Two hours had passed since he and Chloe abandoned the car. The afternoon sun wept through clouds pulled apart like cotton wool in the breeze. The trek was proving worse than Ben expected. Much worse. Hidden beneath the grasses was a knobbly causeway of soil and stone. Sometimes he sank and sometimes he tripped, and every time his rucksack pounced on his shoulders like a bear.

‘How much farther is it?’ he called out, using his scarf to dab his brow like an out-of-shape boxer who’d just gone twelve rounds.

‘A little bit more, Benny Boy,’ Chloe called back to him, shading her phone from the sun. ‘We’re past the halfway mark, I think.’

‘Benny Boy?’ he groaned, trudging towards her. ‘Please don’t make that a thing.’

The press of his boots on the earth was like an insect crawling on skin. The forces of nature sought any means to swipe him away. Maybe it meant to crush him outright like a flea, leaving just a red smear in the mud. The camping gear on his back was doing that anyway – scratching the discs of his spine like flint for a fire. It had occurred to him to simply collapse in whatever godforsaken field he stood in, to accept defeat on his own terms. The grasses could mummify his bones in coils of green and Chloe could even sprinkle some wildflowers over him to mark the occasion.

Her cheeks weren’t even flushed. Every hair on her pixie head was picture-perfect. Ben had to run a hand over his sandpapered scalp to keep the sweat from seeping down his forehead. He felt like fresh fruit squeezed into oblivion.

‘Do you want to take a break?’ she asked, chuckling away to herself as though this wasn’t the single most torturous experience of their lives.

Ben wouldn’t have classed himself as low-shelf material. But in that moment, with his body coiled up like a rusty spring and gurning through a fresh sheen of sweat, Chloe stood leagues ahead, watching him with a smile that was hard to look away from.

‘Just give me a moment,’ he gasped. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Ben had what his mother called a kind face. But then, mothers have an even kinder way with words. He never quite understood what she meant by it. His eyebrows were forever a tad bushy. But the eyes made up for that. Each one was a polished conker like his father’s; an heirloom gladly inherited. When his retreating hairline became too obvious, he had shaved it back. That family trait hadn’t been so eagerly received. His smile was the key to his interviews, or so he used to gloat after a few pints, when his woes and misfortunes were, for a while, forgotten. Lock eyes and always smile.

‘Here,’ Chloe said, handing him a torpedo-shaped flask, ‘drink some water before you pass out on me.’