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“Thanks. However, then things went a little wrong. We came around a corner and straight into the cave bear, which was like driving towards a large furry brick wall.”

“Should have run the bloody thing over!” Calum said, taking a sharp inhale of breath and clutching his knee.

“Idiot!” Martina spat. “It would have caused too much damage to the bear!”

“Precisely!”

“Less damage than you think,” Davey said. “Those buggies are ridiculously light. Economical, but not built for crashing.”

Martina ignored him; she was still glaring at the top of Calum’s head as he stared at the ceiling. Davey gave Roger and Steph a tired look.

“Anyway, I swerved and, cutting a long story short, crashed and overturned the buggy.”

“Fucking my knee in the process,” Calum added.

“Yes,fuckinghis knee in the process.”

Steph waited. Roger was leaning in, clearly also expecting more.

“Well, I have gathered that you got away, but how?” Steph asked. “Surely it doesn’t make sense that the bear just let you go, but that’s what the tracks suggested!”

“You read the tracks in the dark?” Davey asked, his tone betraying mild admiration.

“Despite my current forms of revenue, I am actually trained for field work – including tracking!” Steph replied, flicking herhair back and realising that half of it stuck to her damp cheek. She thought it best not to say it was Michael who had made the assessment on the bear and not her.

Davey smiled slightly and continued, “It surprisedusif truth be told. We didn’t really hang about to find out why we weren’t followed. Maybe the bear was startled. Maybe it couldn’t be arsed to chase us despite us having to help hop-along over there. I don’t know. Maybe it just wasn’t hungry.”

Steph had not really considered the cave bear before and what made it tick. It was certainly the apex of the whole sorry project. How that impacted its actions was unclear – everything underneath it was desperate. Maybe it didn’t need to worry about chasing every food source yet. It could, for now, let the peasants fight for scraps whilst taxing them on their kills.

“Of course, it didn’t matter that the big bastard left us alone,” Calum said.

“It’s not a bastard,” Martina sniffed.

Calum ignored her. “It wasn’t long before we started being followed by another bear.”

“The one you shot?” Steph asked, turning to Davey.

“Yeah. It started trailing us as we left some trees. We weren’t going to get away because we needed to help Calum, that much was clear, so I hid us. I sort of hoped that, given the weather, the bear might lumber past us. But then you came along and stuffed that plan right up.”

“How was I meant to know? I was trying to find you to help you. Michael would have left you to die! In fact, he basically did!”

“And what a help you were,” Davey said rolling his eyes.

“Oh, come on now,” Roger tutted. “You can’t fault someone for trying to help others… even if they do end up becoming the one in need of help instead.”

Steph turned to Roger who was smiling at her behind his mugof tea as he lifted it to his mouth.

“What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“What’s your story in all this? You’re the one enigma nobody can account for.”

Everyone turned to Roger who shrugged. “I’m afraid my story is not actually that interesting. I saw Michael arrive back with the thing whilst looking out of the window. I assumed that was that and everything was taken care of so got my bag and started walking back to my cabin.”

“What?” Davey spluttered. “You thought that you would just walk back to your cabin?”

“Yes,” Roger replied, raising his eyebrows in surprise to the question. “Why wouldn’t I?”