Mr Mayhood set his lantern at his feet and then sat down. ‘I think we’ve taken this about as far as it can go,’ he said. ‘That’s Hollis under there. I’m not exhuming him. It’s time we called in the police.’

Florence only stared down at the earth. ‘You’re saying that’s a grave?’

‘I’ve seen enough of them to know.’ He rubbed his sweating forehead and exhaled a broken noise. ‘Jesus, Charlie, how could this have happened?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He was a gruff old bastard, Hollis, but he meant no harm. She must’ve lost her bloody mind.’

No answer he could give was going to be enough, but Charlie mustered one more ‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, it’s the end for us. You know that, don’t you? I mean, everything is wasted now. It’s done.’ The folds of Mr Mayhood’s sleeve had come unpinned and it was draping like a windless flag about his stump. There was a devastated slump about his body. ‘You’d better go with Florence. Take the wagon over to the station. Don’t ring 999 – they’ll get the wrong idea. I can wait for them all night, if need be.’

‘Do you really think that she could do this?’ Florence said. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t. She wouldn’t have it in her heart.’

Slowly, Mr Mayhood lowered his back on to the ground. ‘I never would’ve dreamed it a few hours ago. But that’s a grave. And they’re his teeth back at the house.’ He lay there, gazing up, with one hand on his breast, then shut his eyes. ‘Anyway, what bothers me is people thinking we could do this, Flo. Let’s fix one problem at a time. So hurry up. Take Charlie. Tell them everything.’

‘You can’t stay here all night,’ she said. ‘You’ll freeze. You haven’t eaten.’

‘I’ll be fine. I’ve suffered worse.’

Charlie spoke up then. ‘Or we could leave things as they are. Go home together.’ It was less of an appeal than a prayer. Because the only thing he wanted was to push the caravan on to its pitch again where it belonged and never speak of what they’d found. Maybe they could drive out to the coast and hurl the box of teeth into the sea. Nobody would miss old Hollis. Nobody was looking for him. No one cared that he was gone.

But Mr Mayhood’s eyes flicked open then and he sat up. ‘You’re right – we could do that. It wouldn’t be too hard, at first. Just put this all back where it came from, eh? And off we go into the night.’ A wreath of vapour lifted from his body as he spoke. The tolerance he’d shown before was absent now. His voice had coarsened. He was glancing to the stars, as though to curse them or commune with them. ‘Forget it all. I like the sound of that. I do. But trust me when I say this, Charlie, you can carry on as though it never happened, but it’s not the same as living. And we want a life for you.’