The cold felt like tiny knives stabbing me all over. I screamed and jumped out of bed. Sarge said it was a lesson learned. That being tired was not an excuse. That in his big war he’d had to walk across the desert for six days with next to no sleep. And that he hadn’t been able to stop because he had a mission to carry out, that people had depended on him. ‘I never want to hear you say you’re tired again,’ he said. ‘Do you hear me?’

I said I heard him loud and clear. He looked at me for a moment or so to check that I meant what I said, then he left me to get dried and dressed.

Ten minutes later I was following him across the moor towards the woods. It was pitch black out. Sarge was holding his rifle in the crook of his arm as he walked. I could see the metal glinting in the moonlight. I knew that if I kept my eye on that shiny light then I wouldn’t lose sight of him. I wasn’t scared. Not at that point. Even though I could hear noises, I knew it was just the sounds of the woods: the creatures that don’t go to sleep in the night, that prowl around in the bracken looking for food. And I could never be scared of them. Their noises make me feel safe.

There are other noises too, the ones I can’t hear but Sarge can. The screams and shouts of people that he says have followed him from the desert. Sometimes he shouts back at them, other times he puts his hands over his ears and screws his face up really tight. I know never to talk to him when he hears those noises but I make sure I stay by his side so he knows he’s safe, that he’s not alone.

I imagine some people might feel sorry for me. Living out here with just Sarge for company. I know how we live is different. It’s different from the people I read about in the library books – those people live in big fancy houses with servants or in sweet little cottages with pretty curtains at the window, with mothers who bake cakes and sing the kids lullabies at night. And it’s different from the way Sarge lived when he was little – in a thing called a bungalow in a place called Middlesbrough which Sarge says is to the east of here – and it’s different from the dead mum in the desert who lived in the blazing heat and shared food round a big table like in her photograph.

But I wouldn’t change it. Not for anything. And though we live far away from other people, I never feel lonely because actually this place is full of life. Even at four this morning, though Sarge and I were the only humans walking out, I could feel the others all around me. I’ll try and describe it like I’m back there in the woods. There’s a noise that sounds like tickety-tack, tickety-tack. That’s the skylark. It sits up at the top of the beech tree, like some kind of general giving orders to his army. Then as you go deeper into the woods there’s a rustling of leaves and a scratching of claws. That’s the foxes nestling down to sleep in the hedgerow. There are two of them. A dog and a vixen. He’s a big brute, always wild-eyed and snarling, but she’s little and quite tame. She comes up to the house sometimes at twilight. Once she came right up to the door while I was peeling veg for tea. She looked so thin that I felt sorry for her so I held out a bit of potato peel and she came up and took it from my hand. She has kind eyes, that vixen. Amber eyes. Like the dead mother in the desert.