‘I don’t know.’

‘Have a look.’

She walked over to the edge and peered down.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if you’re unlucky.’

He nodded and took a step back.

‘Then let’s hope you’re unlucky, Diana.’

‘I think you’d have to get away from the cliff.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’ll need a good run-up.’

‘Abraham!’

The young woman was walking toward them, and she wasn’t alone. When Diana saw who it was wobbling along behind her like a dressed-up child, it was as if she had slipped into a forgotten nightmare.

The naked little animal slunk down from the man’s shoulder to the ground and vanished. It unexpectedly reappeared a few feet away, as if it had travelled at lightning speed through an underground tunnel, and had found time to put on fur as well. Because now the animal was a weasel and nothing else. Diana was staring at the weasel when the red jacket disappeared from her field of vision. It was as quick as it was unexpected. The man just stepped up to the edge of the precipice, shouted something into the wind, some kind of deranged pronouncement, and then he was gone.

Only then could she bring herself to have a proper look at the creature who had come to her rescue. She realised its face had once belonged to an older person. A jagged line of broken skin, joined together by a seam of irregular sutures, ran up the wrinkled neck, in behind the long-lobed ears and some way into the grey mop of hair. The chequered shirt hung down like a smock and the tip of a tail moved underneath. A broom of grey bristles. Every once in a while, it bent in under the fluttering fabric and she wished it would disappear for good so she could write it off as a mirage; when it didn’t, she placed her hand on her throat and swallowed. It tasted of blood. When she wiped her lip with the back of her hand, it came away red.

The saggy old man’s face turned, but not toward her, toward a little critter sitting in the grass, flaunting his snowy white chest. They looked at each other for a while. Then the old man walked away, back the way he’d come, up among the sharp, mist-shrouded cliffs, and the weasel followed.

Diana was shaking with cold. Her trousers were like a cold compress around her thighs and she had nothing but an idiotic denim jacket over her shirt.

The young woman left without so much as a glance in her direction. She was grateful for that. It was as though they’d forgotten all about her. As though she’d watched it all through a peephole and they couldn’t see her. And soon, they’d be gone.

‘Wait!’

The girl turned around but didn’t stop.

‘Do you know where Susso is? The woman who was with me?’