‘She’s dead already,’ he said. ‘I need you now. It’s my turn. We should get in the coffin together, you and me. We can hold each other. I like it when you cry. Other women look ugly when they cry. You’re beautiful.’

He knelt in the dirt opposite her, the other side of Elspeth’s unresponsive body, and framed her face with his hands. Behind her, Meggy gripped her harder than ever, crushing her face into Connie’s back and trembling.

Connie’s skin crawled at his touch, slimy and icy, his putrid breath was fiery decay.

‘I need to help Elspeth …’ she told him, pulling away.

‘I just want to hold you forever,’ he said. ‘I want—’

‘I’ll give you anything you want,’ she panted. ‘Two minutes. You count the seconds, then I’m all yours.’

He gave her a wary look.

‘On my life,’ Connie said.

He sat back, letting her be, saying nothing.

Connie took a deep preparatory breath, ready to force air into Elspeth’s lungs again, all sense of reality evaporating, fighting the sense that she had just made a deal with the devil.

Leaning forward, supporting the back of Elspeth’s neck with her left hand as she pinched the unmoving woman’s nose closed with her right, Connie tensed her diaphragm and transferred every atom of oxygen from her own body and into its recipient. Another breath, same again. Meggy was crying behind her. Fergus/Harris – even Connie was confused about his real name now, not that it mattered – was counting steadily in front of them.

Chest compressions, and every pump cost her a second of her life.

‘Don’t do what he says,’ Meggy was muttering. ‘Don’t leave me.’

Fergus/Harris was on his hands and knees crawling towards the coffin. Connie put her fingertips on Elspeth’s wrist. The tiny, weak skittering insect of a pulse made Connie’s own heart stop a moment. She risked a glance in their captor’s direction, but he was staring into the watery grave.

Connie whipped her head round to Meggy.

‘She’s alive,’ she mouthed silently.

Meggy’s mouth fell open, and the girl shifted to throw herself at Elspeth’s side. Connie stopped her, raising a finger in warning.

No more than thirty seconds left before he insisted on being paid the debt Connie owed him. The competing emotions of joy and terror fought for dominance, and she pressed fresh air into Elspeth’s lungs. She could stop compressions now Elspeth’s heart was beating, but her lungs weren’t rising and falling yet, and she needed Fergus/Harris to believe Elspeth was beyond saving.

Twenty seconds left, and he was staring at her now, cheeks red, his few remaining teeth gleaming in carnivorous contrast with the earth around his mouth. His transition from living being to the walking dead was complete.