The tent. It’s there. In the clearing, as I thought it would be. It’s dark, but only that half dark which occurs on the exact threshold between day and night, so I can see it perfectly well. Or maybe I just know it’s there.

I’m standing a little away from it, no more than twenty feet, but it feels very small. Like a doll’s tent. There’s movement inside, so she must still be in there. I don’t remember why I’m outside, or why I’m looking at this tent, but I know that she’s inside.

How long has she been in there? How long have I been stood here? No answers. Never answers. We don’t need answers. We just stand and watch.

The tent. Something sleeps. A form, moving in rhythmic swells. The gentle ebb and flow of life. She’s in there. We know it. Everything as it should be.

one.

I boil the kettle again to make myself a fourth cup of tea. I haven’t finished the other three; their quietly cooling remains sit in porcelain coffins on the bookshelf by the window beside an empty bag of chocolate-covered raisins. I’ll deal with them when I get back.

They say a watched pot never boils, but my attention is elsewhere. The kettle clicks off obediently, and I peel myself away from the window to make the tea. Teabag, then milk. Sugar only on a Sunday (not that this anal little health habit did much good). It is a Friday. I scoop in two big spoonfuls anyway.

I’m nervous. For many, many reasons and one. One very big mind-eating reason.

He was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago, but then again as long as I’ve known him, he’s always running a little bit late. Why would it be different now?

By the time he knocks on the door, I am onto my fifth cup, and I’ve scratched halfway through the back of my left hand. I’d held my breath as I watched him roll up in his Daddy’s truck. I also watched him sit in the driver’s seat, staring out ahead into space, pale and frowning. He was there for ten minutes. He doesn’t want to do it. Like the rest of them, he’s too scared. Too scared to see me. I know what he’s thinking: if he doesn’t get out the truck, then the weekend doesn’t happen, and he doesn’t have to say goodbye.

But he does get out, and trudges up the driveway. By the time I open the door, he’s smiling.

“Hey, sausage,” he says.

“Hey, dickhead,” I say.

“It’s been a minute, hasn’t it?”

“Just a few.”

I hug him. Despite everything, it’s still nice to see him. He feels cold, and not just because of the drizzle.

“Have you got everything?”

“Yup.” I point to my bag in the hall, with the sleeping bag and roll up mat haphazardly attached.

“Waterproof?”

“Of course. I’m not stupid, Daniel.”

“Right.”

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He offers to carry it to the truck. I tell him I can do it and he looks concerned.

“Don’t do that,” I say.

“Do what?”

“That face.”

“What face?”

“That one. The worried one. I’m not dying quite yet.”

He’s pretending like he didn’t hear me, jangling the keys back and forth in his hand as he always does. I lob my bag on the backseat as he starts up the truck.

“I’ve got a bottle of wine in the boot,” he says, and grins.

“Wouldn’t expect any less.”

“You ready then?”

My stomach tightens, tying yet another knot.

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

“Then let’s go.”

He presses on the accelerator and the truck jumps into life. It was going to be a long drive.

For an aching moment, as Daniel’s truck turns off the tarmac road onto a track snaking into the woods, I think I don’t know why I agreed to this. Camping makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Not just because of the cold nights in thin sleeping bags on lumpy floors with only millimetres of tent between you and the aggressively intrusive elements. That’s all by the by. No, what makes me profoundly uncomfortable is the deep, trembling unknown beyond the tent. In the black beneath the trees, over the ridge of that hill, anything could be there.

It is an irrational feeling. I know. And enough people have told me so, so even if I didn’t know before, I’d definitely know now. I’m just too accustomed to the hum of traffic, the glow of street lamps, the songs of stumbling drunks on their way home from the pub. There’s none of that when you go camping.

Or maybe it’s because my Dad loved camping. He always used to talk about how much he loved camping. Maybe that was the reason for the aching in my stomach. I’d not been camping since.

But when Daniel asked me through the crackling phone line that grey Sunday afternoon, I had to say yes. It was the perfect opportunity, presented to be neatly wrapped up in a bow, as if someone out there had heard my desperate call.

“Here we are.”

He pulls on the handbrake. We are absolutely, categorically not anywhere. The track disappeared long ago, and for twenty minutes we’ve been driving through dark forest. He’d said we were going to a clearing. Maybe it was, but to me, the trees felt just as oppressive as ever.

“Why here?”

“Can’t you feel it? It’s perfect!”

He leaps out the truck, with a little too much cheeriness that I can tell he’s trying to hard, and flings open the boot. I follow behind, trying to ignore the cold at the fringes of my feeling. It was already late in the afternoon. We’d been driving for three hours.

“Yup, perfect.”

He spots me peering into the boot.

“I could only find the one tent,” he says, sheepishly. “The other one had too many holes in it. I think it got set on fire last time I was here...”

“Oh, right.”

“This isn’t me trying to sleep with you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he adds.

“Not even for old time’s sake?” I say, then laugh.

He visibly relaxes, face softening slightly.

“Not a chance. You could never have this.” He pulls that stupid muscle man pose, then laughs too, his eyes crinkling in the corners.

“I don’t blame you. Especially not now I’m damaged goods.”

His laughter fades, and for a moment his face clouds over.

“No, you’re not. Don’t say that, Alice.” He grabs the one tent and slings it over his shoulder. “I can go back and buy another one on the way if you’re not comfortable. There’s a shop in the village only half an hour away.”

“No, it’s fine, honestly. It’ll be nice to talk.”

“Yeah, it will be.” He leans in and grabs the wine bottle by the neck. “And there’s always this!”

Yes. There’s always the wine.

“We’ll leave the truck here. The spot is just a little walk that way.” He points through the thick trees.

“How far?”

“Not far at all. Couple of minutes.”

“I thought you said this place was perfect.”

“It is. I mean the whole place. Just wait, you’ll see.”

It took him an hour to set up the tent once we reached his perfect spot. An hour punctuated by sporadic (and steadily increasing in volume) bouts of swearing. I tried to help, but he would shepherd me away to sit on the only camping chair he brought. I started to think he hadn’t planned on me being there, but decide against making my thoughts known, even as a joke.

His perfect spot seemed no different to where we left the truck, or the thousand other patches of mossy, dirty ground we passed. There was nothing seemingly special about it. Restless, I went for a wander around the nearby area.

Beyond the spot, further away from where we left the truck, I found a little stream winding and bubbling its way under a fallen tree. It crossed my mind to try and climb over, but thought that nothing could be worse than breaking my ankle all the way out here. I kept wandering around, but all I saw were more and more trees. I couldn’t even hear any birds singing.

So I returned and plonked down in the camping chair, and just watched him struggle instead, wrestling with the bending poles and unending Gore-Tex. And I thought about how I’m going to do it. No one will hear us. There’s nowhere he can run to, not that I have any intention of letting him run. Clean and quick. A simple transaction, is how I’m thinking about it. No more pain than there has to be. I owe him that. He is my friend after all.