Ben’s sore muscles seemed to sing with every stretch. He was glad to have answered nature’s call before lying down. His feet went limp, and their limpness quickly crept through his entire body. Breathing slowed – now steady as a black tide sweeping the shore. Thoughts were fast to fade into some senseless fantasy. But before the plug was pulled on his consciousness, he imagined that blind woman from earlier, standing in the dark, screaming at him. In the opacity of those eyes, her pity was never so transparent.

She was telling him to run. But all Ben could do was sleep.

7

‘Wake up!’

Ben was suspended in a lightless ocean. He could hear a voice – faint and distant, but it was getting louder. His shoulders were being shaken. Exhaustion, like a weight, held him down. He tugged at its chain, tensing its links, but it was rooted in the seabed of his subconscious; so deep in dream that its scape was still his reality.

It was Aoife. It had to be. She had awoken during the night.

‘It’s okay,’ he whispered, reaching out to hold her, ‘it’s just a bad dream.’

‘Wake the fuck up,’ snapped the voice, definitely not his daughter’s.

Ben jolted up, eyes blinking, seeing nothing. The black void of the tent seemed to press against him as he reached for the hands gripping his shoulders. They weren’t Aoife’s. Small as they were, they weren’t small enough, and yet such was the darkness that he held them regardless.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘There’s someone outside!’

Chloe’s hands were still on him. He could hear and feel her every panicked breath. She lifted off and her fingers chafed frantically around them, searching for a torch. Before he could brace his eyes, the tent exploded in white light. Blind again.

‘What did you hear?’ Ben asked, shielding his face.

Chloe was knelt on the floor of the tent, holding the torch in both hands as if she were gearing up to swing it. Her legs were bare; she was wearing just a tank top and underwear. The girl was spooked. Ben was mindful enough to focus on her eyes when eventually he could see again.

‘Footsteps,’ she replied, barely a whisper, ‘outside.’

‘How close were they?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Too close. What does it matter how close they were? There’s someone out there. They must have followed us?’

‘Could it have been an animal, like a badger or something?’

Chloe shifted over on her knees towards the door of the tent. Her fingers pinched its zip like the pin of a hand grenade. She glared back at him, biting her lip.

‘What are you doing?’ Ben asked, slipping out of his sleeping bag.

‘I’m going to shine a light on this fucking badger of yours.’

‘Wait,’ he said as he patted around, searching for his own torch.