‘They’re dead-they’re dead-’ she screamed. ‘Let me go.’

Mandy was struggling to free herself, taking him by surprise so that she was out of his arms before he could stop her. Now she was running here and there in an agony of grief and guilt, colliding with walls, recoiling, running again she knew not where, anywhere if only she could flee the horror inside her head.

He reached for her but she evaded him, heading for a door that led she knew not where. In her blind urgency to escape, she flung it open, not hearing Renzo’s hoarse cry of, ‘No!’ and was halfway across the floor of the room before she realized that the far wall had completely vanished.

Something thundered into her from behind, knocking her to the floor, landing on her, keeping her pinned down while she peered over into the abyss.

‘All right, I’ve got you,’ Renzo said. ‘Just edge back slowly.’

She couldn’t move. Her eyes were fixed on the endless drop into which she had nearly pitched headlong.

‘Gently, gently,’ Renzo urged, pulling her inch by inch until she was a little way back from the edge. Then he seized her suddenly, yanking her to her feet and back through the door, which he slammed shut, then stood leaning back against it, holding her.

‘That…was a very silly thing to do,’ he said in a voice that shook.

‘I…didn’t know…’

‘No, you can’t see that side from where we were. I should have warned you.’

She began to calm down. ‘How could you have warned me? What chance did you have? I was the idiot.’

‘Mandy,’ he murmured against her hair, ‘are we going to pick this moment to argue about who’s the idiot?’

‘No, I guess it’s not a very good idea,’ she whispered.

‘Come on, let’s go somewhere safer.’

He drew her away into another part of the hut, where they could no longer see that the building was half gone, could almost pretend that it wasn’t so.