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‘And before lunchtime, too. Don’t worry,’ they told someone else, ‘we’ll get him up to our room. He can have a little lie down. Won’t you, granddad?’

It wasn’t far back to Little Caldwell from Greenham Common.

The problem was that Joel had panicked and driven the car down a side road, and now he had no idea which way he was going.

The helicopter buzzed him again. Joel yelled involuntarily at the sheer noise of the thing. He slammed the accelerator Pedal down hard, skidded as a tyre went into the mud, dragged on the steering wheel.

He was so terrified that his brain felt like a superconductor, colder than ice and running at ten times normal speed.

This was what they wanted — to force him into some obscure spot so that they could grab him without witnesses. If they wanted to kill him, they’d be shooting at him right now.

He could radio for help. But even if he could take his hands off the wheel for a moment the chopper would only hear the message. He had to get back onto a main road, drive away from Little Caldwell.

Two minutes later he lost control and slammed sideways into a tree.

Luckily, it was the other side of the car.

‘So much for that brilliant plan,’ he gasped, his whole body resounding with the shock of impact. His ears rang in the sudden silence — and then the chopper was behind him, its blades booming as it slowly came down.

It would take them no more than thirty seconds to land, get out, and come and get him.

He kicked open the door and ran for the line of trees a hundred feet away. Some part of his hyperactive brain was waiting for the bullets. They never came.

He didn’t look back as he reached the trees. There was no shouting, just the sound of running feet, the whine of the helicopter’s engines as they slowed down.

He sprinted at random through the forest. The mist was still heavy on the ground. It wrapped itself around him, obscuring logs and rocks. He barked his shins, tripped, got up and kept running. It was deadly quiet.

There was a fallen tree, its leaves hanging down, heavy with moisture. He got on his hands and knees and crawled under it, turning instinctively to face back the way he’d come, flattening himself against the frozen ground.

He couldn’t stop shaking. But it was the cold. The fear hadn’t hit him yet, not in any way he could process. He pushed his head down against his arms and listened as the soldiers came through the forest towards him.

They had slowed down, which meant they’d lost sight of him and were trying to work out which way to go. Possibly they’d realized he’d hidden. By the sound of it, there were only two or three of them, crunching about in their heavy boots.

There was nothing for it but to lie very still and hope they didn’t see him. Fear not, Ranger! he told himself.

The walking sounds came closer. He caught a glimpse of one of them, a big uniformed man. British Army. Shit. If this was just because of Greenham, he was going to strangle Ms Randrianasolo.

They walked around him and past him, deeper into the forest.

He waited ten minutes, counting the seconds in his head, and dying for a cigarette.

It was absolutely still. He was still shaking inside his anorak, wishing to God he’d worn something warmer.

It had always been summer when he and his role-playing friends had headed out into the park to play war games,

‘shooting’ one another by calling out one another’s name.

The aim of the game was to get back to the base without being seen.

Once, he’d hidden between a couple of bushes, wriggling into the leaves with his eyes closed to avoid a poke in the pupil. Instead of running around looking for people, he’d let them come to him, saying their names very quietly as they walked past his invisible hidey-hole.

In the end he’d ‘shot’ four of the other players. They’d all gone grumbling back to Morgue Rock to wait out the rest of the game.

After twenty minutes, he’d become bored waiting for the fifth player to stumble past. With only one other player still in the