One

She had made herself known to him by peeling away from the stream of fighting bodies. She was a sudden stillpoint in the current. She raised her hand and he saw now what it was about her that had itched at his mind for so long. The alien meld of her hand against his; the misted imprint of her fingers on the motorhome window. He understood the significance of the drawing he had seen, of the six-fingered hand enclosing the stick figure within. He thought of protection and assistance. Of species intertwined, interweaved, interdependent. Of mutualist relationships. Of pilot fish and sharks. Of the jaws of the fates.

He thought, perhaps, that she must have chosen him as her little project. A way to maybe convince herself that there was a shred of humanity left in her. Like Aidan, she was fighting against a stacked deck. He wondered if she was the girl whose house he had invaded in Burnmouth, a hundred thousand years ago. A bedroom filled with the accoutrements of the seriously ill. Stuffed toys and sleeping draughts. Posters of Disney characters and a diary filled with appointments to see specialists. Nobody could say how a failed physique might react when bombarded by the special chemistry of the cosmos. A trillion photons passing through the flesh were bound to have some kind of impact. Time bombs and slow releases. The savagery of the mutated cell. Maybe she had witnessed his tender interment of her No. 1 Grandpa – no matter how tokenistic the act – and it had helped her to ignore the death knell of her own heart. For Jane, it was something to cling to, at least.

A Skinner came pounding across the sand and the girl turned and floored it with the heel of her hand. Very clearly, Jane heard the crack of its host's sternum upon instant deceleration. The girl looked back towards Jane, as if seeking approval, and hooked a finger over the edge of her scarf. She pulled it clear of her lower face. The glands in Jane's mouth squirted sour enzymes on to his tongue in some kind of recognition. Her jaws were deep, powerful. The ring of her teethwas too great for her lips to close over them. He felt a wave of love for her. She had seen on or around him some shade that he could not recognise in himself. A scar on race memory, some brief verse from DNA's long lament. The dedication he showed for his son was echoed in her looking out for him. They were nesting parts of the same Russian doll. She was the outer figure; Stanley was the baby at the core that could not open. He was somewhere between, rattling around, seeking closure.

'Come on,' Becky urged.

He turned away from the girl when she bent to the body, a long, curved knife sliding out of the sheath of her hand and opening the Skinner with the deep Y-cut of a pathologist. He ran with Becky and he couldn't give voice to his fear that the raft might, in the face of the vicious fighting, have cut loose its mooring ropes and be scudding across the Channel. They had said they would return, but he didn't believe that. He knew that the boat was making one journey and it was more about getting away than arriving.

They reached the broad curve of the peninsula. The fires along the shore had burned down to embers; they looked like the sullen eyes of great lizards basking in the shingle. Jane thought he saw a swatch of striped fabric, the blue and white of Stanley's pyjamas in the mad criss-cross of bodies, but he couldn't be sure. His mind would not banish the illogicality. He wanted to believe anything and everything that his desperation sowed in him. Pain was unfolding in his shoulder now; no matter how still he kept his arm, it was as if he could feel the ball of his humerus being ground into a socket lined with glass splinters. The deep beat of heat around the shrapnel gave the illusion that his heart had shifted location.

He still wasn't certain he could get onto the raft knowing his boy remained on this soil. He understood that this might mean a lifetime of picking through rubble and entering buildings of shadow that harboured beings that wanted him dead, but all other alternatives possessed no attraction for him. A life free from threat in another country would be hollow; he would barely register what happened from day to day. He would be thinking only of the UK, and his boy squirrelled away in some alley or attic, wishing for his dad, wondering why his dad had not come for him.