I nodded. Always useless at putting things into words. Especially when it matters. Those lessons in high school, in RE where nobody ever gave a shit and I didn’t dare to break the mould. That time when the teacher said some people claimed that the Nile turning to blood might not have been actual blood, but red clay disturbed on the riverbed. And I wondered whether that mattered or not, whether it could still be counted as a kind of miracle. Lorna rolled her eyes and whispered in my ear: Or maybe it’s all just a load of made up shit.

‘I’ve never seen this film before,’ Sana said.

Nan sat up then, like she’d been reactivated. She leaned across to Sana. ‘Turns out you’ve not been missing much.’

We both laughed. And all I wanted at that moment was to be somewhere else. With her.

Someone chucks a stone down onto the grass next to me and it misses my foot by a few centimetres. ‘It must be time for a break by now,’ they say, ‘my thighs are bloody killing me.’

Keith lays a big tarp down on the most even patch of grass he can find and we sit there like children opening our lunchboxes. I find a space nearest the gate and watch the wind ripple over the flooded dip by the stile.

‘You serious about this, then?’ Keith says, crouching next to me and taking a bite of his sandwich. A thick slab of cheese between two doorstops of bread.

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean are you here because you actually want to do this – or did you just fancy a nice day out in the country?’ He gestures to the others.

One man is wandering to different parts of the field, holding his phone up and checking for a signal. The other is tipping a compartment full of chocolate balls into a plastic triangle of plain yoghurt.

‘I’m doing arboriculture at the college –’

‘It’s a very different thing, trees.’

‘Yeah, but I just like working outside, really. I wanted to try something new. I used to walk here with –’

‘Don’t get many young people on these things,’ he says, obviously not interested in the details of my life, ‘always looking for new blood. You might just be stronger than you look.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, but he doesn’t want any sort of answer. The woman with the gilet gets up to chase an Asda bag that’s been lifted in the wind. Keith strides off towards the stile and hops over it, disappearing into the trees on the other side.

‘Probably gone for a piss,’ the man with the yoghurt says, ‘come to think of it I could do with one myself.’