Will we ever have power again? Electricity? Phones? Ever have news of anything outside walking distance? It came back again to the unanswered, for now unanswerable, question of whether this madness was confined to Barsall or if it was a wider, even global, phenomenon. Although the very absence of outside help suggested the latter. Better not to think about it: doing so was pointless and unhelpful. All she knew or had influence over was here. So now she’d do what she could.

She found herself thinking, of all things, of Reuben. There was little chance of survival; assuming the world didn’t end, who’d take care of him if both she and Madeleine were dead? Milly, maybe. Ellie should have asked her before setting off.

One last look across the still deadness of the valley and the empty sky; she turned to go back, then stopped and looked again. A thin black line of chimney-smoke hung above the stack of Barrowman Farm, and the battered second tractor was parked in the farmyard. She was still wondering whether or not to tell Jess when the girl leant on the railings beside her, looked towards the farm and nodded. “Looks like Mum’s okay, then,” she said.

“Yeah.” Ellie watched Jess’ face for a reaction, but there wasn’t one.

“Hope Dom’s all right,” the girl said. “He wasn’t so bad. Not like Paul.” She spat over the ledge; it was hard and precise, full of dismissal and contempt for her dead brother. Ellie was still used to seeing Jess as a scared little waif, helpless and pitiable, but the last twenty-four hours had shown there was flint and steel in the girl. That shouldn’t really have come as a surprise; she couldn’t have survived that mares’ nest without some inner resources. “Frank might’ve been all right if he’d had more of a mind of his own,” Jess went on. “But he couldn’t fucking shit unless someone told him how. Mum, or Keira.” She spat again; then her face softened. “Tony, though, he was the best of ’em. He’s the one I miss.”

She snorted, breathed out, shook her head. “Anyway. Best get on.” She nodded upwards at the dimming sky, the rags of sun which were shifting from cold white to the colour of dull fire. “Be dark soon.”

She’d dragged her backpack to the railing with her: grunting and wincing, she pulled it up onto her crooked back again, then went past Ellie towards the footpath in a firm, straight-legged stride that gave her the earnest, comical appearance of a child playing soldiers. Playing at being a grown-up. Or a child forced to grow up, far too soon.