‘Good question.’ John got to his feet. Another outburst of canine commentary floated across the desert, and John echoed it with an outburst of profanity. ‘My brain seems to have crashed. We’d better get into hiding. It may not be necessary, but – ’

My brain wasn’t working any better than his. It had gone back to basics, driven by the same primitive instincts that move all hunted creatures. ‘Right. Hide. Where?’

‘I know a place. I hoped we wouldn’t have to resort to it since I know how you feel about – ’

‘Oh, no. Not a tomb. I can’t, John, I really can’t.’

‘Not a tomb. We couldn’t get into them anyhow; they’ve all got locked gates. Come on.’

The surface under our feet cracked and crunched with every step. The shadows through which we moved weren’t dark enough; the rocks between us and the plain weren’t thick enough or hard enough. If John hadn’t kept shoving at me, I might have sat down on the ground and waited in fatalistic acceptance like some poor cornered rabbit. In a way it was worse for me than it would have been for the rabbit. I knew exactly what would happen if we were caught I had seen what Mary could do when she was just amusing herself. She’d be really annoyed by now.

The face of the cliff was weathered and uneven; I saw a dozen crevices big enough to offer concealment, but every time I headed mindlessly towards one, John pulled me on. I could have handled a nice shallow crevice, no problem. I had a feeling he had something less comfortable in mind. He seemed to know where he was going. How? The question, like a lot of others, ran through my head and out the other side, without hanging around long enough to inspire an answer.

After passing around a low ridge he headed for one of the openings in the cliff. The moon was down but those impossibly bright stars cast enough light for me to see how dark the opening was. Really dark. Very, very dark. He had to drag me through it. The space beyond was devoid of light but not of sound. Things squeaked and flapped. The blackness moved.

I flung myself at him, clutching at his shirt. Not such a smart move, that one, but there was a wall behind him; otherwise we’d have both fallen to the ground. His breath went out in a sound that would have been audible a long way off if compressed lips hadn’t contained it. Then his arms closed around me and his mouth brushed my ear.

‘Hang on, darling, it’s just a cave and a few miserable bats. Lazy little buggers, they ought to have been out before this.’

‘Oh, God,’ I whipered. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I hurt you.’