'I think I do… Did the Angels of Lucifer kill Ben Stoddart – by black magic, I mean?'

Moira did not feel ready, yet, to say that they knew the identity of the Angels, so she countered with: 'Do you believe it's possible?'

Eileen paused, then said 'A couple of weeks ago I'd have doubted it. But this would make two coincidences, so I'm not sure any longer.'

'Two coincidences?'

Eileen told them the story of May Groombridge and the witches of Coddenham. 'That policeman deserved what he got – but if they did it – and I know they believe they did, and I think I do too… If they did it, they've only put him where he can't do any harm for a while. And after what he had done to May, that very day, I suppose they were pretty restrained. But killing someone, deliberately and impersonally…' She shuddered. 'No. That's different.'

'Quite apart from the morals of the thing, it was damn stupid,' Angie said briskly. 'All it did was make things worse for the rest of you. Like getting your houses burned… What are your plans, now?'

'Immediately?' Dan replied. 'Find somewhere isolated to rest up for a day or two. After that, with any luck, find somewhere where we can stay put… Something worse than Orders in Council's on the way. Some kind of breakdown – probably to do with these earthquakes and from what you were saying, you know more about that than we do. Whatever it is, we don't know if we can survive – but we're going to have a bloody good try.'

'And the Welsh mountains seemed a good place to do it,' Greg added.

'Why d'you think we are here?' Angie asked. 'Same guesswork and same reasoning – and same "bloody good try". So why don't we join forces?… No, don't answer right now – talk it over among yourselves. Eileen and I will, too – after all, I haven't asked her yet. Just my own idea but there's a lot to be said for it. Pooled resources give us a better chance. More people means division of labour, less wasted effort. Communal cooking and so on. Easier look-out roster, if it becomes necessary. We can contribute one trained nurse, and – if I may say so – one highly experienced camper; been my hobby all my life. You can contribute – among other things, I'm sure – two strong-armed men, one of 'em a professional mechanic…'

'And the liability of one eighty-year-old woman and one four-year-old child,' Sally pointed out.

'For Christ's sake,' Angie told her, 'a survival group's got to be a human family – a representative sample, if you like, something worth preserving in terms of human balance. You and little Di help to make it that. You're assets, not liabilities.'

Moira's mind had been made up before Angie had even put her suggestion, which she had sensed was coming; but with that last remark, she knew Angie had the others as well. She smiled and asked: 'Does anyone really want to talk it over privately?'

There was an immediate chorus of 'No', and Dan went on: 'It's a marvellous idea and it'll obviously improve our chances. We'll probably spit at each other sometimes but that's "human balance" too, isn't it?'

'Right, then,' Angie said. 'Practicalities; any of you know this area?'

'Where are we now, exactly? Our map-reading was getting a bit bleary-eyed. A few kilometres west of Llanfyllin, aren't we?'

'That's right.'

'Rosemary and I toured around here a year or two back,' Greg said. 'We seemed to remember some promising Forestry Commission land ahead, just south of Lake Vyrnwy. Thirty or forty square kilometres of it, by the map, nice and mountainous but with little valleys and streams and that, and it looks as if there might be clear patches hidden away here and there, where we could plant vegetables, if we stayed. And forestry plantations are marvellous to disappear into if you're attacked… All guesswork from map-reading, though. We visited Lake Vyrnwy on that tour but we didn't explore the forestry bits.'

Angie nodded. 'We had the same idea though I don't know it personally either. I think the plantations have been extended in the past few years which'll make it even better. Dyfnant Forest, it's called. Shall we take a look, when you've rested a bit?'

'I don't know about the others,' Moira said, 'but that breakfast's set mc up – and meeting you. I feel rested. Sally and Di could sleep on the way '

'Like hell I'll sleep,' Sally protested. 'I want to be in on this. I snored most of the night, didn't I?'

Dyfnant Forest was dark, silent and reassuring, hugging the Afon Vyrnwy and Afon Cownwy rivers between precipitous ridges, and spreading out westwards into equally lofty but more gently sloping mountains. The little convoy wound upwards through a village called New Dyfnant, which Angic (comparing a recent map and an old gazetteer) decided must have been built about 1990. From there the road became a logging lane which they followed for four or five kilometres until they rounded a shoulder of the valley and suddenly found themselves in a little clearing, perhaps six hectares of natural meadow along the edge of which ran a trout-promising stream. It formed a perfect cul-de-sac, because the far end was a cliff with a waterfall tumbling down it; at the near end, where they had stopped, the logging lane elbowed sharply right to hairpin back up the mountainside above the way they had come. The stream lay to the left of the clearing, with steep and broken mountains rising from it – not quite cliff but too rough for plantation, so that a mixture of deciduous trees grew wild. The slope up from the right of the clearing was a little gentler and thick with ordered ranks of Norway spruce, their Christmas-tree fingers pointing to the sky.

Spontaneously, they all switched off their engines and climbed out to look.

'It looks so right,' Sally said after a few seconds, 'I'm almost suspicious of it.'

'Whatever for?' Angie demanded. 'It is right. Couldn't be better. What do you think, boys?'

'Looks good to me – provided that meadow's not boggy or liable to flooding,' Dan said.

'Not on your life – I know bog when I see it. And the stream'd have to rise a good metre and a half to top those banks… Look, the meadow slopes up to the right a little, too. Sort of flat shelf along the edge of the trees – make a good camp site.'

'No reason why we shouldn't camp here for a day or two, anyway,' Greg said. 'We can recce the place while we rest up.'

Diana had been asleep when the convoy stopped but now she suddenly said from behind them. 'Yes, do let's recce the place. It's ever so pretty.'

Everybody laughed and Angie asked: 'And what does "recce the place" mean, young lady?'

'Put the tents on it, of course.'

'Orders is orders,' Dan said. 'Come on, let's get cracking.'

They drove carefully along the edge of the trees for a couple of hundred metres, watching the surface but it remained good. Then they reached a feature that had been invisible from the logging lane – a re-entrant in the forest, a little bay in the treeline, that curved back in an approximate semicircle embracing about a hectare.

'Even better,' Greg said. 'Can't be seen from the lane. But I wonder why it's not planted?'

Examination of the ground answered him. The floor of the re-entrant was thin soil on a flat bed of rock which extended out into the edge of the meadow to form the shelf Angie had noticed; a freak of stratification unsuitable for tree-planting but ideal for a camp-site. They parked the vehicles by the trees at the mid-point of the semicircle and erected the two big frame-tents and the inflatable igloo tent, in front of them at either side, to form a C-shaped, inward-facing laager. The sun was higher now, the shadow of the opposite mountain moving away across the meadow like an ebbing tide. Dan and Greg went to erect the screen for the chemical closet, just out of sight in the trees, while the women furnished the tents, unpacked stores from a big plastic dustbin so that it could be used for rubbish, spread bedding to air, began to plan the midday meal and generally 'made the place like home' as Rosemary put it. Moira noticed, without comment but with a lifting of the spirit, that there was no hint of nostalgia in Rosemary's remark and that everyone – including herself – took it quite naturally. This isolated and beautiful spot had achieved, for the moment at least, what they had instinctively looked for; an immediate change of scene so complete that Staines, the witch-hunt, their burning homes, seemed distant and unreal. She noticed, too, that nobody had switched on the radio, or Angie's television, to keep track of the news – a rest, too, from that.