I lowered my head. The inside of my left leg was streaked in maroon against the red of my tracksuit bottoms. A puddle grew round my trainer. Nate, Joey and Dimi turned to exchange high fives.

I took my chance. Grabbing the noose with both hands, I swung out of the doorway and over the river.

I didn’t quite reach the other side – I hadn’t kick-started my swing well enough. I should have just dropped – I wasn’t far from the jetty – but, by the time I thought of it, it was too late. I was swinging back to where I started.

The crossbow clanked as the trigger was pulled. But I was moving and Joey was drunk. I heard the whistle of the bolt disappearing into the trees. Just before I reached the cabin, I let go. My momentum carried me a crucial metre or two closer to dry land.

The drop wasn’t huge and the icy water I landed in was barely half a metre deep. I fell on to my knees and plunged my arm in to right myself. Feet pounded on the wooden floor above my head.

I tore at the reeds, dragging myself diagonally up the slippery bank. Weaving from side to side, I sprinted for the trees. The shouts of the others were close behind me, but after five minutes they were getting fainter. After ten, they were silent. After twenty, I slowed.

Only once I was walking did I feel the coldness of my soaked clothes. And only then did I appreciate that I had no clue where the hell I was. As pale grey light seeped from one end of the sky to the other, so the cold crept from my feet up my legs, from my arms into my shoulders. Somehow I had to get back.

The street lights still glowed in the mist when I emerged from a bridleway to find myself beside an empty road. Every minute or two, a pair of headlamps would round the corner in the distance. Occasionally, a driver would slow and briefly consider my tattered and soaked attire, before turning their gaze back to the road and speeding past.

I was close to accepting defeat when the minicab driver pulled over. Through chattering teeth, I asked him for directions. All I could remember was that we were staying at a fort. He searched for it on his satnav.

‘You are three miles from your destination,’ said a woman’s voice through the speakers.

‘You’re wet and cold,’ the driver said in a thick Eastern European accent. ‘I take you. No fare.’

He cranked the heater up in his Prius as I wrapped my arms round me in the passenger seat. The clock on the dash read twenty to six.

I was soon back in our field of tents. They were each closed up and perfectly still among the dewy grass. And I was crying again.