Lewis was chopping wood with Ed. He’d been enjoying it out there in the garden, practising his axe skills, feeling good when the blade bit into an upended log and it fell into two neat halves. Feeling frustrated when his aim was off and he only sliced a pathetic splinter of wood from the log or sent it spinning away into the long grass. He hadn’t realized how stressed he’d been before. Oh, he showed a front to the world that he was Mister Cool, half asleep, that nothing bugged him. But he was human.

It was different for boneheaded Kyle. Kyle was bored. Kyle was restless, wanted to be out there cracking skulls. Kyle was your basic psychopath. He was over there now, on the opposite side of the garden, doing some target practice with Ebenezer.

Lewis was happy to lose himself in work. Have a little holiday. Driving the car, pretending he was on top of it, on the edge of panic the whole way, had been hard. So it was nice to just chill for a bit. There was a lot of violence in his past, and there would be a lot in his future, he was sure of that, but for now it was Zen, brother. Peace and love and happiness. Chop that wood. Thock, thock, thock. Pretend that there was nothing outside these walls. That the world was OK. Chillax, get his strength up, refill the ice in his cool box.

He prayed that Macca would hold on, because as long as he was alive they were going to stay put. How long had it been now? A week maybe? Ed getting more miserable every day. Lewis knew it was selfish, that he mainly wanted Macca to stay alive so that he could stay here in the garden, but you had to be selfish, didn’t you? Had to look after yourself. There was no one else to do that for you. No Mum and Dad, no teachers or doctors or police. He definitely knew his own mum and dad weren’t ever going to look after him again, because he’d killed them both. Strangled them in their beds when they’d got ill.

That seemed a way long time ago.

Best not to dig up any of them old memories.

There was a shout from across the garden. It was Kyle, throwing a spear into his target – an old door that they’d painted a crude picture of a sicko on to. Ebenezer cheered and Kyle cackled. The spear had got the sicko in the crotch. Kyle had been making weapons out of old gardening tools and bits of wood and scrap metal they’d found around the place. Apparently, when Kyle had first met Ed, he’d been armed with a garden fork. He’d come up in the world since then, raided the armouries at the Tower of London. His axe was a mean killing machine.