But Paula knows better. She knows that imperceptibly she has become old too. And she knows how difficult it is to tell the truth, because the truth is so slippery, and so painful. Most days it’s easier to pretend that following the rules is the best thing for you, and if you do, it will all work out in the end.

She has a speech she gives, on resilience. She says how really, there’s no wisdom that she can impart beyond simply saying don’t stop. All you have to do is keep going, keep taking the knocks. No shortcuts. She believes what she says, and she knows it is what they need to hear. But she also feels the delicate equivocation of hard-won experience becoming brittle and glib as she puts it into words.

Fuck you, Paula, she thinks.

She runs her hand over her face, pulling the sweat from her eyes.

The light is failing. The sky darkens above her, but light still echoes up around the rim of the horizon. Her feet pound along the track. She can feel the ache and spring in her knees, the balance of muscle and bone, the tight power of her deep breaths.

Ahead of her is a rocky outcrop, beyond which a rough track curls back towards town. She’ll go that far and then turn back.

A bird calls, sharp and thin across the twilight.

Her mood lifts.

Every now and then it works. You have that conversation, and something in the way you say it sticks. Nothing different about what you say. No special insight. But a glance, an inflection, a moment, and they hear you. You read the currents, the flow of things, and at the right moment you say the right thing, and everything changes.

She will talk to Rose on Monday. And when they talk, it will lift, and everything will change.

She reaches the rock. She stops, doubles over to touch her toes. Hangs like that for a moment. She straightens, pulls one foot back behind her, then another. Feels the flex of muscle inside her. Touches her thigh to feel the hard strength of it. Shakes herself. Pulls out the head torch – it’s not dark yet, but may be soon.

She puts it on now, because she may as well.

Slowly, she picks her pace back to a run. She looks down at her feet, at the rough path, and then glances back at the rock, and the beam of the torch in the dimming twilight catches something, a flicker of reflective material, up to the left of the path.

She frowns, looks again, sees a trainer abandoned in the heather. Runs two steps closer. Sees the trainer is on a foot.

The moor is a thunder of blood in her. She feels the roll of her heart. She stands.

She can see the shape of where he lies.