“I see.” Demeter looks only partially reassured, but she starts following me again.
“You’ll want to see the ponds,” I tell her over my shoulder. “Beautiful wildlife at the ponds. We’ll go there now.”
They’re always called “the ponds,” but it’s one pond, really. One quite large, fairly deep pond and one shallower dip, right next to it, which is sometimes a pond and sometimes a swamp. At this time of year, it’s swamp. About three foot deep of swampy, froggy mud, all topped off with bright-green weed.
And that’s where Demeter’s heading, whether she knows it or not. I want her plastered in mud, dripping with weed, screaming with fury, and then—final touch—immortalized in a viral photo, which I’m sure Flora will have great pleasure in disseminating to the world. My phone’s in my pocket, covered in protective plastic. I’m all set. The only issue is going to be getting her into the swamp. But even if I have to dive in first myself, I’m doing it.
My breaths are coming fast as we walk along. My ears are buzzing; I’m twitching at every sound from the trees. Every so often, I have a spasm of nerves and think: Do I really want to do this?
Shall we just go back to the farmhouse instead?
But then I picture Demeter tapping at her phone with that smug smile, summoning Alex like a takeout order the minute her husband disappeared. Demeter making me do her roots…thrusting her Net-A-Porter boxes at me…complaining about her tiny journey to work…Demeter staring at me in the lift at Cooper Clemmow. She couldn’t even remember if she’d let me go, because, hey, what does the life of some junior girl sitting in the corner matter?
There I was feeling sorry for her—well, what a joke. She doesn’t need my pity. I mean, look at her. I glance at her long legs, clad in designer wellies. Her confident, I’m-the-boss stride. If she had a brief moment of vulnerability, it’s long passed now, and I was a mug to fall for it. Because Demeter’s always been an expert at using other people to sort her life out. Husband disappeared? Order in your lover instead. Deleted a crucial email? Get your assistant to sort it out. Somehow she always manages to come out on top.
Except today.
“Somerset has amazing birds,” I say, leading her toward the ponds. “There are loads of rare species around here, so as we walk, you should look up, all the time. Look up.”
Not down at your feet. Not down at the mud and slippery oil that I may possibly have planted earlier.
As we round a clump of bushes, the ponds come into sight ahead of us. The swamp is a patch of lime-green weed. It couldn’t look more glistening and noxious. No one’s about. All the other glampers are miles away, doing their foraging in Warreton Forest, and no one else has access to these woods. The silence around us is eerie and expectant. All I can hear is my own breath and our footsteps on the increasingly muddy ground, sloping downward toward the swamp.
“Look up,” I keep exhorting her. “Look up.”
Everything becomes boggy around here. And very slippery, even before it’s been laced with hemp oil. It’s OK, as long as you’re careful, don’t walk too fast, and don’t even think about running.
Which is why I’m about to make Demeter run.
“Oh wow!” I whisper as though in sudden excitement. “Can you see the kingfishers? Millions of them! Hurry!” I up my pace to what looks like a run, although I’m careful to plant my feet carefully and stay balanced. “You go first.” I turn and make a generous gesture to Demeter. “Go ahead of me. But hurry! Hurry!”
Like a shopper at the Harrods sale, Demeter starts pegging it in a tiptoe run, her eyes fixed upward, gathering momentum. She doesn’t see the point at which soggy mud turns to oil slick. She doesn’t even notice when she starts to skid—until her feet finally hit the slipperiest bit of the oil slick, and she hasn’t got a chance. She slides down toward the swamp, flailing her arms, looking like a really terrible snowboarder.
“Oh my God!” she gasps. “Oh my—oh God!”
“Careful!” I call out cheerfully. “It gets slippery….Oh no!”
I’m watching with all my attention, not even letting myself blink. I want to enjoy this fully. I want to see every single moment: Demeter thrashing her arms in panic…Demeter sliding off the bank…Demeter poised in midair…Demeter’s horror as she realizes what’s about to happen…
And Demeter landing in the swamp. With not so much of a splash as a thwump. It’s three solid feet of mud, and as she crashes into it, the mud sprays up in great gloopy splatters, landing on her face and hair. There’s green weed on her head and down her cheeks, and I can see some sort of bug crawling along her shoulder.
Yes! This could not have gone better. Look at her!
She immediately tries to scramble to her feet, but it’s not so easy—and she falls several times before she manages to stand up. By this time she’s in the middle of the swamp, and if I’d planned the perfect photo op, then this would have been it. Demeter looking drenched, muddy, undignified, and furious.
“Help me out!” She waves an indignant hand at me. “I’m stuck!”
“Oh dear!” I call back, getting my phone out. Trying to hide my euphoria, I take a few photos, then carefully stash my phone back in its bag.
“What are you doing?” shouts Demeter.
“Just coming to help you,” I say soothingly. “You know, you should be careful around swamps. You should never hurry.”
“But you told me to hurry!” Demeter explodes. “You said, ‘Hurry!’?”
“Never mind. We’ll soon get you back to your yurt. Come on,” I beckon.
“I’m stuck,” Demeter repeats, giving me an accusing look. “My feet have sunk into the mud.”
“Just lift up your leg.” I mime pulling a leg out of a swamp, and Demeter copies—but as she wrenches her leg out, her wellie is missing.
“Shit!” she says, flailing her arms again. “My boot! Where’s my boot?”
Oh for God’s sake.
“I’ll get it,” I say, feeling like a mother with a three-year-old. I wade into the swamp, reach Demeter, and feel around in the mud for the boot. Demeter is meanwhile standing on one leg, clinging to my arm. “Here.” I fish out the missing wellie. “Shall we go?”
I turn toward the bank, but Demeter doesn’t turn with me.
“Why did you tell me to hurry?” she asks in even, ominous tones. “Did you want me to fall in?”
I feel a tiny spasm of alarm, which I quell. She can’t prove anything.
“Of course not! Why would I want that?”
“I don’t know,” says Demeter in the same ominous way. “But it’s weird, isn’t it? And you know what else? I feel like I know you from somewhere.”
She scrutinizes my face and I bow my head hastily under my baseball cap.
“Well, that’s ridiculous.” I give a hasty laugh. “I’m a Zummerzet girl. Never been to Lunnon town in my life. I don’t even know where Chiswick is.”
“Why did you say ‘Chiswick’?” snaps Demeter.
At once I curse myself. Shit. Idiot. I’m losing concentration.
“Didn’t you say you work in Chiswick?” I answer as lightly as I can. “Summat like that?”
“No, I never mentioned it.” Demeter holds my wrist so tight that it hurts. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Katie!” I try to wriggle out of her grasp. “Now, let’s go and have a nice slap-up cream tea…or cake…jam tarts….”
“You’re hiding something.” Demeter gives me an angry wrench and I lose my footing.
“Aargh!” I land in the swamp and feel mud slapping onto my face. Oh my God, this is gross. I scramble into a sitting position, wipe my eyes, and glare at Demeter. All my self-control has gone. I feel as if my kite string has snapped; the kite is soaring away.
“Don’t you dare do that!” I slap swamp mud at her.
“Well, don’t you fucking dare!” Demeter slaps mud back at me. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but—”