They soon stood on the clay path, now grey and gritty with pools seeping through from the surrounding fields. The flood was mirror calm, spreading through the distant walls as far as the eye could see. Ben rested a moment, dirty hands on his thighs, suffering through the pain and those memories of the creeper’s smile – like flashes of lightning in his mind. The closer they got to the village, the more frequent they became. He had tried to ignore them but now he was simply too tired to fight back. Fear had coiled around him like a snake, squeezing out whatever strength he had left.

‘What time of the day is it?’ he asked, trying to focus on the here and now.

‘It’s just past half three,’ Chloe replied. ‘It’s as good as we could have hoped for.’

‘Still though, it’s not giving us much time.’

She slapped him on the back and walked on. ‘Come on, the cottage isn’t far.’

Ben expected that same child around every corner, but they encountered neither sight nor sound of anyone. It was like walking through the fallout of some bygone disaster. Nature’s remnants had withered to the point of rot and even the air was unpleasant to breathe; a cloying dampness clung like wet powder to his sinuses.

Chloe reached the hilltop first, where they’d glimpsed the villagers idling after their day’s work. But the land – still so fresh in mind – was now lost to the eye. Only the field’s tallest stones could be seen, like drowning men poking their heads above the surface. The rain had consumed it, denying them the same route as last time.

They held each other as before and scraped their way downhill, into the village’s slimiest reaches. No field was free of the flood. It was as though the ocean had risen to devour it.

Just like Atlantis after all.

‘Here we are,’ Chloe declared, stepping off the path and onto a stream of muck that Ben hadn’t noticed, and one he certainly didn’t recognise.

‘Where are we exactly?’ he asked, looking around him.

‘Isn’t it a good job you brought me along? You would have wandered around this shithole until sundown with no clue where you were going.’

The penny dropped. This was where they had followed the wasp after leaving the field that day, before their lives were marked with an expiration date.

Ben had joked about Chloe being his anchor but she was that and more; never asking for anything and always giving all she got. No bullshit. No talk without honesty. And he needed that – someone to grab him like a ball of clay and mould him into something better.