter, with rounded chisel marks across it. What looked like a broken stool, a sawn piece of trunk and three stout legs splayed around it.

She passed them back for the others to examine.

‘If the people who lived here had moved of their own accord,’ said Stanislav, ‘they would have taken their plates, if not their chairs.’

Dalip turned the platter in his hands. ‘We don’t know that. For all we know, the farmer was old, out working alone in his fields, had an accident or just died, and everything just fell apart with no one to keep it up.’

Mary stood up and wiped her hands. ‘If this was a farm—’

‘Twenty years ago.’

‘Then is there still going to be food here? I don’t know how these things work. Are we going to find chickens and things like that running around? Or potatoes. They grow in the ground, right?’

‘We don’t even know if they have potatoes here,’ said Dalip, but Stanislav nodded in agreement.

‘It might be food we do not have to work for, which is always worth collecting.’ He checked the position of the sun and pronounced it midday. ‘We need to rest for a while anyway. Here is as good a place as any.’

‘You realise I don’t know what I’m looking for. Veg comes out of packets.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘do you know what a chicken looks like?’

She thought about it. Probably. It wasn’t going to arrive in breadcrumbs, but yes, she’d seen one before. ‘Sure.’

‘Then we are all agreed. If there is any sign of Grace, or if she has been here, tell me immediately.’ Stanislav stepped back out of the doorway and walked off to catch the others as they arrived.

‘Your mate’s a bit weird,’ said Mary.

‘Weird? In what way?’ asked Dalip, and added, ‘And he’s not my mate.’

‘He’s closer to being your mate than anyone else here. And weird in a serial killer sort of way. Paranoid.’ She went to the other corner of the room, picking her way between the leafy ferns. ‘No one’s tried to kill us yet, unless you count your sea serpent. So why’s he got the fear?’

‘Fear? I wouldn’t say that.’