We had toast again for dinner.

I took another bite of the cheese and jam sandwich Kenny had made. Now I was expecting it, the taste wasn’t so bad. I made myself imagine it was pickle, not jam. Anyway, I was starving hungry and freezing cold, and the sandwich helped.

I stood by the fence and looked down at the gorge. The cliffs on each side, the rocks sticking up from the stream and the rapids made it look like something you’d see on a documentary about the wilds of America or Russia or somewhere. Just a bit smaller. You could almost imagine bears hunting for salmon in the river and wolves prowling among the trees.

“I like it here,” Kenny said.

“Yeah, it’s not bad, is it? And it won’t be long now till we hit that path. Then we’ll find the road and the village, and it’ll all be sound. But let’s see if there’s a signal on this stupid phone, and I’ll tell Dad that we’ll be home a bit late.”

I reached for the phone in my jacket pocket. My hands were so cold they were as clumsy as flippers. Still no signal, and the battery was down to almost nothing. I held it high, which was stupid – as if an extra six inches would make a difference when the signal has to come all the way down from a satellite that’s orbiting the Earth thousands of kilometres away. Maybe a bit less stupidly I leaned out a little bit, over the fence, then over the cliff and over the water, thinking that maybe that would help.

And then, for no good reason, the phone fell out of my hand. One second I was holding it, the next second I wasn’t. I saw it slip from my fingers and begin to tumble, turning slowly in the air. I didn’t have time to think much then, not proper stretched‑out thoughts. But maybe a few images flashed into my mind. Jenny, nice Jenny. She’d saved my dad, and so saved us. She’d given me the phone, paid for out of her hard‑earned money from working night shifts as a nurse.

And so I lunged out after the falling phone. I felt the top of the fence press against my thighs, holding me steady. I stretched a bit further and my fingers just reached the phone. But I couldn’t catch it cleanly. The phone flipped up, and I knew I had it. Like when you go to catch a cricket ball and it bounces out of your hands but pops up and you know you can get it with the second grab.