Lauren grabs a handful and tries to cram them in her mouth, smiling slightly as she does so.

‘You’re like a hamster,’ Billy says.

‘Shut it,’ she says through crunching teeth. She runs her hand over a part of the hut that is a little spindly and will let in rain and snow. ‘We need more sticks.’ She takes another handful of cereal and tips back her head.

‘We need to turn this area into a fully operational military zone,’ says Billy. ‘I’m planning on building in some spy holes here. And an embrasure over there.’

Lauren sighs. She doesn’t know what an embrasure is, but it sounds boring. ‘I think this is more of a house,’ she says. ‘Like a secret cabin.’ It’s hard to concentrate on the game, because she can’t shake the discomfort of last night. It has seeped into the daylight. She wonders if she really did just see the same woman as last night. She tries to focus on what Billy is saying.

‘We’ve got to protect ourselves, though,’ he explains, rootling further into his rucksack. He is becoming less fun to play with.

The urge to tell him keeps bubbling up. She wants to feel safer, but not in the way he means. She looks at the soft bloom of fungus growing on the side of the trunk. When she starts to talk, it comes out in a ribbon of story, unspooling. ‘When Dad and me were driving home, we saw this woman standing in the passing place and so Dad picked her up and we took her home.’

‘Who was she?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t speak.’

Billy is readjusting some of the branches on the hut roof. ‘What?’

‘We took her home. I didn’t see her in the morning.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did your dad fancy her?’

Lauren sighs. ‘Get tae France.’ She walks away down a small hill of bracken and sits on the wet verge. She puts her arms on her knees and plucks a reed. Her fingernail splits a line down the middle and she scoops out the spongy white insides like the stuffing of a tiny cushion.

‘Lauren! I was only kidding.’ His voice is muffled by the trees.

Jameson snuffles up to her, pushing his nose between her arms and head. She gives him another dog biscuit and walks further down to find more branches, her feet squelching as she tries to get a hold in the mud.

She can hear Billy wandering off somewhere in the tall ferns, so she returns to fix the hut. She takes some scissors and string that Billy has brought and starts tying crooked sticks together. At that moment Billy bolts out of the trees, snatches a branch like a rifle and makes the sound of gunfire. ‘Gonna get my own one day. I asked Dad for one but he wouldna let me.’