‘Don’t build a fire. I’ve got it. Lesson learnt.’ I pulled out my sleeping bag and stuffed it into the tent, throwing the rucksack in after it. ‘Right. It’s getting cold. I think I’ll try to get some sleep.’

Sam checked his watch. ‘It’s quarter to ten on a Saturday night.’

‘I’ve had an eventful day to say the least!’

‘When’s the last time you had a hot drink?’

I thought about it. ‘I made one just before you arrived but it got knocked over. Before that, it was breakfast.’

‘So I owe you a hot drink?’

‘When you put it like that…’

‘Give me ten minutes. There’s a rangers’ hut not too far away.’

‘Sam, I’m supposed to be doing this challenge by myself!’ I called after the shadow where his rapidly disappearing figure had been two seconds earlier. I mulled over the boundaries of the No-Man Mandate while I waited for him to come back, pulling on a hoodie and changing into my thick socks. Having a professional forest ranger escort me to a safe area was totally within the rules. I decided that having him bring me a hot drink to replace the one he’d caused me to spill was also fine. Inviting him to stay while we both enjoyed a drink, under the stars, wrapped in my blanket… that was definitely nudging the boundary.

Sitting on one edge of the blanket, sipping a creamy hot chocolate, Sam perched on the other and Nesbit snuggled in between us, marshmallows roasting over a portable firepit, the moon and firelight waltzing together in his eyes as he attentively listened to the highs and lows of my day, I had to admit that this completely broke the No-Man Mandate.

It couldn’t have looked more like the picture in my head when I’d created the Dream List if I’d tried, even down to me borrowing a woolly hat from a forest ranger who was starting to bear a startling resemblance to my Dream Man.

18

I woke up with a fuzzy head, aching bones and no idea what time of day it was due to the tent’s blackout lining. Nesbit, however, repeated the bark that had startled me out of sleep, then followed it up with a barrage of nose nudges until I clambered out of the sleeping bag to let him out, and a beam of daylight in. Following him into the open, I blinked my bleary eyes and tried to shake the dregs of sleep from my brain before pausing to assess the location.

Oh, now this was lovely.

Pretty in the moonlight, it was perfect in the early morning mist.

Lush grass, speckled with daisies and other blue and purple flowers, with a wide stream that ran along one border of the clearing. A weeping willow hung low over the water, laden with catkins, and a pair of ducks were gliding upstream.