Lilou glanced back at them. “It’s just a flooded valley,” she said. “Longford’s down there somewhere, or what’s left of it. Just down past that hump in the land, towards the river, I think I can see the remains of a building?”

Angela couldn’t see it, but she did not care. Vocalising the wrongness of this place seemed to amplify its effect on her. Its greyness and blandness gave it the appearance of being unfinished, yet perhaps that sense was misleading. In truth, it looked and felt like somewhere that had been finished long ago, and which had since shed itself of humankind. This place had moved on.

“Other people have come,” Angela said. She could see signs across the valley—the glint of early morning sunlight from vehicle windscreens, a couple of columns of smoke that might have been from camp fires.

“The curious,” Lilou said. “It’s not often a dead town is revealed to the world again.”

“Nice way of putting it.”

Lilou smiled. “It’s fine. It’s an adventure.”

“I’ve had enough adventure to last a lifetime,” Angela said, and for a moment she felt Vince squeeze her hand, and she knew what his response would be.

Maybe just one more.

* * *

To their right, and further down the valley, was the dam. It was a vast structure stretching from one valley slope to the other, its side facing them the same grey colour, the deep fault in its centre obvious, a wound on the land. It looked like a huge cleaver had come down and smashed the dam in two. Angela guessed that a minor leak could progress over time into something more substantial, rocks undermined, concrete cracked and swept away, until one tumbling rock led to a chain reaction. There had been no cataclysmic failure, but downriver beyond the dam the landscape was still flooded in places. It had been a slow disaster.

As they descended through the forest towards the shore of the old reservoir, Lilou called a halt.

“There’s security ahead,” she said. “I can hear them.”

“Security for what?” Sammi asked.

“They don’t want people getting to Longford,” Angela said.

Sammi shrugged. “Maybe it’s just ’cause the ground’s dangerous. If this has only just happened there’ll be quicksand and stuff, and the river’s flowing pretty quick.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Lilou said.

Angela was unconvinced. “Lilou?” she asked.

Lilou glanced back and forth between them.

“What else could it be?” Sammi asked.

“Plenty more,” Angela said. Her heart sank. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Lilou had lied to them, but now they were here she needed to know why, and how much.

“It’s pretty much like I told you,” Lilou said.

“Pretty much?”

“My friend might have died here. I want to know how and why.”

“So do I,” Angela said. “Before Sammi and I go a step further.”