‘Stop!’ She jerked round. ‘Reverse about twenty yards.’ He edged the car backwards. ‘Here.’ She leapt out and headed for what seemed to be a tangle of branches and creepers. He joined her and they tugged at clumps too set to shift, able only to peel them away branch by branch, strand by strand. The surface of a lichen-covered, dark green gate, some twelve feet high, became slowly visible. Sara turned right and walked a few yards up the lane, scraping away more creepers covering a stone wall. It was flecked with smears of old whitewash.

‘It fits,’ she cried out. ‘What was it exactly Marion said… down in a dark valley… hills around…’ She walked back towards Patrick. ‘And that weird thing her mother mentioned she once said… when I smell the life inside me, I must leave the smell of death.’

‘It may have been smells on the wind from an abattoir,’ he said prosaically.

‘No!’ Sara protested. ‘This is isolation. The sort of place you could yell and yell, day after day, month after month, and no one would ever hear you.’ She thought of Marion slumped on her chair. ‘A hell-hole to drive you crazy.’

‘That gate’s pretty solid,’ he said. ‘Any way round it?’

‘That stone wall’s just as tall and there’s a long stretch of it – may not lead into the courtyard Sami described anyway.’

‘I’ll look left.’ He walked in the opposite direction. ‘The wall abuts an outbuilding.’ He continued along a high hedge and stopped to feel through it. ‘There’s a wire fence behind the hedge. Doesn’t help us.’

As he rejoined her, she was scratching at a rusting metal panel. ‘Remnants of an entryphone. I reckon that proves it.’ She stared at him, a challenge in her eyes. ‘You lift.’ She stood in front of the gate, arms stretched upwards.

‘Sure?’

‘No other way, is there?’ He took her by the hips and pushed her up the gate, then she eased back to sit on his shoulders. ‘Higher.’ She sensed him hesitating. ‘Get on with it, it’s no time to be shy.’ He pushed his hands beneath her buttocks, raising them while she used her own hands against the gate to steady herself. She bent one knee, flattening her heel on his shoulder, followed by the second. He managed to repress an oath as they dug sharply in.

She placed a hand on the top of the gate. ‘Ow!’ Her shriek echoed across the valley. ‘I think I hit some old barbed wire.’

‘Come down. This is no good.’

‘It’s all right. Just a nail. Don’t move.’

Gingerly she felt for clean gaps between nails and wood splinters to place her hands, finding enough grip to push herself upwards while he raised his hands to hold her feet.

‘I’m up. I can see over.’

‘See what.’

‘Buildings, weeds, a barn. It’s a good size.’

‘Can you jump?’