Harold and Dog were so close to Berwick they must do nothing but walk. After his experience with the pilgrims, he was anxious to avoid public attention. In talking to strangers, and listening, he feared he had created a need in them to be carried and he hadn’t the strength for that any more. If he and Dog came to a built-up area and could not bypass it, they slept in fields on its fringes until dark, and then crossed in the early hours of the morning. They ate what they found in hedgerows, and bins. They picked only from the allotments or trees that looked uncared for. They still stopped to taste spring water wherever it bubbled up, but they troubled no one. Once or twice someone asked for his photograph, and he obliged, though he found it hard to look into the camera. Occasionally a passer-by recognized him and offered food. A man who was possibly a journalist asked if he was Harold Fry. But since he was careful to keep his head low, and since he stuck to the shadows and the wider spaces, people mostly left him alone. He even avoided his reflection.

“I hope you feel better,” said a graceful woman with a greyhound. “It was such a shame to lose you. My husband and I wept.” Not understanding, Harold thanked her and moved on. The land heaved ahead and formed dark peaks.

Strong winds came from west to north, bringing rain. It was too cold to sleep. He lay rigid within his sleeping bag, watching patches of cloud as they skittered across the moon, and trying to keep warm. The dog lay against him in the sleeping bag. Its ribs were cavernous. He thought of the day David swam out at Bantham, and the fragility of his son against the coastguard’s tanned arms. He remembered the nicks in David’s skull where he had dug the razor, and how he used to haul David upstairs before he was sick again. All those times David had put his body at risk, as if in defiance of the ordinariness that was his father.