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very much as we were too tired and the room was too cold. Winter wasn’t that far away and the general feeling was that it was going to be a bad one. Meanwhile, Jamie stayed indoors, not doing very much as far as I could tell, mainly resting and regaining his strength.
    I really wanted to talk to him, to find out more about him. I even went back to the church and walked through the door a couple of times to see what that had been all about. But it was impossible to have a proper conversation. The two of us were hardly ever on our own and Jamie was still sticking to his amnesia story, even though I was certain it wasn’t true.
    And then came the village Assembly. Practically everyone was there. Attendance was compulsory unless you were sick or on duty at the perimeter, but nobody would want to miss an Assembly. We were alone in a world that was dangerous and difficult to understand. Everyone was afraid more or less all the time. At the end of the day, we needed each other. We needed to be reassured.
    The meeting began with the usual stuff. All the crops – from the wheat to the apples and even the wild blackberries on the hedgerows – were down and once again there would have to be cutbacks, although we’d still be able to survive. Old Mrs Brooke had finally died and nobody was going to miss her. She’d been suffering from dementia for some time, wandering in and out of The Queen and swearing at the top of her voice. Applications were now open for those wanting to move into her house. More volunteers were needed for the collection of winter firewood. It looked as if the snow was going to be worse than ever this year and stocks were low.
    At last Reverend Johnstone climbed into the pulpit.
    “My friends,” he began. That was what he always called us, although at the end of one of his dreary sermons there were plenty of us who were anything but. “I do have one remarkable piece of news for you. Many of you will remember that it has been seven years since the Traveller arrived in the village and was welcomed by us. Well, another visitor has turned up out of the blue and presented himself to us, this time a young man of about fifteen. His name is Jamie Tyler and he came here through the wood after being badly injured. He has no memory and cannot tell us where he came from, but having taken account of his age and the fact that he is unarmed and alone, the Council has decided to let him stay.”
    That was the cue for Jamie to step out and present himself – which he did, quite nervously. I’d have been nervous myself. There was one of him and three hundred of us, staring at him with a mixture of fear, curiosity and disbelief. The one thing about life in the village was nothing new ever happened, nobody new ever came. Jamie’s sudden appearance was totally unexpected, as if the clouds had turned green or the pigs had begun to talk. It was completely shocking. And it didn’t matter that he was just a scrawny kid with long hair and a scar on the side of his head. He was a threat to everything the village stood for.
    But the Council had agreed and although there was a lot of muttering, nobody was outright hostile. Jamie made a short speech. He thanked everyone for accepting him (although they hadn’t, really) and promised to work hard in the village. I was looking at him as he spoke. Then I glanced sideways and noticed George, who was watching me while I was staring at Jamie. He didn’t look pleased and when I heard that Jamie was going to work at the bakery, helping fuel and clean the ovens, I had a feeling it wasn’t a good idea.
    That wasn’t quite the end of it. We all milled out of the church, people still talking to each other in low voices and more or less ignoring Jamie, who was now on his own, near the door. I was about to go over to him when suddenly I found the Traveller at my side. I don’t think he’d spoken to me more than a few times in all the years he’d been here, but he spoke to me now.
    “The boy