The rain didn’t help. It had started drizzling as we passed Birmingham. By the time we hit Stoke-on-Trent, that had upgraded to pissing down. And, once we left the M40 and were into the bit of the country where there were hedges instead of pavements and everywhere was called something like Muclestone or Wetwood, it was raining so hard that the windscreen wipers were just making ripples on a pond.

Eventually, Rhys pulled over on a stretch of grass that I wasn’t totally sure he should have been pulling over on, but was too much of a city boy to challenge, and announced, “Here we are,” with thoroughly unearned cheerfulness.

“Where is here, exactly?” I asked.

“Charlie’s house.”

I peered out of the window, but between the rain and the fact that the sun had set an hour ago, I couldn’t make out anything except wet and bush. “Are you absolutely certain?”

Rhys tapped his phone, which was showing a little blue circle inside a big blue circle. “Google Maps never lies.”

“No,” I admitted, “but it’s sometimes very economical with the truth.”

Oliver patted me gently on the leg. “Perhaps one of us should get out and take a look?”

One of us, we all knew, meant Oliver. I certainly wasn’t about to go, and Rhys didn’t seem to be up for it either. Besides, getting your bearings after a long minibus journey seemed far more like Oliver’s skill set than mine in that it was a useful life skill, rather than the brand of occasionally helpful bullshit that I preferred to trade in.

Clambering past me and out through the front of the bus, Oliver vanished into the night, only to return a few moments later with his hair plastered to his head, his jacket wet through, and his trousers damp to the shins. “There is a house there,” he confirmed. “But it’s on the other side of a rather large field.”

“Ah, that’ll be it.” Rhys’s aura of cheeriness had never really gone away, but it had ebbed slightly when it had looked like we might be stuck in the dark and houseless. Now it was flowing back with a vengeance. “The Google Maps do that sometimes in the countryside. They put you in the right general place, but they can’t work out where the roads go. I suppose it’s because they’re hard to see from space.”

Ana with one n reached out an affectionate hand. “I’m not sure that’s quite how satnav works, sweetheart.”

“Either way, it seems to be our best option,” said Oliver. “So I suppose we should all grab our things and get going.”

At the back of the bus, Barbara Clench glowered. “This was not a well-planned excursion.”

Rhys was still grinning. “No, but it’s been an adventure, hasn’t it?”