I unbuckled my belt and slid it out from the loops. Even that small movement hurt like hell. I was afraid to touch the messed‑up leg, but I knew I had to do something so I could move. I felt down along my left leg carefully to find out where the break was. Everything above my knee was OK. I prodded at my knee. Sore, but that wasn’t the problem. I stretched and felt along the outside of my leg. Ten centimetres below my knee I came to it. A bulge, like an egg. Just touching it lightly wasn’t too bad. My leg didn’t seem to mind that. And, yeah, I know it’s stupid, but I was coming to think of my leg as something different from me – a separate being. Separate, but the same. The black sheep of the family. Something to be embarrassed about. The leg definitely had a brain. Or at least a mind. It thought things and felt things. It had views and opinions. And the leg’s main opinion was that it didn’t want me to move it.

I knew the next bit was going to hurt. Hurt a lot. But now I wasn’t just doing it for me. Kenny needed me. He was up ahead somewhere, stuck and in trouble.

I began to wrap the belt around my legs. The belt was an old one of my dad’s and way too long. I remembered him poking extra holes in it with one of the tools from his toolbox. Looked like a screwdriver but with a sharp point on the end, not a flat bit. What did he call it? An owl? No, an awl. My dad was good with tools. Told me my granddad was even better. He was an engineer in the mine. He kept the machinery turning. And my granddad had passed his knowledge down to my dad. But bits of it had been lost. Forgotten. And my dad had tried to show me things. How to measure and mark the wood before you start to drill. How screws were better than nails. How to keep your chisel sharp. But I never really listened. What would I have to pass on to my kids, if I ever had any? Changing a sodding lightbulb freaked me out.

But these thoughts were all instead of the thing I was dreading. The thing I was putting off.

Kenny. Kenny. Kenny.

I reached the place where the egg grew from my leg. I lightly wrapped the belt around that, and then down as far as my ankle. My legs were now loosely tied together. But that was no good. I held my breath and tightened the belt. My scream filled the gorge, drowned the river, reached the sky, stretched out into space.

But even as I screamed, I carried on tightening the belt to bind my two legs together.