I made myself turn around, one slow, full circle on the spot. The sky was less heavy than the hills, rinsed just once. And there—

A pale light, not orange, bobbing like it was on a string. Far away on the hillside. Another torch. If I could see it, then it could see me.

I didn’t care about the path any more. I took off, straight ahead, through the grass.

Each bootstep made a horrible, slurping sound. A moorland flesh-eater. I aimed for the higher mounds of grass, but my foot kept going straight down into mud. Water seeped into my heels. If I dared to glance behind me there was the light, bouncing along. It was him. Rocky. He’d waited out in the dark. And now he was trailing me. I mean, how had he got all the way up here on his own anyway? He wasn’t a normal human. He had powers.

The bothy was long gone, sunk into the mud. Once or twice the light – always just behind me, right up on the horizon – seemed bigger, and high in the sky. A second moon. Or it was down in the grass again, smaller, much closer, like a lost firefly. Following me. Or I was following it. Maybe it wasn’t a torch. I didn’t trust my eyes any longer. Cold, spongy air filled my mouth. My lower legs were soaked.

Something sharp on my shin. I let out a scream that somehow had no sound before realising that I’d walked into a boulder. God. I was so lost, and freezing. Tears came, finally.

Somehow, it was less scary with the torch off. I could see the backs of the hills, just, and stars, blurred by clouds in places. We’ve … come too far … to give up … who we are. My pulse was pumping in my fingers, my lips. I would stay here, just for a bit, in the dark. On this stone. No one would know I was here, so no one would come. Still as a stone, like the one I’d found on the loch beach. Upright, and not supposed to be there.

I thought of the Spanish guy again, lying in an East London hospital bed, Homerton, or the one in Whitechapel – I’d looked them up. What was it like, being in a coma? Was your brain a stone, or your whole body? Noise crashing around you like a tide.

Still as a stone. Me, and him.

There was a buzzing in my ears, like tissue paper in a draught.

If Rocky came then he came. I’d just have to take it. This would be payback.

The night was assuming the blackest of blue tinges, as if the horizon were a lid being lifted. The stars were tiny and amber, a skyful of blinking car lights. The road was up there. I was the wrong way up. My breath stuttered.

Slowly, I began to tell the clouds apart from the hills. The strange, bobbing light was to my right, very faint. It had stopped when I stopped. Like it was waiting. But I couldn’t see anything that went with it, the dark line you’d expect if someone were standing there. Maybe he was lying down, holding the torch up.