Bill made sure the hot water for Megan's bath on her return was ready. He looked at the kitchen clock. Twenty to twelve already! He crossed to the wall where the large and detailed map of her route hung, liberally annotated with estimates of her prospective position minute by minute. Now she should be only a mile away, and only the last quarter mile would slow her down as she wended her way by the few houses between his and the open country she'd crossed. With a confidence he couldn't entirely bring himself to truly believe in, Bill began to make sandwiches against his lover's return.

Megan's plan was simple. It was to follow the road where she'd been dropped off for a mile to the cross-roads, then to turn left on the road the gate had prevented her crossing. Another mile would bring her to the exact spot where she'd been before. She knew every inch of her route, and every place of concealment, and she jogged along steadily, alert for pedestrians and vehicles, feeling that she'd never felt so thoroughly alive as now, a hunted animal with every sense alert for predators. Reaching the cross-roads, she hid behind a belt of shrubbery while a lone car went past. Only when its rear lights were long out of sight did she turn down the left-hand road.

The road, little wider than the one she'd come out of, was straighter and busier. The verge on its far side, to which she had to cross at some point, was broad, and many small shrubs grew on it between the road and the hedge which ran along its side. She crossed the road and continued on the soft, water-logged grass.

After a time she grew almost blas about the traffic which passed her from either direction. She could see their headlight from quite a distance in the misty air, and she was able to calculate to a nicety the moment to take cover against observation. She reached the gate of the field she'd intended to cross before and ducked through it. Once inside, she began to run easily across the grass. Two fields further on, she was feeling pleased with her progress.

“About twenty minutes late! she thought. Not bad, considering. And all our neighbours should be asleep by now; that will make it easier!”

The wall-clock in the kitchen showed midnight. Bill sat and stared at the door, willing Megan's appearance. He rose and checked that the large pile of fluffy towels were ready for her after the long and luxurious hot bath he'd insist that she take the moment she came in.

The second check was a replica of the first; another silly gate, fastened immovably by another silly chain. Megan stared at it in dismay. This gate had never been closed before on her many runs across these fields. Then she saw the ghostly bulk of cattle in the field beyond, and knew at once the reason for the gate's closure. To cap it all, a thin rain had begun to fall and the South West wind had freshened. Tired, and beginning to feel the cold now that she was motionless, she stood in the shelter of the hedge and thought through her options.

A quarter past twelve! Bill opened the back door and stood in the darkness, peering down the garden path in the direction he expected Megan to appear. It had begun to rain. He shivered and went inside to the warmth of the kitchen.

Megan shivered; she must keep moving! To her right were the bright lights of the modern farm to which the cattle belonged, to her left were more fields. The farm was out of the question. Even if she evaded its dogs, the only way out of its complex of modern building was along a well-lit concrete road leading to an even more well-lit major road which ran straight and true for three miles between stark, barbed-wire fences with open fields on either side. Their was no cover there; muddy skin or not, she would be caught like a rabbit in the headlights of any vehicle travelling it. To turn to her left was the only option, she decided; retracing her footsteps would involve travelling the whole way home by the public highway, and that she dared not risk. And, of course, there would still exist the problem she feared most, crossing the Motorway. No, she decided, she must go to her left and thread her way across the fields, trying to keep parallel to her intended course.

Ten minutes later she stood in front of yet another closed gate. Almost weeping in frustration, she turned back.

One o'clock! By now seriously worried, Bill debated inwardly whether or not to take out the van and look for her. But any number of things could have slowed Megan's passage; at any moment she could come trotting triumphantly up the garden path to the door. In the end, he decided to wait a further hour before going in search of her.

Huddling in the long wet grass by the side of a hedge, another closed gate before her, Megan began to sob. By now she was thoroughly lost; the thin rain had closed down what visibility there was. She seemed to have been wandering for hours in this maze of fields with their gates open and closed at random. She was cold and wet, and thirsty too, and she lowered her head to suck the moisture from the heads of the grass within her reach. Slowly she recovered something of her poise. Somehow she had to find out her exact location. But that would mean waiting for daylight at about six-thirty; long before then she must find shelter. First she urinated where she crouched, feeling the warm liquid splash back against her legs and thighs; then, wearily, she rose to her feet and continued her hopeless progress.

At two-thirty Bill was parked in the tiny lay-by where he'd left Megan more than three hours before. Taking a powerful torch in his hand, he stood in the entrance to field and shone it into the rain, calling her name loudly, although with no real hope. He cursed himself once more for his folly in allowing her to go through with this. His imagination, fired by numerous American horror films, dwelt on the perils she was in, naked and helpless, at the mercy of any evil-minded passer-by who came across her. Perhaps even now she was lying, raped and dead, in some muddy ditch, or cowering chained in some secret shed or cellar!

He returned to the van and drove away, trying to follow her intended route as best he could by road. The rain came down harder and harder.

Megan trudged listlessly over the muddy field, slipping and sliding with every step, blinking the rain from her eyes. Some thin and hard brushed her thigh, and a numbing shock paralysed the muscles of her left leg. She fell to the ground with a gasp of pain.

Slowly, her mind cleared. At last she knew where she was; on the pig farm about two miles out of her route, and that shock had been from an electric fence. Rising awkwardly to her knees in the thick, slimy mud, she listened hard for the sounds of the pigs that must be nearby. But the hissing of the rain defeated her hearing, and she crawled slowly and cautiously forward, at every instant expecting to feel again the numbing pain of the electric fence.

She found the fence within a few feet of her by bumping gently into one of the posts supporting its single strand of wire. Realising that the pigs were penned on its other side, she went down on her stomach and wriggled under the wire, heedless of the stinking mud. A few yards further on the low, dark bulk of a semi-cylindrical pig shelter loomed through the rain. Bent low, Megan stumbled across the mud and scrambled inside.