But there is no answer from Donovan because, as we sit staring into the wilderness, there is the sound of an engine and a sudden beam of headlights lasering the darkness before both vanish as quickly as they have come. Donovan jumps up and shoulders the rifle.

‘Sons of bitches crawling out from underneath their stones. They want me out of here. Won’t stop until they see me dead or gone. Just like Satan came to the wilderness. And I’ve heard there’s a price on my head but that’s a bounty no one’s going to cash in except me.’

At first I file this blank cheque in the Bank of Donovan’s Paranoia but then remember the vehemence of Marlboro Man and my initial certainty is slowly tainted by doubt.

The lights have died. Donovan moves his rifle from side to side as if covering invisible watchers under the stars that press their brightness against the black pleats of the night sky.

‘They come sniffing round at night, looking for cross-overs, smashing help stations, spilling water. Spilling water in a desert, Mikey. That’s who the sons of Satan are. Can you hear the voices?’

But I hear nothing and am not sure if the voices are in his head or the babel he imagines coursing along the wires criss-crossing the continent. I recognise, however, the intensity of his voice, hear it chime with the echoes stored in my memory, and know that there is still a flame burning at his core, and it makes me apprehensive because, like facing some forest fire, you can never be sure in what direction the wind might blow it. And the rifle makes me nervous. In a different context I would take it from him, resting my arm on his old-man’s shoulder while telling him that everything will be all right. But I know that isn’t possible and as he talks I think of the long arid hours I spent at my father’s hospital bed when Alzheimer’s rendered him disconnected and disorientated from his former resolute self, as he spoke in staccato random sentences, trying to recalibrate fragmented moments of consciousness, his words trapped in an endless loop. And it isn’t because Donovan’s words bear any resemblance to my father’s but rather that they force me into the same role of passive listener, seemingly acquiescent to what can’t be fully grasped or incorporated into any form of recognisable reality.

‘Can you hear the voices, Mikey? Can you hear them?’

And whether to appease his insistence, just as I often did at my father’s bedside, or because I think I actually can, I say I do. He goes back into the house and switches off all the lights then summons the dog, a shaggy indeterminate breed, and with a sudden gesture of his arm sends it scampering into the night.

‘Step down. Keep in the shadows,’ he tells me, and I follow him.

Melissa appears and I see she too is holding a rifle. They stand there shivering, thin and silvered as if negatives of themselves, and just as I am wondering how best to extricate myself from this increasingly alarming situation and write off my journey as a self-indulgent exercise in futility, I see a fire-tailed shooting star and then another. Except of course they aren’t stars and, as they tremble and flare through the darkness, I know that they are Molotov cocktails. They crash in a splurge and roar of flame but both fall far short of the house and in response Donovan and Melissa fire a volley of shots into the air. There is the sound of an engine starting and a momentary glimpse once more of headlights, this time veering into the distance.