He, the boy, one of the boys, poked the fire with a stick. A drizzly spark hissed into his coat sleeve with a smell like a toasted seed. He placed the stick to one side, away from the blanket. The fire was going all right now. As the smoke sank away, in the not-quite dark of the edge, he could see what must be miles of forest, and all the fires between the trees, all the blankets, tents sometimes, all the people.

‘You didn’t find her then?’ The woman with the baby passed him again on the way to the stinky pit.

He shook his head. The woman went on; he turned away before she pulled up her coat to squat.

He watched the dark fall into the fire and listened to the sound of lorries churning mud, this side of the barbed wire or the other.

He pulled his bag towards him. The socks and schoolbooks were still damp, his mother’s scarf too, but the scraps of plastic bag he’d tied round the packet of biscuits seemed to have done the trick. It felt dry. There were sixteen and a quarter remaining in the packet. At least two of them were cracked but not splintered, not crumbly. He believed the others were intact but he couldn’t see further into the packet without splitting the wrapping.

He ate the quarter biscuit. The water they made them drink from the ditches and puddles wasn’t the colour it should ...