Ben frowned at the prospect of Chloe being on her own. There were too many unknown elements and an underlying sense of uncertainty that hadn’t fallen silent since the tripwire tolled in their arrival.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said assuredly. ‘I’ll be fine. I know exactly where I’m going and I’ll be back before it gets dark. The church isn’t far and—’ here she leaned into his ear ‘—I want to check out that cottage we saw.’

‘Just be careful,’ he said.

‘Ms Coogan,’ she replied, with her chin held high, ‘is perfectly able to take care of herself. Go get your stories and I’ll go do the important stuff.’

*

The stable, as promised, was sheltered. Someone had recently carpeted its earth with shards of bark, soft to the step, with a rotted moistness that Ben could taste. Two open frames admitted sufficient daylight. Nets of ivy draped over their plinths and clawed their hooks through a ceiling of branches bound in wire and misty web. In lieu of a door there was a wooden board that Ben had to shift out of place to get in and out. Its base had been a mass of woodlice. Some fleeing for their lives, others upturned with their myriad legs squirming at nothing.

‘Okay,’ Ben said to himself, taking the recorder from his rucksack, running a finger across its chunky buttons like a knight polishing his steel, ‘here we go.’

History demanded a respect for certain antiquities, and so Ben recorded his interviews on cassette. Unlike the newfangled digital recorders, his plastic block had a history of its own and had come through it with no shortage of nicks and scratches. It was strange to think that something so dated – this relic from the Nineties with its battery lid taped in place – had to be kept hidden in case it spooked his interviewees.

‘Testing, testing,’ Ben spoke into his recorder, and then rewound it back.

Testing, testing.

‘Interview one,’ he said, with one eye on the stable door to make sure no one was coming. ‘Interviewee’s name is Mary. Surnames don’t seem to factor into their identities. It’s highly possible that the close-knit nature of their community has unified them into a single clan, free from any divisive labels. Mary was the first woman to engage with us upon our arrival to the village.’

Click.

If Sparling had ever doubted Ben’s professionalism, a few more lines like that would quickly convince him otherwise.

‘Okay, Benny Boy,’ he said to himself, steadying his nerves, ‘time to get to work.’

5

‘Now, Mary,’ Ben began, smiling as though they were old friends sitting down between a pot of tea. ‘Thanks for volunteering to go first. I honestly don’t know what I would do without you.’

The woman nodded. Her fingers fidgeted as if trying to loosen an invisible knot.