The song died away; once again, the only sound came from the fires. The beasts remained in the shadows. The blackness beyond them, around the camp, seemed absolute; Milly felt a swirl of dizziness and vertigo, suddenly convinced that they were floating like a raft on an ink-black sea. Fragile, leaky, so easily overturned by a wave or swamped by a storm. And the sea full of sharks and other, more terrible things. Monsters of the deep.

Someone else began singing: Tara Caddick, Jess’ baby in her arms, looking shyly down but belting out the lines with all her lungpower. Milly bit back hysterical laughter when she realised it was a Katy Perry song. But Laura joined in, and then the rest. Noel caught Milly’s eye and grinned. It wasn’t even about the words now; it was about music, solidarity, a refusal to give in. Spiting the bastards with communion and joy.

The moaning began again at some point, but Milly barely noticed. As Tara’s song faded somebody else weighed in; after he was done, there were a few moments of silence before someone else began. Noel sang an old Welsh hymn called “Calon Lân”. Milly barely understood a word of it, but knew it was beautiful. He sang alone, of course; after him old John Kennard, who’d been a miner once upon a time, remembered the ‘84 strike all too well and probably thought he’d had quite enough religion for one evening, began belting out:

“You can’t get me cos I’m part of the Union,

You can’t get me cos I’m part of the Union,

You can’t get me cos I’m part of the Union,

Till the day I die...”

And so it went on, until at some point they realised the moaning had stopped. Silence returned, and they waited for whatever came next.

The next attack would involve no games; Milly knew that in her bowels. When it came, it would be unrelenting, and wouldn’t end until the light was gone and the dark supreme.

She tried to pray, to beg forgiveness of her faults before the end, but nothing came.

Ancient night. Ancient night. That’d been what Madeleine had said. The old gods wake, the sun dies, and earth and waters perish as night comes forever more. Sitting on her crate, looking out into the dark, Milly touched the cross at her throat. To even talk about old gods was blasphemy; there was only one. Everything else was the Devil. But who or what had spoken through Madeleine, then?

Reuben whined and licked her hand. Milly ruffled his hair. None of that mattered now. This was as simple as could be. Black and white: a relief, almost, in a life so full of greys. No complexity here, no negotiation, no difficult questions – just standing steady and defying the old deep dark.