The grass in the field had been trimmed like a haphazard haircut, leaving taller tufts here and there. Maybe that’s why Chloe chose it. Most of the grasses in Tír Mallacht grew nearly as tall as her. It was a poky tract compared to what they’d seen that day, no more than a quarter acre. A grove of trees – skeletal in the torchlight – loomed in its corner. Other than that, it was surrounded by larger fields that stretched long past the reach of their torches.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said wryly.

‘Shut up.’ She giggled. ‘Let’s get ourselves organised so we can finally eat some food. I’m starving.’

Chloe assumed the responsibility of pitching their tent and didn’t delay in rolling out its parts on the grass. She was one of the odd souls who seemed to genuinely enjoy it, like those precocious kids back in school with their heads buried in a puzzle book, as if life weren’t challenging enough. The packaging boasted of the tent’s ease of assembly. But Ben had his doubts. It was the most expensive one in the shop and Chloe wouldn’t settle for anything less.

‘That’s the one,’ she had said the second she laid eyes on it.

Ben had only known her for a few hours, but he guessed that her life’s path was littered with snap decisions.

‘I’ve spent too many nights camping at digs,’ she had told him. ‘I’m done sleeping in polyester coffins. We’re getting the fancy one, okay? No arguments.’

Ben was given the job of collecting deadwood for their fire. Not the most demanding of missions, but this might be the first thing he did right all day.

‘Okay, you bastards,’ Chloe said, standing over the umpteen poles and folded bits of nylon strewn around her, ‘it’s time to build us a home. Give me some space, Benny Boy. I’m about to work magic unlike anything you’ve ever seen.’

This was exactly what she seemed to need – a familiar task to busy her mind.

‘It’s all yours,’ he replied, chuckling as he walked away.

Ben had been a finger tap away from deleting Sparling’s email that day in the coffee shop. This was a whole lot more interesting than what he had grown used to – work, sleep, repeat, with sporadic intervals of existential crisis just to make sure that the sleep part never came easy.

As an only child, his parents had groomed him for success, backing Ben one hundred per cent like the only horse on the racetrack. He was brainwashed by propaganda portraying him as some moneyed historian, travelling the world for the History Channel; a detective of the past, solving age-old riddles and discovering lost treasures. It was heading that way for a while. Then that horse they had gambled all their savings on started crashing through hurdles and veering into the railings.