He shuffled up beside her and together they listened before committing. There wasn’t a sound other than their knees balancing on the tent’s nylon floor. Ben gripped his torch like a baton. Their eyes locked. They nodded their heads. Ready. One, two…

On three, Chloe hitched up the zip and cast her light outside. Ben had no clue as to the time, but their fire was long dead. A light enamel of frost glistened on its stones. They tracked Chloe’s torchlight. It flashed around the field, taking in its walls, its corners, and every blade of crisp grass in between. There was no sign that anyone had approached their tent. Amidst the stillness, their breathing fell into a slow and steady synch.

‘I don’t see anyone,’ Ben whispered.

The cold air was glazing over their mouths and clinging fast to any bare skin. Still the torch swept from side to side, revealing nothing and no one. Chloe pushed up onto her feet.

‘What are you doing now?’ Ben asked, talking directly to her naked legs.

‘I’m looking outside,’ she replied, her knees clattering together in the cold. ‘If someone’s out there we won’t see them if we’re peering out the door, will we?’

She stepped out and walked across the grass on the tips of her toes. Ben was equally underdressed but if he stayed behind to drag his jeans on, he would never hear the end of it. Man up, Benny Boy. Chloe was already standing by the stones that had cradled their campfire, spinning her light around in every direction.

Ben brought his torch’s beam upon the copse of trees. They rose out of the night like scrawny giants. That was where he had heard something crack. He regretted not telling Chloe now. Ben watched and listened, as before. There was no movement that he could sense, not even the nervous foraging of some nocturnal animal. If there was something in the bushes, his torchlight should have startled it into revealing itself.

This is insane, he mouthed, but no words escaped his lips.

Ben suffered through the cold. Keeping the torch steady was impossible.

‘No one’s going to be out on a night like this,’ he shouted over to Chloe.

Her cylindrical light was stabbing the darkness around the field’s perimeter.

‘I definitely heard someone,’ she replied.

Twigs and frigid grass crunched beneath Ben’s feet as he jogged over to her.

‘Come back inside the tent,’ he said. ‘It’s too cold.’

Chloe was panning her torch over the wall.

‘Just let me check one last time. I know what I heard, and it wasn’t some fucking badger.’

‘Jesus, what have you got against badgers?’