The worst part was leaving Rosie.

They wrapped her in monk-made blankets, closed her eyes and smoothed her hair.

Another body to leave behind.

Then they dragged away the things they’d piled in front of the door as a barricade and both put their hands over the doorknob, looking at each other one final time.

‘Ready?’

‘No.’ It was the first word she’d spoken since Rosie had died. ‘Wait.’ She picked up one of the cuddly monks from a nearby shelf, blew the dust from it and placed it gently in the crook of Rosie’s arm.

They pushed the door open into a harsh, white world.

The air scoured Thea’s eyeballs, which was good because they needed it. She took a deep breath and blinked at the snow and a sky so blue it looked like a glass bowl over them. Time had slipped away from Thea since she had left the lighthouse, but the daylight had a freshness to it that felt like morning. The gift shop had swallowed a whole evening. A day had gone past. Only a day.

They walked, quickly, to the cover provided by the copse of trees, Thea taking unsteady, drunken steps. Weirdly, she’d felt more awake in the dim light of the gift shop. Out here, the daylight seared its way through her eyes and burned a headache into her temples. A part of her wanted to slump into the snow and sleep until the white covered her up completely. She stabbed the point of the scissors into her palm and kept walking.

Despite thinking of them back at the Centre, there had been no time to get boots or warmer clothes and Thea’s feet were soon soggy and freezing again. At any moment she anticipated the whine of a bullet zinging past her ear, and then another into her spine where she’d fall, like an animal tracked in the woods, bleeding out and terrified until someone came to cut her throat.

No, no, no. No thinking of things like that. Think of the plan. It was ambitious to call it a plan but it was all they had. Rory and the other sleep techs had seen a map of the island at their own orientation day where all the no-go areas had been pointed out.

‘Just around from the main beach is a cove, not a beach, kind of like a rocky outcrop and a cave where a boat could, in theory, be hidden from view. Launching it would be tricky though because of the rocks.’

They would launch it. It wouldn’t be the hardest thing she’d had to do over the last few days. The boat would take them to land and they would escape. They would make it. The universe owed them that.