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as tall as me. That revelation didn’t help.
    The sound of the jeep died away again.
    ‘Out of fuel,’ I murmured.
    Ms Fairfax was watching the interplay with evident amusement. ‘Can we help?’
    ‘Not really,’ I said. My reply covered almost everything I needed help with, from my relationship with Dan to the endless and probably fruitless task I was doing, to our whole hopeless situation.
    ‘I think we can,’ she said briskly. At one gesture from her, the team moved forward as one, lugging lots of heavy bags with them. She followed them, making more gestures, and they began to unpack the bags and extract tent poles, tents, folding camp chairs and beds, and everything anyone could possibly need to sustain life in an army camp for months on end.
    I had never had any ambition to live in an army camp, but even I was impressed. The same couldn’t be said for Declan, who came out from behind the farmhouse and stormed over to me.
    ‘This is all your doing,’ he said. ‘We can’t even get away because we’re completely out of fuel. What do you think? If we pleaded with Tanya would she siphon some out of the helicopter for us? Just to get us out of her beautifully sculpted hair?’
    Dan didn’t say anything, but he stared at both of us as if we had betrayed him, and walked off as if he couldn’t stand to be around us any longer.
    I would have preferred not to be around me either, but I had no choice, obviously. We didn’t even have an alcohol stash, so I couldn’t drink myself into oblivion.
    I took refuge in words.
    ‘I didn’t notice it was beautifully sculpted,’ I said, trying to wind him up. ‘Won’t Fiona be jealous?’
    ‘No, she won’t,’ said Fiona, arriving on the scene right on cue. ‘Are those tents for everybody?’ she added, watching the teenagers work together to start putting up the first one. ‘Or are they reserved for celebrities like Gav?’
    ‘Nothing to do with me,’ I told her. ‘I expect it’s first come, first served. Better put your name down for one right away.’
    ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ said Declan as she began to move towards Tanya Fairfax and the crew. ‘What’s wrong with the home I’ve built for you with my own fair hands?’
    I breathed a long sigh of relief. For some reason he must have decided to be conciliatory for once in his life. I hoped Dan would start to see it the same way once he had thought things over and worked out the advantages of having proper shelter and food supplies and help.
    I was very much afraid he wouldn’t.
     

2. Looking for Mr Goodfellow
     
    EMMA
     
    Jen wasn’t all that impressed when I talked to her about Mr Goodfellow.
    ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘I suppose some of the things that have happened just lately could have driven anybody nuts.’
    I was disproportionately upset by this comment.
    ‘It’s just that I remember him being so sharp and alert. With his mind on the goal all the time. He helped me a lot on that project. It wasn’t his fault we couldn’t push it through between us. I remember your father telling me not to stress – he nearly drove me nuts too.’
    She laughed. ‘You’re so different from each other. I can’t believe you ever got together at all. How did it happen?’
    ‘I’ll tell you one day.’
    ‘What about Mr G, then?
    We were down in the kitchen. The cook, Jeff, didn’t seem to mind. He might have been a spy, for all we knew, and yet there was something about his casual manner and focus on the task in hand that calmed my suspicions and made him seem trustworthy. Or maybe I had been lulled into it by the trifle. As we talked in the corner near the wood stove, he just got on with what he was doing, which involved real vegetables and some meat of unknown origin. Or maybe it was soya. We hadn’t seen meat for a long time, despite living in a country famous for its beef cattle. I knew most of it had been exported, and when I thought about it, I suppose the rest must have gone to the people who knew