The realization gave me a burst of adrenaline and I got first one, then the other foot up and over the sill. Then I swiveled, ignoring the scream of pain from my side, and slithered through the narrow gap on my stomach, lowering myself until I felt my feet touch the step outside.
I stood, my muscles trembling with exertion, holding on to the edge of the window above me, and risked a glance down, past my legs. The drop was terrifyingly high. It looked worse than it had from inside the train.
Carefully, I got down on my hands and knees and twisted shakily around until I was sitting on the bottom-most step. Below me was a daunting drop, onto what looked like painfully chunky gravel.
I swallowed. And then I heard the train’s engines start up.
“Good news, ladies and gents,” I heard from inside the open window. “We’ve received clearance to proceed to Northampton.”
There was a jolt and the train began to move.
My heart was thumping so hard in my chest I thought I might be sick. What I wanted was to lower myself down slowly and carefully to the ground—but there was no time. We were picking up speed. I was going to get smacked in the face by a bush at seventy miles an hour if I didn’t act fast—very fast. But it turns out it’s very, very hard to make yourself jump off a moving train.
I was leaning forward, trying to psych myself up to do it—when I heard a noise from up ahead and looked right to see a tree looming over the track, its branches rattling against the roof of the train. It was too late to jump. If I did, I’d probably fly right into the trunk. Instead, instinctively, I flattened myself against the door, closing my eyes and hunching my head into my shoulder as the branches tore across my face, stinging my cheek and ear.
When I looked up again, the tree was in the distance, but the train was going even faster. Possibly fatally fast.
With the feeling that I was doing something incredibly stupid, I jumped.
I landed with a crash that knocked all the breath out of me. I was too winded at first to do anything apart from lie there, curled in the fetal position, gasping and holding my ribs. The puncture wound felt like someone had shoved a red-hot poker into it and was jabbing it deeper with every thud of my heart. I had been half expecting that someone would notice my actions and pull the emergency cord, and as far as I could think of anything over the screaming pain in my side, I was listening for the screech of brakes and the noise of the train coming to a stop. But when the pain subsided enough for me to raise my head, I saw that the train had rounded the bend and was disappearing into the distance. Either no one had seen me, or nobody cared.
I let my head fall back and considered my options.
All things taken into account, that hadn’t gone as badly as it could have done. I had landed in a pile of bracken—it could easily have been nettles or brambles, or even rocks—and I didn’t think I had broken anything. My knees and ankles ached with the jarring shock of the fall, but I wasn’t concussed, and when I pulled myself to my feet, nothing hurt too badly—apart from the hole in my side, which throbbed with every movement. When I put my hand under my top to check, I groaned. The dressing was still in place, but I could feel it was already pulpy with blood.
My rucksack was a surprisingly long way up the track, and as I picked my way back along the line, trying to avoid tripping over the sleepers—the last thing I needed was to fall and electrocute myself on the live rail—I tried to think what to do next. I very badly wanted to talk to Hel, but I wasn’t sure if I could do so without bursting into tears. More to the point, could I risk calling her? Her phone was probably tapped, but if I used Signal at least the police shouldn’t be able to triangulate my location…
When I finally reached the rucksack, I picked it up and began climbing the steep embankment. I needed to get away from the main line before another train came along. Maybe none of the passengers had noticed me, but a conductor would definitely spot me picking my way along beside the rails, and the last thing I needed was another train screeching to a halt and a “passenger on the tracks” security alert going out across the network.
It wasn’t easy pulling myself up the steep bank, and when I got to the top, the sight of a barbed wire fence almost made me break down, but I threw my bag over and with a huge effort managed to clamber after it, ignoring the barbs that dug into my thighs and ripped a chunk out of my jeans as I pulled myself free.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. I was over. That was the main thing. I was over and—where was I? Some kind of farmer’s field, it looked like, plowed into deep ridges and sown with something that looked like turnips or beets. All of a sudden I felt weak and trembling, and I knew that if I didn’t sit down—or, even better, lie down—I was going to collapse where I stood.
In the corner of the field was a huge beech, and, wearily, I forced my tired legs to carry me just a few meters further beneath its sparse canopy, and then collapsed against the trunk, the rucksack clutched to my chest. I knew I should eat something, drink something, but I was suddenly so tired, nauseous with it, that even just opening the bag seemed like an effort beyond what I could manage.
Come on, babe. It was Gabe’s voice, gentle in my ear. You’ve got to eat something. It was what he had said to me so often when I got home after a night chasing around the corridors of some remote office, too exhausted to do anything but collapse into bed. I thought of our last conversation, of me bossing him around, demanding fries, bitching at him about his fucking bacon. God, what I wouldn’t give for just one more kiss, one more crack, one more dad joke about one-hundred-percent vegan nuggets being made out of real vegans…
Gabe as a dad. The thought was too bittersweet to bear. I swallowed. Then I opened the bag and peered inside.
The first thing I checked was not how much food I had left, but the phone. It was there, and thankfully unbroken, in spite of being thrown out of a train window and dropping fifteen feet onto rocks. The next thing I did was unscrew the lid from the plastic bottle of water in the side pocket and drink about a gallon. I was, I realized, extremely thirsty—I just hadn’t noticed.
So much water on an empty stomach made me feel even sicker, but I knew I had to eat something. I’d had nothing since the teacake in the cafe in Hastings, and that felt like several lifetimes ago. There were a few energy bars left at the bottom of the bag, and some instant noodles I had bought from the hostel. I didn’t have any way of heating the noodles, but I opened one and crunched the powdery shards dry, and then ate an energy bar.
Then, giving way to the urge that had been growing ever since my conversation with Cole, I pulled out the phone, opened up Signal, and called Hel on her mobile.
It rang. And rang.
And then Hel picked up.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” I said without preamble. Hel let out an audible gasp, and I could hear her brain racing, trying to figure out what she could say.
“Should I call you back?” she said at last.
“Sure. Use Signal and this number.”
“Signal?”
“It’s an app. Encrypted.”
“Okay.” Two syllables, but I could hear the urgency vibrating in her voice. She was as desperate to talk to me as I was to her. She hung up, and I waited. And waited. It was getting cold, and dark, and I took the sleeping bag out from the rucksack, spread it in the shelter of a hedge, and climbed into it. I was just struggling with the zip when my phone buzzed, almost making me drop it. It was a Signal call from a number I didn’t recognize—a mobile number—and for a second my stomach flipped, thinking of Cole and the way he had duped me—but this was a voice call. It had to be Hel, surely?
I picked up.
“Is this secure?” was the first thing Hel said. “I used Signal and I’m on a phone I bought yesterday from that phone shop on the high street, is that enough? I’m pretty sure the police are monitoring my other phone, but I don’t think they’ve bugged the house. Would they do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I tried to think, did it matter? As long as I didn’t say where I was, maybe not. “Fuck, Hel, it’s so good to talk to you.”
“Oh Jesus, Jack. Where are you? Are you okay? Are you really okay?” She sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “I was so worried when I didn’t hear anything from you. I knew the police couldn’t have found you, because they’re still tearing your house apart, and they’ve an unmarked car outside ours twenty-four/seven, but I had no idea if you were dead in a ditch. And your picture is all over the papers—did you know that? They made you sound like some kind of—”
“I know, I’m so sorry,” I said, breaking in gently. “I’m okay—but Hel, listen, has Cole been in touch with you?”