‘So I should probably tell you that I told Mum what you said about Bette’s fingers and the bump on the head,’ Basil was saying, ‘and she went a bit weird, and then I may have mentioned that your mum didn’t actually know you were here, and then she actually totally freaked, and I’m sorry, but I think –’

‘I know. She called Mum. And then Mum called me – she was . . . a bit freaked too.’

‘Sorry, I . . .’ The sun was bright and white. Below the level of the landscape I suddenly felt removed enough from everything else that was going on to realise that something wasn’t right in my body.

‘I don’t feel well,’ I said, just as a skewering feeling moved from my abdomen to my head in a sudden spear of pain.

‘Yeah, you don’t look well.’

The headache was quick and immense; I couldn’t remember a headache like it. I put both hands around my skull, feeling as though I had to hold it together. I was shivering a little. The ground beneath me was cold. My skin prickled and I felt weirdly like I had wet myself.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You really don’t look well. You’ve gone a funny colour.’

‘Big pain in my head and –’

‘Holy shit, is that blood?’

I looked down, shocked to see a small wet patch in the crotch of my jeans.

‘Fuck.’ I tried to stand, but a cramp moved through my pelvis, feeling like it had disabled my hips. I crouched over. ‘Ouch. Fuck. Ouch.’

‘Um, shit, okay,’ Basil said. I saw panic in his eyes.

‘Mum. I’ll get Mum,’ he said. ‘You’ve taken the pills, then.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t take them. I haven’t taken them yet. I don’t have the pads and painkillers with me.’

‘Okay. Right. So Mum’s gone to town to get some more dressings for Bette, but I’ll go and climb a tree for reception and call her.’ Basil took off his fleece-lined jacket and laid it over me. ‘These pads and painkillers, where are they?’

‘Bromley. On my desk. Will she be able to find us?’

‘This is the gully. Mum knows the gully. We all know the gully.’

Basil left, the son of a nurse, with a nurse’s efficiency, and I lay curled on my side on the grass. My head still pounded where it lay, and beneath my nose the earth smelled like all the colours of the world had now rotted to brown.

And then, suddenly, I felt better. I felt the strangely physical sensation of the pain lifting as quickly as it had descended. Slowly, testingly, I sat up a little. The sudden absence of any pain was a mystery but also an absolute relief. I breathed in the earthy air – I could smell the silt in the water and the clamour of a bird in the reeds filled my ears – and when I breathed out I didn’t feel any more blood moving into my underpants.