His pressed the top lip onto his tongue and felt the lack of moisture depressing. He had been walking for longer than he dared to remember. At first, he was with company who he deemed tolerable. A tour group which was everything you could imagine of tourists. Cameras, chatting loudly and inconsiderately. Sun hats and big backpacks.

He decided to take the path less trodden and now those steps that dared venture for excitement, haunted and mocked him for his stupidity.

He wished he was back in the coach with the air-conditioning. He would be happy to pretend to understand any tourists talking to him without him initiating the conversation first. He would happily take the back of a backpack in his face as they hauled it in the overhead. He would happily take a photo of badly posed positions. And yet here he was, in the middle of a non-living surrounding where the rustles in the night gave his heart extra beats and his ears extra thudding pulses.

Suddenly, he saw it. A glowing box in his view. His heart now beat with adrenaline. His exhausted muscles gaining a second wind. Those haunting steps even pacified with renewed vigour in his walk.

It was a telephone box. A red one. He wondered why on Earth it was placed here in the middle of nowhere. A dead man’s land. He reached out his grubby hands to the handle. And the phone rang. He stumbled inside and picked up the receiver. His sight blinded by the immersion of light and his mind flooded with tumultuous emotions.

“Hello?”