Thick with trees, bushes and ferns, the forest was a shady tousle of vegetation, practically impenetrable beyond the path. Several giant trees, like the one she rested against, lay dead and decaying where they’d fallen years ago, creating fertile surfaces for other life. A caravan of ants, each insect hauling a tiny piece of plant, trickled past her boots and disappeared, one by one, beneath a chunk of bark.

The air was musty with mould and decomposing plants but there was something else too, another smell. Faye lifted her head and sniffed. She couldn’t place it. The fustiness reminded her of the odour in her car when she fetched Zach and his friends from the athletics track. Yes. That was it. The forest reeked like perspiring young sportsmen wearing kit that was saturated with sweat. It was the kind of grime that had accumulated over time and which no amount of washing would ever eradicate. Only the smell in the forest was much worse. Was it a plant? A dead animal? Were the odour and feeling of being watched related?

Faye rubbed her hands together. Her palms were wet. She took two deep breaths to calm herself. That didn’t help. Forget the mysterious smell, it’s time to go, she thought, glancing at her bag on the floor. She was about to lift it when the sharp crack of a branch and scuffling of leaves behind her cut through the quiet. She turned slowly.

A few metres away, three bush pigs stared down their long, bristly snouts at her over a leafy branch.

“Oh, my,” she whispered.

The pigs’ small eyes glistened, unblinking. The largest was the height of a big Labrador retriever, but much broader. His spiky stubble and whiskers protruded at all angles along his jaw and above his nostrils in an even unrulier version of Zach’s messiest morning hair. He flicked a fuzzy ear towards her. Was it a sign? Would they charge her? Were wild pigs carnivorous? Why wouldn’t they be?

Faye remembered how horrified she’d been when a school friend told her that domestic sows sometimes ate their newborn piglets. She searched her mind for something else she might know about pigs and their behaviour. All she could come up with was the image of the cover of George Orwell’s Animal Farm featuring an illustration of the porcine antagonist, Napoleon. His little eyes were red and there was blood on his trotters. Faye remembered how the boar had commanded the dogs he’d raised to chase Snowball from the farm, and how he’d allowed Boxer to die without calling the vet.

There was no doubt about it; pigs could be monsters.