Smiles, as he finds it.

‘My love,’ he whispers, and puts one hand to his heart.

He pulls the blade from his pocket.

Reaches into her mouth and seizes her wet, dead tongue.

Begins to carve.

ONE

Not much of a moon tonight.

Typical, thinks Mr Dash. They can’t even do that right.

He squints through the binoculars. Rubs at the lenses. Thumbs at the focus wheel as if tuning a radio.

‘Not a bloody dicky bird,’ he mutters, pressing his skin again the eyepieces. ‘Not a sausage.’

He isn’t surprised. Whole bloody world’s going to the dogs. It’s the same with the weather. Used to be proper weather. Winters used to look like Christmas cards. And puddings. Used to get proper puddings, once upon a time. Children had proper names. Shoes lasted. Hotels gave you a proper key …

Mr Dash is not a sunny individual. He is well-suited to the bleak panorama into which he gazes. Remote, joyless, unremarkable: he and the landscape could be twins.

It’s cold, now. Cold and bitter and still. If he were to strain his ears the same way he forces his eyes, he would be able to hear the Humber estuary, sucking and pulling and chewing at the land. Instead he can hear little save the shushing of the trees, and the low, mournful wail of next door’s cats.

‘Last chance,’ he mutters, raising the eyeglasses and training the blurry circles on a distant spot of darkness. There’s a waning crescent, out there, apparently: somewhere over the shimmering blackness of the water. According to the website, some eleven per cent of the lunar surface should be visible. Gazes into nothingness. It does nothingness well, this part of Holderness, out on the very eastern edge of Yorkshire.

He pushes out a wispy grey cloud of air. There is a brief whiff of denture-paste and Ovaltine, before it is gathered up by the chill wind and carried inland. He considers emitting a true hurrumph of dissatisfaction. Decides to keep it in reserve: a weapon in his arsenal in case the electricity goes off or the French invade.

‘Ah, there’s the blighter …’

He finally sights the moon, just out there, just above the treeline, peeking out of the lower reaches of a great wall of cloud: a silvery arc – a curved blade puncturing a gut. Thinks of a shark’s eye, almost closed. Thinks of sickles and slash hooks.

He holds the glasses steady, enjoying their heft. Wartime glasses, still complete with the original leather case. He likes how he feels when he’s holding them. Can make-believe he is on the deck of a battleship, scanning the horizon for any sign of the Bismarck. Can feel quite the hero, out here, on the front lawn: a vision in slippers and raincoat.

He gives a nod, satisfied. He’d feared the worst. Very little surprises him anymore. A missing moon? Very much par for the course, these days. Too many softies, that’s the problem. Too many bleeding-heart liberals and not enough speed cameras. Mr Dash is in no doubt that the world is ‘going to the dogs’. That civilization is ‘off to Hell in a handcart’. He feels that he is living through the end of days. Young people have no respect, no drive, no bloody backbone. He’s all for the short, sharp shock, is Mr Dash. Would like to see the return of National Service, the birch, and public executions for benefits claimants and vegans.