I glared at him. ‘It’s fine. Honestly. Just lend me a torch.’

‘She’s a big girl,’ said Bev.

The lizard was still catatonically plotting its world takeover in the hallway as Adam fished a small red torch out of a sideboard drawer. ‘Get back safe.’

It was a mile back to ours, first through the dimly lit village before the road flexed out into the night, dark trees on either side. I striped the branches with my torch. This was nothing. I’d been in those fucking terror hills. It was like walking down a high street in comparison. I was basically Wonder Woman spliced with Ripley from Alien. Half boiler suit, half extremely impractical glitzy corset.

God, I’d never felt more alive than right now. Everything in me was primed, working its arse off – eyes, ears, tastebuds. The smell of nettles and the salt of the loch. My rubber soles on the road. I put my torch up into the night and all the stars shrunk away.

A faint crunch. I stopped, listened. There – a sound like grit moving very slowly under a swivelling boot.

‘Adam?’ My ears felt heavy, lined in lead. I shone the torch back. Maybe he’d decided to see me home after all.

For a second I thought I saw him, but the thin shadow was just a tree, cut at with blunt scissors and leaning into the road. My wine bravado was rapidly evaporating.

I kept moving, same speed. I wasn’t going to go faster when there was nothing to fear. The cold plastic of the book squeaked against my spine. It was a weapon, like the Bible against vampires. Wonder Woman and Ripley and Buffy. Katniss. A breeze coasted over me.

It was fine for it to be Adam. I’d tongue him if it meant being back within four walls and my heart shuffling back down behind my ribs.

Another wash of breeze, stronger and warmer.

Something seemed to be collecting in the torchlight in front of me. Forming. Forming into pale, laddered lines. Moving forwards. The wind was blowing towards me with faint chalk lines in it. Chalk lines, or – something splintered, feathers or fine bones.

‘No!’ I shouted, and ran straight for it, taking the book out from my waistband.

I ran into darkness. The lines dissolved as I reached them, the book aloft in my hand. There was nothing to hit with it. Just a gentle buffeting sound deep in my ear, sea shell echoes, and the trees around me.

‘Well, fuck you, then,’ I said.

I woke up on the sofa in the morning with dank rosé-breath and one cheek on the open book. My tongue hurt as if I’d chomped on it. Someone was gushing about spring onions. I turned the TV off.

Fear was exhausting. I had shut the front door, turned on all the lights in the house and whacked the telly up, loud. A soft-focus detective drama – wedding hats and Victoria sponge filling and churches – had sent me to sleep.