A silence covers us and a minute of calm passes, but beneath it, under the surface, the question floats. Where is Gull?

“Gull is safe,” I blurt out again, and then I realize that is all I can say.

“Why is she not with you?” Tanya’s chin quivers. “Doesn’t she want to see us?” She grips my hand desperately and I wish I had more to tell her, better answers at least.

“Longsight is alive,” I say and I see their eyes widen in shock. “And I was captured the minute I got back. Gull was taken in.” I will myself to be brave – to be truthful. It’s the least the Whitworths deserve. “Tanya, I am so sorry – I don’t know where Gull is, but I have been told she is safe.” Safe as long as I’m not found out. As long as no one knows I came to Featherstone. Safe … if I can trust a word Jack Minnow says.

Tanya’s hand goes to her chest and her eyes close. She nods, as though she knows this story – as though she was just waiting for me to say it.

There is barely any food, but the Whitworths share with us a broth and we offer them all our goods. They marvel at the sight of cheese and Tanya laughs when she picks up the bread and says she might use it as a bed tonight, it is so soft. Apparently, on their first day here, Oscar tried to catch fish.

“I don’t believe there are any in that river.” He scowls when Solomon laughs at him.

“Not now that you scared them off.” Solomon dodges a nudge from Oscar.

“Why are you here?” I ask. “Why aren’t you home – in Featherstone with the others?”

The smile drops from Solomon’s face. “Things have changed quickly for us too.”

A sudden yelp of pain interrupts us. In the dying light, Mel is gathering firewood and she’s already got a splinter. Tanya removes it and gives Mel a poultice to rub into the wound. “It wouldn’t do to get an infection out here.”

“It’s just a tiny cut! It’s hardly going to kill me,” Mel exclaims.

“No, but blood poisoning could. We don’t have the medical resources that you have. It is not worth risking.”

Mel goes quiet as she holds the mulched-up leaf to her palm.

“How have you kept going out here?” she asks.

“Out here in the woods, or out here in Featherstone?” Tanya asks with a smile and a raised eyebrow.

“Both. I had never imagined it like this.” She throws the herb on the fire and carries on collecting wood and twigs. “Actually, I had never imagined it at all. I refused to – what was the point of thinking about how you live, when all I really cared about was that you didn’t?”

A kind of gasped silence leaves a vacuum between us – it is as though time has taken a breath. The quiet breaks with a twig under Mel’s foot. “I was so blind. I still have so much to see.” She lays her sticks in a neat pile at Tanya’s feet, like an offering. “I hope you will show me.”