‘Do you mean…?’ I felt myself frown in the dark. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Ruby was staring up at the outline of the trees traced on our tent. ‘I don’t know what I mean really.’ She rolled over. ‘Thank God for that mysterious stranger though.’

‘Bill’s mate?’ I said lightly, but my face felt inordinately hot suddenly.

‘Yeah, him. Thank God.’ She tucked herself into the foetal position. ‘I just – I can’t wait to go home again.’

‘Me too.’ Tension was pinging in my very bones. ‘I’m going to get a bit of air, babe.’

‘OK.’ She sounded drowsy now. ‘Watch out for goblins in the night.’

But, unzipping the tent, I couldn’t help feeling it wouldn’t be a bad thing if I did just disappear.

After all, I’d done it enough times before.

Ruby

Curled on top of my sleeping bag in the muggy tent, I watched my fretful son – muttering and grinding his teeth until finally he seemed to drop into a calmer, deeper sleep. Dreaming of happier days, I hoped: of his dad, maybe; hotdogs and home games at QPR in the family stand.

After the events of the past few hours, selfishly perhaps, I was just relieved my own child was fine.

The shadows of the trees danced across the thin fabric of the tent as I listened to the night-time woods. Nearby, an owl called for its mate: one of a pair, I hoped. Something scuffled in an inhuman way, reminding me of the hedgehogs I fed as a kid in Yorkshire.

Jonny and I had gone camping in Cumbria once, just after he’d qualified as a paramedic. Despite his brief stint in the army, we were useless campers, forgetting everything we needed except vodka and chocolate, but we’d laughed so much, high on life, and each other.

Life with Jonny hadn’t always been funny – but at least there had been the possibility.

Eventually I fell into a fitful doze myself and, in my ears, the crack of the gun still vibrated.

I dreamt of Jonny on a huge empty beach. He kept talking to me, gesturing vehemently, but I couldn’t hear the words. Every time I moved closer, he moved back, closer and closer towards the sea until he was in the waves up to his knees.

‘Don’t go!’ I cried. ‘Jonny, don’t go!’ But soon the sea swallowed him.

When I woke around dawn, I was gasping for air. I wasn’t sure Gwyneth Paltrow hadn’t been in my dream too: a perfect blonde siren on top of a hill, wearing a floaty white dress, laughing down at my distress.

Or maybe it had been Nella.

Melissa

MONDAY 28 AUGUST

Outside the tent, the breeze was fresh across my face, pushing clouds across the pale biscuit moon. Dark flits of bats dashed through the branches in the clearing ahead, like naughty children chasing one another.

‘Hey diddle, diddle, the cat in the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.’