She drags her bike over the snowy field, then hauls it over the paddock fence to the start of the Loop. The track is almost too dark to see, but she has walked it so many times, and ridden her bike here too, it should seem easy. Before she can scare herself, she tears up the track into the acres of woodland ahead, away from the lights of the search party. The bike throws a shaky beam in front of her and then the old water tanks. She doesn’t dare to look inside, this time. The trees start to close in around her. She wonders if Ann-Marie or her father have headed along the Loop and fallen somehow on the way. It doesn’t lead anywhere, so it doesn’t make sense. She is sure for a moment that she hears Diane’s voice in the fields shouting too, far away, but it’s hard to hear over the tyres whipping the stony track and the noise of her own breath. Just a little further along the path, she gets to their usual spot by the hut. In the dark, it’s just a faint shape among the trees. The sight is familiar yet unnerving. She closes her eyes and hears the flapping of wings.

She carries on further along the Loop, as the trees thicken and the forest deepens. She thinks if she rides along here, calling, maybe she’ll get an answer. The path seems to go on for hours. She can’t ride very fast in the dark, but she rides fast enough not to feel scared at the prospect of cycling into a black hole.

After what could have been two hours or five, her adrenaline is running out. The path she is on becomes narrower until grass is brushing her legs. She looks around, hard. It dawns on her that she is not on the Loop any more, but a narrowed animal track. Suddenly she is moving fast, downhill, unable to stop.

A rock looms in the darkness and she turns sharply and then pounds to the ground with a clatter of metal. The bike light goes out. The breath has been knocked from her lungs. She lies there as the damp from the slushy grass seeps through her trousers and chills her tired body. At that moment she is too tired to cry and too angry with herself. Part of her wants to sleep. She has never been so aware of her childishness.

In a patch where the moon is big, she spots an old saucepan in the undergrowth and a rusty beer can. These objects are strange. The only signs of life she has seen before are from a very long time ago: the stone foundations of a croft, an old bridge. She wonders how long she will have to walk to try and find a way out.