He stiffens resolutely and screams out, ‘Ellis, Ellis!’ Frantic and gut-wrenching – I don’t know how his throat isn’t bleeding, that’s how hard and long and loud the sound strangles out of him. We know Ellis is here somewhere. He has to be. Ellis, Ellis, Ellis. Booker and I press on but I’m not even noticing him wrap the tags round the trees; so as far as I know we’re lost.

A black dot of fear blooms in the middle of my chest.

We’re lost.

Celeste, fumbling through the dark –

Mona, why’d you leave me out here?

‘We’re lost,’ I think I say.

‘Kid, we’re not lost, don’t be –’

Tell and you die.

I think I might puke.

Black oozes from behind my eyes and I don’t even see it happen, the spray and bile. When I’m finished, I know it’s mostly seawater by the way it stings my gums and hollows out my nose. Booker’s hand on my back. ‘We gotta get back to base, kid,’ he says.

‘No.’ I stand up straight and wipe my mouth with my bare forearm. ‘I’m staying.’

He grips my shoulders hard. ‘We’re gonna find him,’ he says.

I want to believe him.

A beat. We walk maybe twenty steps. ‘I talked to Mary Anne,’ I say.

‘That’s right. You went running. I saw; you figured something out.’

‘She loved her.’

Booker stops. Turns and stares at me. ‘Hm?’

‘That’s what Roxy told Mary Anne that upset her. It was that she loved her.’

Booker considers this. Chuckles to himself. ‘Damn.’

‘It’s just weird that – weird that everyone I talked to said they couldn’t stand each other.’

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘That sometimes love and hate look damned near the same.’

We go forward for about an hour without finding anything, saying little else beside his name, and then Booker’s cradling his walkie-talkie. He speaks into it. ‘Probably about two miles in, no dice; you guys got anything?’

The speaker crackles. A man’s voice on the other side: ‘Nothing.’

‘Shit. How’re we doing for time?’

‘You gotta get back.’

‘What, now?’

‘This storm is moving in like all hell. Too fast.

‘Shit, Chuck,’ he says, then hovers his mouth round the receiver, hesitating. ‘I’ve got the kid with me.’

‘Get back here.’

‘She’s fine. She’s keeping up.’

‘You gotta turn round.’

‘Copy. Over.’

Booker looks at me and I realize now what’s happening. We’re leaving him. We’re leaving Ellis. He’s gonna die. ‘No,’ I mutter again.

‘We gotta go, kid,’ and it might be tears in his eyes, it might be the moisture in the air. Doesn’t matter. He’s telling me to go and of course I want to, but obviously I can’t.

‘He’s gonna die.’

‘I’ve gotta get you home.’