Miranda mutters something under her breath, defiantly. But I can see that she’s really stung. She can give it out, you see, Miranda – but she can’t always take it. Underneath that tough, glossy exterior she’s softer than she looks. And I think she’s always secretly admired Nick, sees him as an equal.
I see her glance at Julien. I wonder if she’s waiting for him to stick up for her. If so, she’s disappointed, but perhaps not surprised. She has always said that he hates confrontation, likes to try to please everybody – never wanting to be seen as the bad guy.
I don’t want to take sides, either. I can’t afford to. I have enough of my own issues to deal with. I feel as though I’ve been catapulted into the past: Miranda causing drama, me having to mediate between her and the unlucky opponent – feeling that each of them is asking me to choose. I’m not going to do it now. I walk away from the group, around to the other side of the ruin, and stand in the full force of the wind for a few minutes, my eyes closed.
I clench my fingernails into my palms until they sting. I have to stop. I have to stop this thing, this compulsion, once and for all. But every time I have tried I find that I can’t bring myself to. When it really comes to doing it, I’m never strong enough. I can’t believe I’ve got myself into the mess that I have. I take a few deep breaths, open my eyes, and try to distract myself with the view.
I have been to some beautiful places in my life, but nowhere quite like this. It’s the wildness of the landscape, perhaps: raw, untouched by human hand other than the small cluster of dwellings below us, the tiny station on the other side, and the old ruin behind us. It is bleak and brutal, and its charm, if it can be called that, lies in this. The colours are all muted: slate-blue, the old bruise yellow of the sky, the rust red of the heather. And yet they are just as mesmerising as any turquoise sea, any white sandy beach.
As I watch, a huge clump of the heather seems to lift up and move, and I realise that it is deer, running as one, their sleekness only offset by the comedy flashes of their white tails. Perhaps it’s this movement that draws my eye to another flash of movement, lower down the slope. I don’t think I would have seen it otherwise. Seen him, that is. He is some fifty yards away, wearing camouflage gear, a large backpack on his back. I can’t make out his face, or even his height – because he’s up to his waist in heather. He appears to be making an effort not to be seen, keeping low down, close to the heather as he moves. It must have been him that scared the deer and set them sprinting off.
I don’t think he’s seen me yet. I can feel my heartbeat somewhere up near my throat. There’s something menacing about the way he moves, like an animal. Then, like a predator catching my scent on the breeze, he looks up and sees me. He stops short.
I can’t make sense of what happens next. It defies all logic. In the next couple of seconds he seems to sink from view; to disappear into the heather itself. I blink, in case something has actually happened to my vision. But when I open my eyes there is still no sign of him.
I think of the manager’s instructions. ‘Tell the gamekeeper or me if you see anyone you don’t recognise on the estate.’ So should I tell them? But I’m not even completely sure of what I have seen. A person doesn’t just dissolve in plain sight, do they? It’s true that my eyes are full of tears from the rawness of the wind, and I’m still a bit groggy from the sleeping pills I took last night. The others will think I’m simply making it up, or imagining things. I’m too weary to try to explain what I saw. If I were Miranda, I’d make this into a big drama, a ghost-story anecdote. But I’m not. I’m Katie: the quiet one, the watcher. Besides, there can’t be any real harm in not saying anything. Can there?
DOUG
There’s a change in the group. He noticed it even before the argument between the man with the glasses and the beautiful blonde. He has seen it happen before, this shift. It starts with the rifles. Each of them is suddenly invested with a new, terrible power. At first, during the target practice, they flinched with each report, at the jump of the device as it punched bruises into the flesh beneath their shoulders. But quickly – too quickly, perhaps – it became natural, and they were leaning into each shot: focused, intent. They began enjoying themselves. But something else crept in too. A sense of competition. More than that … something primeval has been summoned. The ‘buck fever’ felt by all novice hunters before their first trophy. The blood lust. Each of them wants to be the one that makes the kill. And yet they don’t even know what it is they’re yearning for. Because they have never killed before – not beyond the odd swatted fly, or trapped mouse. This is something completely different. They will be changed by it. An innocence they did not know they possessed will be forsaken.
There is the landscape, too. It has made them edgy. Up here the harsh, skeletal lines of the land are revealed, granite peeking like old bone through the rust red fuzz of heather. Up here they become aware of quite how alone they are in this place – not another human soul for a very long way indeed.
Except … his fingers now find the cigarette stub in his pocket. He doesn’t like it. It shows that someone has been up here, recently. Heather doesn’t smoke, as far as he knows – and she certainly doesn’t go anywhere near the Old Lodge if she can help it. Iain smokes, he thinks, but he has no need to come up here: he’s been working down by the loch, on the pumphouse. It could also have been the Icelandic couple – but he saw them smoking rollies the other evening, after the dinner.
He’ll mention it to Heather, later. Just to check whether she’s noticed anything.
Poachers? But there would have been some other evidence of them, surely? In the past he has found blood-smeared grass where they have dragged their illegal bounty, or the cartridge shells with which they killed it. He has found the remains of fires they’ve made to attempt to burn the rest of the body (it’s the heads they’re after, in general) and the blackened bones that remain. Sometimes he’s even found the kill before they’ve come back to claim it – they’ll take the head, the most valuable part, and leave the headless corpse hidden in the grass until there’s an opportune time to come and collect it.
It could merely have been dropped by a hiker – there’s still a right to roam, though they’re no doubt discouraged by the (probably illegal) ‘private property’ signs. He can’t remember the last time he saw a walker. Besides, hikers are all bright cagoules and cling-filmed lunches and earnestness, not the sort to callously litter the landscape they’ve come to enjoy.
No, he doesn’t like it one bit.
He’s pleased to put the Old Lodge behind him. Its story parallels his own ghosts. The gamekeeper haunted by his own war, burning the place down. He knows the sorts of forces that might drive a man to such an act.
They find the hinds in the stretch of land beyond the Lodge. There is a stain of darkness in the sky already – the sun, invisible behind cloud, must be readying to set. They need to be quick. He has the guests lie in the heather and crawl towards the deer, so as not to alarm them.
One has got separated from the others, an old doe, with a hobble to her walk. Perfect. You only shoot the old, the limp. Despite what the poachers might think, this is not about magnificent trophies.
When they are close enough, he turns to the shorter, not-beautiful blonde. ‘You,’ he says. ‘Want to try her?’
She nods, solemnly. ‘All right.’
He helps her sight it. ‘The largest part of the chest,’ he says, ‘not the head. Too much room for error with the head. And not too low, or you’ll shatter her leg. And squeeze the trigger, remember, gently does it.’