Colin, panicking now, shook his head. That wasn’t going to happen.

At that precise moment, Harry hunkered down and gave a little whistle.

‘Fucking hell, did you see this?’ He looked up at Colin.

‘See what?’ Colin said stupidly.

Greg, while groaning inwardly, prepared himself to express horror at what Harry had just found.

Joanne

Her spirits lifted as she climbed the hill behind the house. Above her, small white clouds patched a sky so blue it was hard to believe it was real.

Reaching the top, she turned to look down on the panorama that was Blackrig, nestled in its wooded glen. The single road running through. The small church, the village hall, the school, the shop, the little hotel. The other white houses that lay scattered across the surrounding hills, including Beanach.

A world that looked secluded and safe. Until the invisible enemy had arrived.

She thought of a parallel English story, which she might use in the piece she was writing, about the little village of Eyam, in the Peak District. In 1655, the bubonic plague had been brought to Eyam from London in a flea-infested bolt of cloth.

There, the villagers had closed themselves off to prevent the plague from spreading to the surrounding area. One woman had buried six of her children and her husband.

According to Greg, something similar had happened in Blackrig. The locals, with no idea initially how the new variant had reached the village during strict lockdown, hadn’t tried to flee. They’d remained isolated, supporting one another, and had still buried their children.

It was only later the people of Blackrig had discovered that the virus had been brought from London to the Party House.

No wonder they were still angry about it reopening. She couldn’t blame them for that. Nor for their concerns about visitors arriving in the village . . . visitors like her. Adjusting the spyglass, she sought and found the walled local graveyard nestled among the trees. A little further west lay a clearing with what looked like dark peaty pools and fallen mossy trunks.

There were other shapes there too – animal carvings, she thought. A roe deer and a pair of wolves. Others she couldn’t make out even with the spyglass.

Greg had mentioned there was a carving trail in the woods, so she assumed this must be it.

She would go there on her next walk, she decided, explore the woods and maybe visit the graveyard. She could clearly do that without ever showing her face in the village.

Turning, she now focused on the road from Blackrig to Beanach, searching for the rough track through the pinewoods Greg had taken her on, when he’d brought her from the station.