There is a loud wail from the next room, cacophonous in the silence, startling me so much that I spill water from the kettle onto the floor. It’s just the baby, of course. I remember the sound of the baby crying on New Year’s Eve when I woke to go to the toilet, and when I saw – or thought I saw – that strange light, up on the flank of the Munro. And I wonder now whether it’s possible that the sound could have concealed any other noises out there.
I think of all the sounds in this place that have come to seem normal, that I choose not to question. As I wait for the kettle to boil I’m remembering one of my very first nights at the Lodge. I’d moved into the cottage, and was focusing on not thinking too much about anything. It was the week of the terrible anniversary. I’d had quite a lot of wine – a medicinal quantity, a bottle and a half, perhaps. I remember sinking into the bed and pulling the duvet up over me. One thing I have learned about ‘silence’ – at least this sort of silence, that of the wilderness – is that it is surprisingly loud. The building is old, it creaked around me. Outside in the night were the sounds of animals; two owls conversed in long mournful calls. The wind was moving through the tops of the great Scots pines just beyond my window. It sounded like a moan. It could be soothing, I remember telling myself. Perhaps I would get used to it. (I have never quite got used to it.)
Then there was a sound that ripped through everything else. A scream, high-pitched, desperate: horrible, the sound of a person in terrible pain. The air rang with the echo of it for several seconds afterwards. I sat up in bed, all the drowsiness from the wine leaving me. My ears felt sensitive as an animal’s, the whole of me prickling, waiting for another scream. None came.
I waited for a response: surely someone else must have heard it? Then I remembered that it was just me and the gamekeeper: no one else for miles around … apart from, presumably, whoever it was that had screamed. I imagined Doug pulling on those big boots of his, taking one of the rifles from the barn. He would be the right person to go, I told myself. Not five-foot-two drunk me. But the night seemed even quieter now than before.
I pulled the shutter open a little way and looked out. I couldn’t see any lights. I checked my watch. Two a.m. The hours had blurred; I had not realised how much time had passed. Wine does that, I suppose. It began to occur to me that Doug might be sleeping. That I might be the only one of the two of us awake to have heard the scream.
I started to believe that I had imagined it. Perhaps I had dropped off to sleep for those two minutes, without realising. I couldn’t even quite remember how it sounded, though there was still the reverberation of it in my ears.
Then, as if to remind me, it came again, and this time it was more terrible than the last. It was the sound of purest agony, something almost animal in it. I climbed out of bed, felt for my slippers. I had to go and see – I could not pretend now. Someone out there was in trouble.
I crept downstairs, shrugged on my coat and boots, took the cast-iron poker from the fireplace and the torch from the windowsill.
The night outside was black and still. I remember noticing that above me the sky had a depth I had never seen before, how at that moment it looked sinister, like a void.
I peered into the shadows, trying to discern any sign of movement. ‘Hello?’ I called. My hands were shaking so much that the light from my torch bounced everywhere, illuminating indifferent patches of earth. The silence around me felt like a held breath. ‘Hello?’
Perhaps it was inevitable that I felt I was being watched, haloed as I was by light from the door. I realised that in calling out I had exposed myself, made myself visible and audible. I might just have put myself in danger.
I took a few steps. And somewhere in the direction of the loch I caught a movement. Not with the torch beam, rather with some animal sense I didn’t know I had: a mixture of sight and sound. ‘Who’s there?’ Fear had stifled my voice – it came out as a tiny, strangled squeak. I directed the torch beam towards where I thought I had caught the movement. Nothing. Then another flicker, much closer at hand.
‘Heather?’
I swung my arm and illuminated a face. In the torchlight the figure was ghoulish, and I almost shrieked; was glad as realisation dawned that I did not. It was Doug.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. There was no urgency in his voice, just the deep, unhurried tone he always spoke in.
‘I heard someone scream. Did you hear it?’
But he frowned. ‘A scream?’
‘Yes. Very high-pitched. Whoever it was sounded terrified. I came out to see …’ In the face of his evident incredulity I faltered. ‘You didn’t hear it?’
‘Was it,’ he asked, ‘like this?’ And then, to my amazement, he mimicked the sound almost perfectly. I felt the same cold flood of dread down the backs of my legs.
‘Yes. That’s it exactly.’
‘Ah. In that case, you heard a fox. A vixen, to be precise.’
‘I don’t understand. It sounded like a woman.’
‘It’s a terrible sound – and an easy mistake to make. You certainly aren’t the first to have done so. There was a story, quite recently, about a man killing himself on a train track outside Edinburgh trying to help what he thought was a woman in distress.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You didn’t hear that story, living in the city?’
‘No,’ I said. I was beginning to be embarrassed by the tremor in my voice, and wished I could bring it under my control.
‘It’s when they’re—’ he grimaced. ‘—the male’s … you-know-what, is barbed. So it’s not exactly a pleasant experience for the female.’
I couldn’t prevent my wince.
‘Exactly. So not pleasant. But not someone being murdered, either.’ He paused. ‘You’re sure you’re OK?’
‘Yes.’ Even to my own ears it didn’t sound quite convincing. I tried to bolster it by saying, ‘Honestly, I’m fine.’
‘In that case, I’ll let you get back to bed.’
I remember that his eyes swept over me then, so quickly that I might almost have imagined it. But not quite. I was wearing pyjamas. But I felt more exposed, suddenly, than if I had been standing there completely naked.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He doffed an imaginary cap. ‘You’re welcome.’
I closed the door, stepped inside, and pressed a hand to my chest. My brain did not seem to have told my heart that the danger had passed. It was beating so hard and fast it seemed to be trying to leap out of my ribcage. It was only when I finally climbed back into bed, and pulled the duvet over myself, that it occurred to me to think properly about what had just happened. If it wasn’t the scream that had woken Doug, as it had me, then what on earth was he doing wandering the grounds in the dead of night?
I think of his hand; how he’s been so vague about the way in which he injured it. I think of the boss’s mention of how good he would be at fighting off any poachers, the intimation of violence. It isn’t enough that I don’t want him to have had anything to do with any of this. And that’s just because you fancy him, a little voice says. Just because you made yourself come thinking about him. With some effort, I mute this train of thought.
I remember my mother’s words about googling him. It suddenly seems important, necessary.
With a quick step I move to the door of the office and lock it. If Doug tries to come in I’ll pretend I’ve done it accidentally, ‘force of habit’. Still, I don’t have long, unless I want to raise suspicion. I open the doors to the cabinet where I keep all the filing. The two personnel files: my own, Doug’s. Iain’s only a contractor, and I think he worked for the boss before, didn’t need to apply for his job the way Doug and I did ours.
I open Doug’s file. There’s a short CV, detailing a period in the Marines: six years. Nothing more. What exactly am I looking for? I move to the computer, plug Doug’s full name into the search engine, and wait for the results to load via the creakingly slow Internet connection. It is only when my chest starts to burn that I realise I have been holding my breath. There won’t be anything, I think. There won’t … and I’ll feel terrible for doing it, because I’ll have breached his trust without him ever knowing, but it will stop there. He will never know. And I will be able to lay any suspicions – if that is even what they are – to rest.