We’ve brought Shane to Shotton Hill for a picnic. Mum has a big tin with a whole chicken inside. Grease seeps through its kitchen-towel wrapping. Chocolate slides off the Penguin biscuits.

The heat seems to slow everything down. Usually it’s green everywhere you look up here. But today the grass is yellow and trodden-on. Even the leaves on the trees look tired. There’s just this hot wind, blowing dust up from the patches of dirt where the grass has given up.

Shane walks behind Dad. He’s wearing cut-off denim shorts and new black slip-on plimsolls, like the ones I’ve got for PE.

We sit beneath a tree and eat the chicken. The knobbly dirt sticks into our bums. Mum passes round warm orange squash in plastic cups. Shane watches me as I lick chicken grease off my fingers.

‘Look at that. It must be a bird of prey,’ Dad points into the sky.

Every other bird is a bird of prey, according to Dad.

‘What do you think, Shane?’

Shane doesn’t reply. His legs are long and tanned, covered in shiny black hairs right down to his ankles.

‘Let’s play a game,’ says Dad.

‘It’s too hot for games, Dan,’ says Mum, lying back so her head’s in the darkest bit of shade. ‘My head’s thumping.’

Dad looks at us. ‘You’re not too hot for a game, are you?’

‘What are we playing?’ I ask.

He thinks. ‘I’ll tell you what. We’ll play find the clue.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You go and find something unusual in the woods, an unusual object. And then you bring it out to me.’

‘What kind of unusual object?’

Mum smirks. ‘I’ve never heard of this game, Dan.’

‘That’s because it’s a new game. You bring me anything that you wouldn’t expect to find in the woods. I decide whose is the most unusual, and the winner gets… a Penguin biscuit.’

‘They’ll be melted by then,’ I say. But I get up anyway. The sun bears down on my shoulders. I’m wearing a strapless dress with an elasticated top, red with white stripes running from my armpits to my knees. The elastic sticks to my ribs. I like the tightness, the feeling of it holding me in.

‘Go on then,’ Dad lies back in the grass. ‘Shane’s already got a head start.’

I look over towards the woods. Shane’s nowhere to be seen.

It’s a bit cooler in the trees. The sunlight comes down in patches. The leaves make an occasional swish in the occasional breeze. I run until I find a piece of dead trunk, crouch behind it and look around on the ground.

What can I find that’s unusual? Everything in the wood is exactly as usual. Trees. Dirt. Twigs. Nothing else. Except the heat.

I sit and wait for Shane. I decide I’ll let him win the game.

A line of ants marches across the wood in front of my nose. A spider runs over my sandal, but I don’t cry out. Everything smells fresh and warm. My thighs begin to ache from crouching, so I kneel down. Twigs dig into my knees, and I know they’ll leave a mark, like the sheet does when you’ve been so deep asleep that you’re all twisted round in the bed.