Opening Chapter:
(6.31pm, Easter. Fulwood, Preston.)
    Half-six, Good Friday night, and over two years had passed since our holiday from hell in Arnside. (Jasmin was now sixteen and I was eighteen.) Our day had already been sinister and disturbing, but neither of us knew how unpleasant and violent the next few hours would become.
    Mum and Dad had left us on our own. They were in the Highlands of Scotland at Lochawe for their wedding anniversary. Jasmin was reading and I was trying to relax; glued to the TV. Dad had recorded a documentary about oceans that burn. Clathrate, burning-ice, or methane hydrate, and the conflicts over the true causes of global warming, climate change and carbon emissions... Memories came rushing back. I thought of Jost Fingle, hoofmen, hawksteeds and slinkfish. It also made me think of our friends, Sylvanor, Eulosi, Lancer, Godwit, Redshank and the rest... 
    “Wasn’t Godwit always worrying about that white stuff?”
    “Shh, Jas. I’m trying to listen.” 
    The programme Dad had recorded for us was unbelievable and amazing; the same documentary I’d woken up to the night of Dad’s nightmare two years earlier. And, I was concentrating so hard, the loud, repetitive knock on the front door made me jump. 
    “No probs,” said Jasmin, yawning. “It’ll be Hillary with hay for the rabbits.” 
    “Eh?”
    “Hay.” 
    “Eh?” I was frowning at the TV screen. 
    “You deaf, Joshua? Hay, I said. Hillary told me yesterday she’d drop it off for Muffin and Percy.” Jasmin rolled off the settee and ran to the hall. 
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