A tiny, fractional pause. Then she said calmly, in a different voice, "Want me to pick you up?"

"Yeah. Please." I hadn't realized, till she said it, that that was why I had rung her.

"OK. See you soon." She hung up.

It took her forever to get there, long enough that I started imagining panicky nightmare scenarios: she had been splattered across the highway by a truck, got a flat tire and been abducted from the roadside by human traffickers. I managed to pull out my gun and hold it in my lap-I had enough sense left not to cock it. I chain-smoked; the car filled up with a haze that made my eyes water. Outside, things rustled and pounced in the undergrowth, twigs snapped; over and over I whipped round with my heart racing wildly and my hand tightening on the gun, sure I had seen a face at the window, feral and laughing, but there was never anything there. I tried switching on the roof light, but it made me feel too conspicuous, like some primitive man with predators drawn by the firelight circling just beyond its glow, and I turned it off again almost at once.

At last I heard the Vespa buzzing, saw the beam of its headlamp coming over the hill. I got my gun back into its holster and opened the door; I didn't want Cassie to see me fumbling with it. After the darkness her lights were dazzling, surreal. She pulled up in the road, bracing the bike with her foot, and called, "Hey."

"Hi," I said, stumbling out of the car; my legs were cramped and stiff, I must have been pressing both feet against the floorboards the whole time. "Thanks."

"No problem. I was awake anyway." She was flushed and bright-eyed from the wind of driving, and when I got close enough I felt its cold aura striking off her. She swung her rucksack off her back and pulled out her spare helmet. "Here."

Inside the helmet I couldn't hear anything, only the bike's steady hum and the blood beating in my ears. The air flowed past me, dark and cool as water; cars' headlights and neon signs streamed by in bright lazy trails. Cassie's rib cage was slight and solid between my hands, shifting as she changed gears or leaned into a turn. I felt as if the bike was floating, high above the road, and I wished we were on one of those endless American freeways where you could drive on and on forever through the night.

She had been reading in bed when I rang. The futon was pulled out, made up with the patchwork duvet and white pillows; Wuthering Heights and her oversized T-shirt were tumbled at the foot. There were semi-organized heaps of work stuff-a photo of the ligature mark on Katy's neck leaped out at me, hung in the air like an afterimage-scattered across the coffee table and the sofa, overlaid with Cassie's going-out clothes: slim dark jeans, a red silk handkerchief top embroidered in gold. The chubby little bedside lamp gave the room a cozy glow.

"When did you last eat?" Cassie asked.

I had forgotten about my sandwiches, presumably still somewhere in the clearing. My sleeping bag and my thermos, too; I would have to get them in the morning, when I picked up my car. A fast finger ran down my neck at the thought of going back in there, even by daylight. "I'm not sure," I said.

Cassie rummaged in the wardrobe, passed me a bottle of brandy and a glass. "Have a shot of that while I make food. Eggs on toast?"

Neither of us likes brandy-the bottle was unopened and dusty, probably a prize from the Christmas raffle or something-but a small objective part of my mind was pretty sure that she was right, I was in some kind of shock. "Yeah, great," I said. I sat down on the edge of the futon-the thought of clearing all that stuff off the sofa seemed almost unimaginably complicated-and stared at the bottle for a while until I realized I was supposed to open it.

I threw down way too much brandy, coughed (Cassie glanced over, said nothing) and felt it kick in, burning trails of warmth through my veins. My tongue throbbed; I had apparently bitten it, at some point or other. I poured myself another shot and sipped it more carefully. Cassie moved deftly around the kitchenette, pulling herbs out of a cupboard with one hand and eggs out of the fridge with the other and shoving a drawer shut with her hip. She had left music on-the Cowboy Junkies, turned down low, faint and slow and haunting; normally I like them, but tonight I kept hearing things hidden somewhere behind the bass line, quick whispers, calls, a throb of drumbeat that shouldn't have been there. "Can we turn that off?" I said, when I couldn't stand it any longer. "Please?"

She turned from the frying pan to look at me, a wooden spoon in her hand. "Yeah, sure," she said after a moment. She switched off the stereo, popped the toast and piled the eggs on top of it. "Here."

The smell made me realize how hungry I was. I shoveled the food down in huge mouthfuls, barely stopping to breathe; it was whole-grain bread and the eggs were redolent with herbs and spices, and nothing had ever tasted so richly delicious. Cassie sat cross-legged at the top of the futon, watching me over a piece of toast. "More?" she said, when I had finished.

"No," I said. Too much too quickly: my stomach was cramping viciously. "Thanks."

"What happened?" she said quietly. "Did you remember something?"

I started to cry. I cry so seldom-only once or twice since I was thirteen, I think, and both those times I was so drunk that it doesn't really count-that it took me a moment to understand what was happening. I rubbed a hand across my face and stared at my wet fingers. "No," I said. "Nothing that does any good. I can remember all that afternoon, going into the wood and what we were talking about, and hearing something-I can't remember what-and going to find out what it was… And then I panicked. I fucking panicked." My voice cracked.

"Hey," Cassie said. She scooted across the futon and put a hand on my shoulder. "That's a huge step, hon. Next time you'll remember the rest."

"No," I said. "No, I won't." I couldn't explain, I'm still not sure what made me so certain: this had been my ace in the hole, my one shot, and I had blown it. I put my face in my hands and sobbed like a child.

She didn't put her arms around me or try to comfort me, and I was grateful for this. She just sat there quietly, her thumb moving regularly on my shoulder, while I cried. Not for those three children, I can't claim that, but for the unbridgeable distance that lay between them and me: for the millions of miles, and the planets separating at dizzying speed. For how much we had had to lose. We had been so small, so recklessly sure that together we could defy all the dark and complicated threats of the adult world, run straight through them like a game of Red Rover, laughing and away.

"Sorry about that," I said at last. I straightened up and wiped my face with the back of my wrist.

"For what?"

"Making an idiot of myself. I didn't intend to do that."

Cassie shrugged. "So we're even. Now you know how I feel when I have those dreams and you have to wake me up."

"Yeah?" This had never occurred to me.

"Yeah." She rolled over onto her stomach on the futon, reached for a packet of tissues in the bedside table and passed them to me. "Blow."

I managed to work up a weak smile, and blew my nose. "Thanks, Cass."

"How're you doing?"

I caught a long shuddery breath and yawned, suddenly and irrepressibly. "I'm all right."

"You about ready to crash?"

The tension was slowly draining out of my shoulders and I was more exhausted than I'd ever been in my life, but there were still quick little shadows zipping past my eyelids, and every sigh and crack of the house settling made me jerk. I knew that if Cassie switched off the light and I was alone on the sofa the air would fill up with layers of nameless things, pressing and mouthing and twittering. "I think so," I said. "Would it be OK if I slept here?"