Read this original account of a family’s first night at a campsite.

My father had promised that putting up the tent would take ten minutes. Forty minutes later, it lay across the grass like a giant green pancake.

“It looked bigger in the picture,” he said, disappearing beneath a fold of canvas.

A pole rose briefly into the air, trembled and collapsed. My younger brother applauded. When Dad finally hammered in the last peg, he gave a victorious little bow, as though he had built a palace rather than persuaded a tent to remain upright. Even Mum, who had spent most of the afternoon reading the instructions aloud, was laughing.

The campsite seemed to be laughing with us. Children chased a football between the tents. Someone was singing near the washing-up area, although they knew only the first line of the song. Pans clattered, camping chairs squeaked and the stream beyond the hedge made a soft, busy sound. Our sausages burned on one side and remained pink on the other. We ate them between slices of bread and called it cooking.

As evening arrived, the jokes became quieter. A grey bank of cloud had covered the last strip of sunlight, and the trees on the far side of the stream began to move. At first, the wind merely tugged at the tent. Its walls breathed in and out, and my brother copied the noise until Mum told him to stop.

Then the whole wood seemed to shift. Leaves turned their pale undersides towards us. A gust travelled through the branches with a deep rushing sound, as if some enormous animal had turned over in its sleep.

The rain began while we were brushing our teeth. We ran back to the tent, laughing and holding towels over our heads. Inside, we listened to the drops drumming above us. Dad announced that the tent was completely waterproof. Almost immediately, a cold bead of water landed on his forehead.

That was the last thing any of us found funny.

I woke in darkness to a small sound beneath my sleeping mat.

Tap. Pause. Tap.

I sat up. The rain still battered the roof, but underneath it was another noise: a steady, patient glug. Dad switched on his torch. For a moment, its beam moved uselessly across sleeping bags and coats. Then it stopped at the entrance.

Our shoes were floating.

Dad pulled open the zip. Outside, the grass had disappeared. There was not a collection of puddles but one dark sheet of water, shining whenever the torch passed over it. From somewhere beyond the hedge, a man shouted that the stream had come over its bank.

“Shoes. Coats. Car. Now.”

Dad no longer sounded like the man who had bowed beside the final tent peg. We gathered whatever we could reach. The water curled around my ankles as I stepped outside, colder and faster than I had expected.

We climbed into the car without speaking. In the mirror, our green pancake rose and sank in the torchlight, and this time none of us laughed.