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“Well then, Ashley, is it? You had best make yourself useful and make us all a coffee. You’ll find some in that second cupboard from the right. Milk’s in the fridge obviously.”

Steph raised her head slightly to see how Ashley would react to being ordered about. He rolled his eyes a little but then unslung his rifle, propped it against the wall and went about making the coffees.

“So, Steph, what are your plans now?” Roger asked.

He was far too jovial for Steph’s liking. She was too tired and angry to have anyone behaving in an upbeat manner around her. She lay back and closed her eyes.

“Well, once I have had a brief rest, I’m getting the hell out of here. Ashley said he would guide me to the fence. Well, I suppose I would lead the way and he would ensure I don’t get eaten.”

“Said he’d help you to the fence?” Roger parroted. “And why would he do a thing like that?”

Steph opened one eye and rolled it in Roger’s direction to see him looking over at Ashley, his last question clearly indirectly addressed to him.

“Because I guided him here,” Steph said, not waiting for Ashley to answer. He had his back turned anyway, too busy measuring heaps of instant coffee.

Roger turned back to Steph briefly before turning around to address Ashley more directly this time.

“Why were you so desperate to come and see us in the cabin?”

“Oh, it was not wanting to see anyone in particular,” Ashley said, continuing to make the coffee. “More just that I assume Kelvin will lose focus and turn up here at some point. He will likely secure the lion, perhaps go back to his little control centre and then come here with his public relations face on thinking that I will have tried to escape whilst I can. Essentially coming here means I can sit in a bit of comfort whilst he comes to me.”

“Uh huh,” replied Roger, his eyebrows raised. “Well, whatever you say.”

Steph looked at the ceiling. Something didn’t feel right. She could not say what it was exactly, but there was something. Was it the ease Ashley and Roger found themselves whilst in each other’s company? Hard to say. Roger seemed at ease in most people’s company. Ashley… well, he seemed to behave outside the normal laws of social convention too to some extent anyway. Perhaps it was nothing. But did Roger fully appreciate that Ashley was one of the men they had initially set out to stop?

“Well, it all seems to be quite the mess,” Roger said, sinking back into his chair after accepting a coffee from Ashley. “I don’t suppose this little experiment of Kelvin’s can really carry on.”

“Not if I can help it,” Ashley said, quite politely as he tapped Steph on the shoulder and pointed to a mug that he was placing on the floor beside her.

Steph noticed Roger frown at the hot mug being placed on bare wood.

“Do you think Kelvin was actually trying to achieve what he said he was trying to achieve?” she asked, suddenly thinking about the wholeexperiment.

“What do you mean?” Roger asked.

“Well,” Steph said, sitting up, “I mean, do you really think thiswas/is a whole rewilding experiment?”

“Hard to say.”

“Why?”

“Because of the prehistoric animals running around. What was the purpose of them except for his own vanity? Rewilding in itself I can understand. Bringing in animals that were native to these lands in years gone by is fine. But everything else…”

“So you think he had two motives?”

“Possibly. Who is to say? You’d have to ask him. He’s a clever enough man and I don’t doubt that he genuinely believes there needs to be some rewilding, or that the planet and people would benefit from it to some extent. Whether he is right or not is another matter. Do people need to learn to live with extinct cave bears and cave lions though?”

“But then why would he pay people like you to see whether you could live alongside them?”

Steph looked intently at Roger who took a sip of his coffee, grimacing slightly at the heat of it.

“I have ideas,” he said. “That’s all they are, of course. But I have them.”

“And they are?”

“One is that he is and must be a competitive man to have made the riches he has for himself. As such, he wants to be the first to do what so many have talked about but not yet achieved. In short, it is vanity and getting people like me involved gives it some fake face of genuinely trying something for thegreater good. Another idea is that he just thinks the whole thing is quite cool. It is, I suppose. It was enough to lure poor Daniel in, away from his fledgling career. However, there is also the possibility that he has done all this because of Martina. That’s the other likelihood.”

“Martina?”