‘So what do we do now, Jane?’

‘Watch the church. Keep watching the steeple.’

The steeple must have been half a mile away, at least, but from up here you felt you could prick your hand on the tip of the weathercock. Beyond it, to the west, you could see distant Hay Bluff over the mist, a dent in the sky at the end of the Black Mountains.

Jane put on her sunglasses.

‘And then we walk towards it.’

Lol followed her, keeping a few feet behind, sure now that something else was bothering her. Some problem between her and Eirion? They’d been together a long time. Maybe too long, for teenagers.

‘We came up the easy way,’ Jane said over her shoulder. ‘But we have to follow a different route down, to more or less keep to the line. The path zigzags a bit, but if we keep the steeple in view…’

‘Eirion OK, Jane?’

‘Fine.’ Her voice was a little too light. ‘Off to uni in September.’

‘Where?’

‘Depends on his A-level results. Oxford, if he does well. Bristol or Cardiff if he fluffs. Or, if he really fluffs, one of these joints that used to be an FE college until, like, last week?’

‘I see.’

‘I mean, it’s ridiculous how like everybody has to go somewhere. You need a degree to be a hospital porter now. You probably need a degree in, like, hygiene studies to clean lavatories. It’s-’

Jane slid on a small scree of pebbles and grabbed a sapling to keep from falling.

‘-All complete and total bullshit. Just a Stalinist government scam to destroy the individual, get everybody into a slot. Result is you’ve got people walking round with a string of letters after their name, and they’re like, you know, Homer Simpson?’