‘How can you not remember?’ She hasn’t moved from her spot on the path, but now he is far enough ahead that she has to raise her voice, her eyes darting to the empty trees. He shrugs in reply. She wants to go home now. But the idea of walking back alone feels wrong. She runs to catch him up.

‘You probably saw Stuart or Maisie,’ he says. Stuart and Maisie MacAllister live on the neighbouring farm, whose land stops at the edge of the forest. They occasionally come up to play in the trees and at school they claim that the land is theirs. Billy usually tells Lauren to keep a lookout for them. In the summer, someone kicked Lauren’s stick hut to pieces and stole the tarpaulin roof, as well as a huge cake tin that contained a bottle of lemon Fanta and five back issues of The Beano.

‘If I saw them, so did you.’

‘I’m not remembering this at all,’ he replies, as if he’s talking to a much younger kid.

Banks of beech ferns bow either side. Their leaves are changing from bright green to a rusty brown, with many at the in-between stages of deep orange and golden yellow, spreading sunset colours across the forest. Lauren likes to turn the fern fronds over and pick off the bright spores underneath.

On the path, the children reach the old water tank, a shed of browning corrugated iron, and pick through the marshy reeds to peek inside for frogs.

‘Hel-looo, froggies, you seen anyone?’ Billy’s voice reverberates across the dark metal walls of the tank, but only their reflections stare back at them from the deep black water. Billy runs away but Lauren stays and watches. There are times like this when a feeling comes over her and the world stands still for a few moments. There is a rippling in one corner of the water, which spreads out in circles, suggesting something is moving beneath the surface.

Soon the children reach the towering pines and the mossy stone foundations of an old bothy, close to the path, where they have started to build their hut. It is made of carefully placed sticks fitted around a stray cluster of birch trees that grow close together, mottled with reindeer lichen. They start to walk around, searching for fallen branches. The springy moss underfoot and the layers of pine needles soak up any sound.

As they stand making sure the walls of the hut are still sturdy, Lauren begins to lop off stray twigs from the outer walls with her pocketknife. She keeps turning round as she works, with the crawling feeling someone might be watching her. Someone could live out in these woods, easily.

Billy sits his rucksack down at the base of a tree trunk. He loosens the drawstring and pulls out a packet of Golden Grahams.

‘Hungry?’ He offers her the box.