"Sausages and potatoes," I said. "We can build a fire and get sticks-"

"No, no fire, they'd see it. Don't get anything that needs cooking. Get stuff in tins, spaghetti hoops and baked beans and stuff. Say it's for your mam."

"Someone better bring a tin-opener-"

"Me; my mam has an extra one, she won't know."

"Sleeping bags, and our torches-"

"Duh, but that's not till the last minute, we don't want them noticing they're gone-"

"We can wash our clothes in the river-"

"-stick all our rubbish down a hollow tree so no one finds it-"

"How much money have you guys got?"

"My confirmation money's all in the bank, I can't get it."

"So we'll get cheap stuff, milk and bread-"

"Eww, milk'll go bad!"

"No it won't, we can keep it in the river in a plastic bag-"

"Jamie drinks chunky milk!" Peter yelled. He jumped at the wall and started scrambling up to the top.

Jamie leaped after him. "I do not, you drink chunky milk, you-" She grabbed Peter's ankle and they tussled on top of the wall, giggling wildly. I caught up with them, and Peter shot out an arm and dragged me into the scuffle. We wrestled, yelping and breathless with laughter, balancing dangerously half over the edge. "Adam eats bugs-" "Screw you, that was when we were little-"

"Shut up!" Peter snapped suddenly. He shook us off and froze, crouched on the wall, hands out to silence us. "What's that?"

Motionless and alert as startled hares, we listened. The wood was still, too still, waiting; the normal afternoon bustle of birds and insects and unseen little animals had been cut off as if by a conductor's baton. Only somewhere, up ahead of us-

"What the…" I whispered.

"Shhh." Music, or a voice; or just some trick of the river on stones, the breeze in the hollow oak? The wood had a million voices, changing with every season and every day; you could never know them all.

"Come on," said Jamie, her eyes shining, "come on," and launched herself like a flying squirrel off the wall. She caught a branch, swung, dropped and rolled and ran; Peter was leaping after her before the branch stopped swaying, and I scrambled down the wall and chased behind them, "Wait for me, wait-"

The wood had never been so lush or so feral. Leaves threw off dazzles of sunlight like sparklers and the colors were so bright you could live on them, the smell of fertile earth amplified to something heady as church wine. We shot through humming clouds of midges and leaped ditches and rotten logs, branches swirled around us like water, swallows trapezed across our path and in the trees alongside I swear three deer kept pace with us. I felt light and lucky and wild, I had never run so fast or jumped so effortlessly high; one shove of my foot and I could have been airborne.

How long did we run? All the familiar loved landmarks must have shifted, turned out to wish us good speed, because we passed every one of them on our way; we jumped the stone table and soared through the clearing in one bound, between the whip of the blackberry bushes and the rabbits poking up their noses to see us go by, we left the tire swing swaying in our wake and swung one-handed round the hollow oak. And up ahead, so sweet and wild it hurt, drawing us on-

Gradually I became aware that under the sleeping bag I was drenched in sweat; that my back, pressed against the tree trunk, was so rigid that I was shaking, my head nodding in stiff convulsive jerks like a toy's. The wood was black, blank, as if I had been blinded. Far off, there was a quick pittering sound like raindrops on leaves, tiny and spreading. I fought to ignore it, to keep following where that frail gold thread of memory led, not to drop it in this darkness or I would never find my way home.

Laughter streaming over Jamie's shoulder like bright soap-bubbles, bees whirling in a sunbeam and Peter's arms flying out as he leaped a fallen branch whooping. My shoelaces coming undone and alarm peals rising fiercely somewhere inside me as I felt the estate dissolving to mist behind us, are you sure, are you sure, Peter, Jamie, wait, stop-

The pittering sound was catching all through the wood, rising and falling, drawing closer on every side. It was in the branches high overhead, in the undergrowth behind me, small and swift and intent. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. Rain, I told myself with whatever was left of my mind, just rain, though I couldn't feel a drop. Off at the other side of the wood something screamed, a shrill witless sound.

Come on, Adam, hurry, hurry up-

The darkness in front of me was shifting, condensing. There was a sound like wind in the leaves, a great rushing wind coming down through the wood to clear a path. I thought of the torch, but my fingers were frozen around it. I felt that gold thread twist and tug. Somewhere across the clearing something breathed; something big.

Down by the river. Skidding to a stop; willow branches swaying and the water firing off splinters of light like a million tiny mirrors, blinding, dizzying. Eyes, golden and fringed like an owl's.

I ran. I scrabbled out of the clutching sleeping bag and threw myself into the wood, away from the clearing. Brambles clawed at my legs and hair, wing-beats exploded in my ear; I shoulder-barged straight into a tree trunk, knocking myself breathless. Invisible dips and hollows flicked open under my feet and I couldn't run fast enough, legs crashing knee-deep through underbrush, it was like every childhood nightmare come true. Trailing ivy wrapped my face and I think I screamed. I knew beyond all doubt I would never get out of the wood, they would find my sleeping bag-for an instant I saw, sharp as reality, Cassie in her red sweater, kneeling in the clearing among falling leaves and reaching out a gloved hand to touch the fabric-and nothing else, ever.

Then I saw a fingernail of new moon between racing clouds and knew I was out, on the dig. The ground was treacherous, it sideslipped and gave under my feet and I stumbled, flailing, barked my shin on a fragment of some old wall; saved my balance in the nick of time and kept running. There was a harsh gasping sound loud in my ears, but I couldn't tell whether it came from me. Like every detective, I had taken it for granted that I was the hunter. It had never once occurred to me that I might have been the hunted, all along.

The Land Rover loomed up radiantly white through the darkness like some sweet shining church offering sanctuary. It took me two or three tries to get the door open; once I dropped my keys and had to grope frantically in the leaves and dry grass, staring wildly over my shoulder and sure I would never find them, until I remembered I was still holding the torch. Finally I clambered in, banging my elbow off the steering wheel, locked all the doors and sat there, gasping for breath and sweating all over. I was way too shaky to drive; I doubt I could even have pulled out without hitting something. I found my cigarettes, managed to light one. I wished, badly, that I had a stiff drink, or a large joint. There were huge smears of mud across the knees of my jeans, though I didn't remember falling.

When my hands were steady enough to push buttons, I phoned Cassie. It had to be well after midnight, maybe much later, but she answered on the second ring, sounding wide awake. "Hi, you, what's up?"

For one hideous moment I thought my voice wasn't going to work. "Where are you?"

"I just got home like twenty minutes ago. Emma and Susanna and I went to the cinema and then had dinner at the Trocadero and, God, they gave us the loveliest red wine ever. These three guys tried to chat us up, Emma said they were actors and she'd seen one of them on TV in that hospital thing-"

She was tipsy, but not actually drunk. "Cassie," I said. "I'm in Knocknaree. At the dig."