He drove towards Newbury until he hit a fork in the road and turned left, towards Devonshire. He drove another minute before making a right onto a dirt track. His one headlight cast over dense forest and imagined animals. He reversed the car neatly beneath some low-hanging branches and got out.

There was a river nearby. People launched their boats down a small mud ramp. Nothing man-made. Only locals knew this place. He took a few steps in shifting mud away from the car and then turned to gaze upon his subterfuge. You’d have to know it was there to look for it. Otherwise it’d look like some bloke gone night fishing. He thought about the boxes. He walked up the slope, pushing himself up with his hands on his knees, and met asphalt.

He walked back to the fork in the road and waited for passing cars to give him a lift. In his youth he had been a man of much greater endurance. It pissed him off, being old. The walk ahead of him would be massive. Kilometres. Unfortunately Port Napier did not offer much to entice traffic in the middle of the night. He didn’t expect he’d see a car before he made it home. He started walking, regretting not bringing a drink of some description.

When he came to the cemetery he stood a moment with his elbows propped on the fence and regarded the stones and thought of all the people buried there, skeletons in the earth, and thought what it would be like if they were to rise from their graves and come for him in the dark with their arms outstretched. Or if they’d walk at all, or float like spectres, and he thought of all those he’d known who were now dead, all who’d perished in the war, and old Barney his boss who had died on the job, teaching kids, supervising, a heart attack as he pointed to the flower parts on the blackboard, noting the stamen. How he’d fallen. Even Vernon in the building nearby heard the sound of his body colliding with the laminate. Dead, skeletal now, all of them. Weymouth in the ground. His one good eye forever staring straight into Vernon. Who would be dead too, eventually. Though would he know it then? His son in there with him too, all of them, every person, every son, every daughter. Dead for certain. What was the point? If nothing mattered then nothing bloody mattered and he might as well just lie down in an open grave here now and let nature do its work.

Back home he opened his front door, his back dripping sweat after his effort, the night breeze cooling it against his skin. He prised his boots off as he walked inside, tiptoed over the carpet. The laundry taps provided him with water so that his wife wouldn’t hear.

It took him what seemed a full minute to shut the bedroom door. Holding the handle down, moving it in millimetres, then creeping over to the bed, removing his clothes, wincing as they rustled.