What? For a crazy moment, Thea thought he was going to ask her out on a date. Would she want to go on a date with him? He was nice-enough looking, under the beard, and he’d been kind to her. But it was dark and she couldn’t see him properly, and beards gave you a rash, didn’t they?

He angled away from her for a few seconds, fumbling with his clipboard, then he glanced to see if anyone was near. It was done so quickly. One moment he’d bent towards her and Thea hadn’t known what to think; the next he was gone.

There was a piece of paper in her hand.

Thea took a closer look. It was all about her: weight, height, sleep history, some graphs and numerical data that she couldn’t decipher. But, more importantly, the form had been stamped:

CLIENT APPROVED.

Chapter 7

It was the kind of place where hitchhikers got chopped up by axe-wielding maniacs. Brown, bare hills, a lonely road, a few run-down houses, clearly abandoned – just sky and grass and a low-level sense of fear at an animal level.

‘One room, one night. You’re the last of ’em,’ the man muttered from behind the reception desk whilst writing in a book as yellowed as his fingers. He looked as weathered and grey as ancient stone, his face pitted as if it had endured centuries of unrelenting rain.

The pub was called “Sanity’s End” with thick walls, mullioned windows and empty hooks where pretty hanging baskets had once swung. Now they were just hooks, as if the pub had armoured itself, porcupine-style. How was it still in business? There was no one else around and the whole area was too grim and stark to be a tourist spot.

‘Busy lately?’ Thea ventured.

The man looked up and put the pen he’d been using behind his ear. A few flakes of dandruff dislodged and fell gently to be reunited with their friends on his shoulder.

‘What do you think?’ he said harshly.

Thea took a look around at the ghost-bar, the stools still stacked on the tabletops, the unravelling carpet and the heavy curtains that had once been red but were now so covered in dust they’d paled to a rusty pink. There was a sticky wood veneer on the reception desk, which held a dusty stand of local brochures and a cardboard charity box in the shape of a lifeboat. Thea put in all the change she had left – after all, she was unlikely to need it in the next six weeks.

‘See there?’ A grimy fingernail pointed to a group of framed photographs on a nearby wall. ‘Used to be a lifeboat man. She were mine.’

Thea dutifully peered at the picture, what she could see of it under a thick layer of dust on the glass that made the boat look as if it was nosing out of a fog.