THAT EVENING, ONCE he’d decreed that work was over for the day, Rafferty stopped off at the twenty-four-hour supermarket on the outskirts of Elmhurst, before heading for the caravan park. He arrived to find the sea of mud went even deeper than the previous night. He took one look and decided to leave the car on the road, scared it would get bogged down. Of course this meant his mud-mired pathway was even longer. He slipped and fell face-first in a particularly cloggy spot. With difficulty, he dragged himself from the mud’s clutches, and heaved himself upright, feeling several stone heavier with the weight of the mud. The rain, now not quite as light as it had been and even more penetrating, lashed his unprotected head with a spiteful vigour.
Bitterly, Rafferty cursed his brother, the weat
