I try to shake my head but the movement feels too powerful so I stop.

“Emma?” Isaac says, his face creased with worry, and a cloud of paranoia so dense, so acrid, that I instantly forget how to breathe, engulfs me. The rug slips from beneath me and I plummet down through the base of the hut, down through the hard soil beneath it, and then I’m floating through blackness – grasping, reaching, but there’s nothing to hold on to. My mind has gone into freefall. And I can’t breathe. I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

“Emma!” I feel hands on my face. “Emma, look at me. You’re having a panic attack. Emma, look at me. You need to slow down. You need to breathe. Breathe with me, Emma …”

His face is inches from mine, his pupils huge, the tip of his nose lightly dotted with open pores, his top lip speckled with sharp, spiky stubble. I feel like I’m looking at him through a microscope.

“Emma, breathe. Inhale. In … one … two … three.”

I try to do what I’m told but the breath keeps catching in my throat.

“Out. Exhale, Emma. Slowly. For as long as you can, push the air out.”

My breath escapes in raggedy gasps.

“Just keep looking at me, Emma. Just keep breathing.”

In. One-two-three. Out. One-two-three.

After a couple of minutes, or a couple of hours, I can’t be sure, I reach up and touch Isaac on the arm. I can breathe but I’m still spinning. I need to root myself to the floor.

“I need … I need to lie down.”

“Okay.” He gently guides my elbow as I lower myself onto the rug, then unwraps the jumper from his waist and fashions it into a pillow. He gently slides it under my head.

“Close your eyes,” he says softly.

And I do.

I wake with a jolt, slamming one hand against the wooden wall to my right, the other against something soft to my left. The candle is still burning on the table in the hut but it’s only a couple of inches tall now. Isaac is asleep beside me, facing away, his shoulders curled, his knees bent. I stirred at some point in the night and reached for him, but he’d gone. I was too tired to care, so I fell back asleep. He must have returned while I was sleeping.

“Isaac?” I put a hand on his back. “What time is it?”

He rubs a hand over his face and slowly uncurls, propping himself up on one elbow. “I don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t we get back to the oth—” I stop speaking as a memory floats lazily to the surface of my mind.

“What is it?” He sits up. “Do you feel ill again?”

I shake my head.

“Emma, talk to me.”