There was a weird taste in my mouth. I spat. Blood. What had I bitten? Tongue? Cheek? Or had the blood somehow come up from inside me?

It didn’t matter now. The searing agony passed. I still had the loose end of the belt in my hand. The buckle end was clamped between my knees. I didn’t know what to do with the loose end. It wouldn’t reach back down to the buckle. I tucked it under and round one of the loops, and pulled it into a knot, as tightly as I could. More agony. But oddly, there was something “right” about this agony. The pain seemed to be saying, “Yes, this is the right thing to do,” like the last stab of pain when you pull out a splinter.

I knotted the buckle end in the same way. Now my legs were tied tightly together. It felt … better. Terrible, but better.

But the water was still rising. I felt the spray on my face. I glanced at Tina. She was shaking and looking as rotten as I felt.

“Come on, girl,” I said, “walkies.” I’d have laughed at my own stupid joke if I’d had the breath.

I began to crawl on my belly, like some stranded fish. Yeah, like an illustration I remembered seeing in a book about evolution. It was the first fish to pull itself out of the water, on its way to becoming an amphibian. That was evolution going forwards, but I felt I was going back, becoming that dull‑eyed, cold‑blooded animal. All that counted was crawling forward. The pain was nothing. I had to find Kenny.

Tina limped by my side, her head low, still shivering and trembling. Like she was an omen of something terrible.

Sixteen

Sixteen

I followed the way Kenny had gone, along the broken rock and gravel by the side of the raging stream. It was properly dark now, and the snow was falling again. My ears were full of the roar of the water. Sometimes Tina was at my ear, sometimes she lagged behind.

The river curved to the left, and I followed it round, digging my gloved fingers into the gravel to drag myself forwards. The river grew wider and the bank narrower with each metre. And then there was no bank at all, and I was dragging myself through shallow water.

I was moving slowly, so slowly, but I still jarred my leg a couple of times on juts of rock. It was like I’d been hit with an iron bar, and I bellowed out my pain and rage and frustration.