‘I think that’s just marvellous,’ she says, as they resume their slow procession down the path. They reach the place where the stile used to be, but there is now a gate, which is easier to negotiate, although after that the path narrows and the wheelchair can go no further.

‘You’re light as a feather, Molly,’ Andy exclaims, hardly breaking breath as they lift her in the fireman’s chair. It is surprisingly comfortable. She is reclined backwards at about forty-five degrees and feels positively regal, like a queen in her sedan, or an Indian maharajah in his howdah – but perhaps that was only for elephants? Andy’s carrying the front of the chair with his back to her, and she can see the muscles rippling reassuringly beneath his T-shirt. Keeping fit is a religion for her former son-in-law, and essential for his job as a fireman. Lewis, who is behind her, seems to be doing fine, too.

After a few minutes they reach the junction – at least that’s what Bella seems to think, although what used to be the path to Eli’s hut is now almost completely overgrown. Andy takes from his backpack a fireman’s axe and a lethal-looking machete and they start hacking at the brambles and saplings, following the trail of small rocks that Eli laid there all those years ago to mark his way at night-time. All the whitewash has gone now, of course, but the rocks lead up the slope to a grove of shrubby trees that are slightly smaller than those around them. This must have been Eli’s glade.

They set Molly down and she stays in the fireman’s chair while Andy and Lewis begin to clear away the bracken and brambles. Bella takes out a flask of tea and some biscuits from her backpack, and Molly remembers the flapjacks Eli used to cook on his little pot-bellied stove, and the sweet tea he served in enamel mugs that burned your lips.

Resuming work after tea, Lewis stubs his toe and lets out a curse that no sixteen-year-old boy should know, in Molly’s opinion. He continues hacking until he’s cleared the undergrowth to reveal the curve of something solid stuck in the ground, heavy and immovable. Something metal . . .

‘It’s the wheel,’ she exclaims. ‘Of the shepherd’s hut.’

‘Then we’re in the right place, Gran?’

‘Definitely,’ she says. ‘Keep going.’

After a few moments half of the wheel has been revealed, lying at forty-five degrees into the ground. As Lewis digs some more, she hears something rattling.

‘Whatever’s that?’

‘Some kind of chain . . .’ Kit’s chain. In the rucksack. What if Jimmy took it?

The world goes pale and the sound of birdsong seems to fade, and then blackness.

When she opens her eyes Molly finds herself in the back of an ambulance.