‘Emily?’ Barbara tries to pull me forward. I move my phone torch across the ground like a searchlight, in an arc. The singing seems to fade away as we walk.

‘. . . I can’t.’

Definitely a little girl’s voice now.

‘You can, Emily. Nice and loud, come on—’

‘Kerry?’ My own voice is swallowed up by the black emptiness and the sound of rain. It can’t be her. I’m hearing things.

Yet she is on site somewhere. ‘Kerry, is that you?’

‘Joel?’

‘Yes. It’s me. Tell me where you are.’

‘Down here. But it’s slippery and steep, I fell. Don’t come any closer. Can you get help? My radio is dead.’

‘I’ve got my phone, I’m already dialling,’ I say, swiping to call Liv, ‘but are you all right?’

‘I’ll survive. But tell them the little girl here is P2, tell them that.’

Liv answers. ‘This better be good, Joel! I’m with the crew looking for some kid—’

‘We’ve found her. Next to the field where the horses are. There’s a doctor with them and she says the child is a P2. They’re going to need a vehicle to get them out, it’s boggy and treacherous . . .’

I hear Liv calling out to tell someone, before she tells me, ‘Joel, I’m handing you over now to one of the firefighters, stay on the line, we won’t be long.’

‘All right, mate, where do we find you?’

As I try to describe our location, Barbara is telling her granddaughter how Santa will get through the chimney later.

Every cell in my body is telling me to climb down and get Kerry to safety – but I know I shouldn’t make the situation worse, force the rescuers to have to haul three people out instead of two. So instead I kneel down, feeling the thick cold mud sinking instantly through my stupid £300 jeans, and – passing my phone to Barbara – I lower my chest onto the ground.

Kerry has started singing again but I can’t hear the little girl joining in anymore. I shimmy along the wet earth, till suddenly there is no earth. My head and neck are facing down into the ditch. My chest aches. My heart thunders.

A halo of a torch illuminates the girl’s face and the torso of the person holding her.

‘Kerry?’

‘Joel? Are you real?’

I laugh, despite the situation. ‘Yup. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. But we need help down here.’

‘They’re on their way.’

‘Hear that, Emily?’ Kerry says. ‘I told you the singing would work. Up there is Joel, a very, very old friend of mine.’

I try to shift my arm from my side through the mud to the edge of the ditch, so I can wave. It’s hard work at this angle. ‘Hello, Emily. I liked your singing.’

She barely responds and her breathing sounds shallow and wrong.