the scraps of conversation he picked up, motor speedboats.

Arm sat by herself, under a tree. He went over and sat down beside her.

'Are you feeling any better?' he asked her.

'I'm all right.'

She looked tired, and he wondered how much sleep she had managed to get the night before. He said: 'Only two more days of this, and then...'

She caught his words up. 'And then everything's fine again, and we can forget all that's happened, and start life all over from the beginning. Well?'

'No, I don't suppose we can. Does it matter? But we can live what passes for a decent life again, and watch the children grow up into human beings instead of savages. That's worth doing a lot for.'

'And you're doing it, aren't you? The world on your shoulders.'

He said softly: 'We've been very lucky so far. It may not seem like that, but it's true. Lucky in getting away from London, and lucky in getting as far north as this before we ran into serious trouble. The reason this place looks deserted is because the locals have retired behind their defences, and the mobs haven't arrived. But I shouldn't think we're more than a day's march ahead of the mobs - we may be less. And when they come ...'

He stared at the tumbling waters of the Ure. It was a sunlit summer scene, strange only in the absence of so much of the familiar green. He didn't really believe the implications of his own words, and yet he knew they were true.

'We shall be at peace in Blind Gill,' Arm said wearily.

'I wouldn't mind being there now,' John said.

'I'm tired,' Arm said. 'I don't want to talk - about that or anything else. Let me be, John.'

He looked down at her for a moment, and then went away. As he did so, he saw that, from under the next