I never used to be a particularly anxious person, but, when I turn off the main road back onto the twisty-turny shadowed-shrouded lanes, it feels as if someone is pressing on my chest. I find myself counting my breaths, but it never feels as if there’s enough oxygen. Olivia was tested for asthma a few years ago and was given an inhaler. The doctor said it might be more anxiety-related as opposed to physiology. Olivia has never asked to return to the doctor since, but the things she used to complain of – the tightness of her chest, the shortness of breath – is exactly what I’m feeling.
It’s hard to keep going but I do so anyway. It’s more than an hour of feeling as if everything is on top of me. The roads all look the same and it’s only when my phone says I’ve arrived that I pull into one of the passing places and notice the gap in the hedge a little down the lane. As I walk along the verge, the daylight makes everything seem less serious, but there’s a morbid familiarity, too. In clearer light, the muddy tyre tracks are zigzagged across the disintegrating tarmac from where I reversed out. The hedge is thin, with wiry twig-like bristles and few leaves. Of all the spots in the immediate area, this is perhaps the only one through which I could have accelerated safely. The verges are deeper in other spots – especially on the opposite side of the road – and the hedges are thicker even a few metres down. If I’d slammed into one of those, chances are I might not have got through to the field on the other side. The car would have been embedded among the branches, likely stuck until a tow truck arrived to drag me out. Then there would have been breath tests, police, and endless questions. If I was lucky, I don’t feel it.
The déjà vu prickles the backs of my ears; a ghostly apparition whispering mischief.
‘You all right there?’
The male voice makes me jump as I turn away from looking at the gap in the hedge, coming face-to-face with a man with a thick grey beard.
‘Can I help?’ he adds. His accent is as abundant as his beard and it takes me a second to decipher what he’s said.
‘I was a bit lost and I noticed the, er…’
I find myself pointing at the gap in the hedge.
‘Happened last night,’ he replies. ‘Some bugger going too fast.’
‘You make it sound like it happens a lot.’
He snorts through his nose. ‘Aye. It bloody does. At least once a month. Usually some kids. Then they wonder why their insurance is so high.’ There’s a hole in his body warmer near the belly and he reaches through the material to give himself a good scratch.
I’m not sure if I feel better or worse at this fact. ‘Is this your field?’ I ask.
He nods, pointing to either side of the road. ‘And that lot,’ he replies. ‘What brings you out this way?’
The man turns to look at my cleanish car and it’s unmistakeably out of place in the middle of nowhere.
‘I’m lost,’ I say. ‘I’m on my way to, er…’ My mind races but the only thing I can come up with is the name of the hotel. ‘…the Grand Ol’ Royal hotel,’ I add.
He shakes his head: ‘Never heard of it.’
I show him my phone. ‘I’m following directions but I can’t work out if I’ve gone wrong.’
‘Those things are bloody clever nowadays. I stream all my music while I’m out in the fields.’
When I laugh with surprise, he joins in.
‘Aye. Betcha didn’t expect that.’
My poker face is awful: ‘I guess not.’ I point towards the gap in the hedge. ‘What happens now? Do you fix it up again?’
A shake of the head. ‘No point. It’s always the same spot.’
‘Why?’
He points to a kink in the road a little further along. ‘They take that bend too fast. Was in the news a few weeks ago. Had some fella here with a camera taking photos. Not done any good, has it?’
‘No…’
I wonder if that’s what I did. In my sleepy, confused state. I was racing home, took the corner too quickly and then woke up in the farmer’s field. It still doesn’t explain why I was travelling on these roads. It’s far from the direct route home.
‘Mud on the road don’t help,’ he adds. ‘But what am I s’posed to do? I need to get my tractor round and about.’
He’s right about that, too. There are narrow tyre tracks coming away from the gap – the ones I made – but, further along, most of the surface is covered with a thicker padding of muck. It seems so straightforward now he points it all out. It could happen to anyone. I’m not special at all, perhaps not even that unlucky.
‘Hope you find your hotel,’ the man adds. When I turn back to him, he’s already a couple of paces away, heading towards a wide metal gate to the side of my car. I watch him disappear over the top into the field beyond and then there’s only the distant fluttering of the breeze. It’s so silent that there’s a moment in which I wonder whether the man existed at all. He came from nowhere and then disappeared back there as well.
I walk along the verge until I’m at the mud on the road. It’s thicker than it looked from further away, packed tight from the weight of vehicles bumping over the top. I’m almost ready to convince myself that I simply slid off the road in the way many others appear to have done so when the truth comes punching back. It doesn’t explain the blood. I move slowly along the edge of the road, checking the edges for any sign of an animal I might have hit. After searching one side of the road, I double back and look along the other.
There’s nothing.
There was no sign of anything last night and the same is true now.
When I return to my car, I sit in silence for a moment or two but nothing feels any clearer in my mind. There’s a part of me for which this all feels like a dream – but the physical evidence is there. Or was there. I got rid of most of it.
I turn the radio up and follow the directions of my phone until I’m back on the dual carriageway once more. Traffic is busier as rush hour approaches and it’s easier to focus on the bumper in front and simply follow, rather than have to think too much about where I’m going. That’s all well and good but I’m so absorbed in my thoughts that I almost miss the exit that will take me back to North Melbury.
Our little corner of the world is slightly too big to be called a village but probably too small to be a town. It sits in Lincolnshire and is where I’ve always lived. There’s a stream, a small High Street and a swathe of green around the outskirts. At one time, it felt so important, as if the centre of everything went on outside my front door. Now I wonder if I’ve wasted my life by rarely spending more than a few days at a time outside the Britain In Bloom signs that surround the boundary. Dan’s midlife crisis is fitness and firming up his body and I wonder if this is mine. That wanderlust and sense of missing out. The realisation that I can never go back and change things. This is the life I’ve built.
I drive along the High Street, remembering how much of it has changed over the years. The bakery used to be independent, where the owner knew people’s names and took weekly orders for various things. Now it’s a Gregg’s. The café on the corner was once run by Mrs Griggs. The creaky, wooden furniture inside smelled of exotic teas – or they were at least exotic to me as a little girl. My mum would take me there in the school holidays and it was something of a day out. It’s a Starbuck’s now. I’m never quite sure if we’ve lost something or gained it. I don’t even know if it matters but it’s something I think about too much. A melancholic sense of sadness for something about which I don’t have any overly strong feelings.
It’s not long until I’m on our street. I wait for the garage to open itself and then pull inside. Dan’s car isn’t there, but then he spends longer and longer away from the house – not that I blame him.
When I get into the main part of the house, the first thing I notice is the draught. I wonder if it’s just me, if the chill is a leftover sense of bewilderment and confusion.
It’s not.
As soon as I move around the kitchen counter, I can see where the breeze is coming from. There’s glass on the kitchen floor, sprinkled and splintered from the shattered window above the door handle.
Someone has broken in.
Chapter Nine
‘Hello…?’
My voice echoes around the walls, bouncing the final ‘oh-oh-oh-oh’ back to me with haunting despondency. There’s no reply. The house feels cool; devoid not only of people but as if nobody’s been home in a long time.
‘Anyone there?’ The quiver in my voice betrays an undercurrent of apprehension.
Nothing.