But when I reached him he started to speak and his voice wasn’t angry at all.

‘Look at those trees over there,’ he said, pointing his finger in the direction of the woods. ‘You know your granddad told me that the bark of most trees in Northern Europe was adapted to withstand attacks by elephants.’

‘Elephants?’ I said, trying to imagine one of those creatures stomping through Harrowby Crag.

‘Yes, elephants,’ he said. ‘They used to roam these parts before the Ice Age. Hippos too. Imagine that, pet?’

I tried to, but the thought was as crazy as trying to imagine my mother anywhere but the desert, or me and Sarge anywhere but here.

‘Funny, eh?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘How things survive. Now the elephants are gone, the danger’s gone, but the trees are still protecting themselves. It doesn’t make any sense.’

His eyes got all red then and I realized that he wasn’t talking about the trees any more or the elephants or even the dead mother. He was talking about himself.

11

Lisa

Two hours later

I sit at the kitchen table looking at the dark screen on my phone. The battery is now completely dead. Without my phone I have no way of calling for help, no link at all with the outside world. In my head I try to plan out a crude escape plan. If someone broke into the house and attacked me then I would need to get out fast. And to do that the back door would have to be unlocked. But then it would depend where I was and how they had got in. My agitated thoughts fizz back and forth inside my head like a Catherine wheel.

The most important thing, I think to myself as I step out of the kitchen and go into the bedroom where Joe has finally settled on the newly discovered bed, is to keep my boy beside me at all times. That’s all that matters. Kneeling by the side of the bed, I watch as his chest rises and falls, his long eyelashes touching his cheek like spider’s legs, and my eyes fill with tears. It shouldn’t have had to come to this. I’m his mother. I carried him inside me for nine months, felt every wriggle, every kick. His heart had beat in time with mine as he lay on my chest that first day and I’d held his fat little hand and promised him that I’d be there for him for ever. He’s part of me. Without him I’m just a vessel floating through the world without an anchor.

I stand up and adjust the covers then, as Joe gently snores, I explore the room a little more. The windows are shaded with thin, yellowed nets that give the room an eerie glow. I run my finger along the top of the window and release a cascade of dust. Coughing, I step away from the window and go to the wardrobe, a dark wooden hulk that stands opposite the bed and looks, in this light, like the hull of a ship.