Flora took her jacket off and put it over her head—it didn’t even have a hood—but the water was running down her neck regardless. She said every single swear word she knew, over and over again, but it didn’t help. In fact, it precipitated a rumble of thunder somewhere in the distance.
Shelter, she thought. She needed to find shelter. She thought about the layout of the mountain in her head, from her childhood running up and down its paths, picking wildflowers for her mother, who would glance at them distractedly before looking around for a vase, which they didn’t have, and dunking them in a mug.
There was, she remembered, a cave about two hundred yards downhill and round the other side, facing inland. She had drunk cider and made out there with Clark when they were at school—he was now the island’s policeman, which showed how things had changed—and cigarette butts and bottle tops had littered the ground then. She wondered if it was still like that. Probably. There weren’t that many places on their tiny island where you could get away from prying eyes. If she could make it there, they could shelter until . . . well. Until she thought of a better idea.
She took a deep breath. Once she was down this mountain, she was going to tell the boys . . . well, she was going to tell the boys to stuff it. They could get on with everything themselves, eat beans out of a can if they wanted, she no longer cared. She hated this stupid place and its stupid mad weather and its stupid tiny bunch of people who all knew each other and had opinions all the time. She was done. She was out.
Bramble nuzzled her foot.
Maybe she would take Bramble with her. Mind you, moving a huge, ancient dog into a tiny London rental . . . Well. Okay, maybe. Maybe she could come visit. Maybe . . .
Bramble whined.
“Stop that, dog,” she said. “Oh God. Right. Okay.”
The best way, she worked out, after some slightly muddy and ungraceful scrambling in the soaking undergrowth, was to lift Bramble over her shoulder, like in a war film, trying to avoid his damaged paw. He struggled to begin with, then seemed to realize she was trying to help him.
Now utterly drenched from head to toe, with mud covering her almost completely, she made a growling noise at the sky and started skidding and slipping back down the hill.
“For CHRIST’S sake, you STUPID dumb dog!” she shouted, marching ferociously, using her anger to propel her forward. “If you weren’t so DAMN greedy and always wolfing up all the leftovers, I wouldn’t be nearly KILLING myself carrying you. And you probably wouldn’t have been trapped in that waterfall if you were a proper HEALTHY dog.”
“Aoww,” agreed Bramble mournfully, lifting his head and covering her face with another layer of mud.
If she hadn’t known it so well, she would have missed the cave altogether, given that it was out of the way round the back end of the hill and had a hefty spray of early-season heather growing in front of it. She staggered toward it through the sheeting rain, continuing to lecture the dog as she went, her feet in their utterly unsuitable—and now ruined—Converse becoming ever more sodden. She nearly dropped poor Bramble as she pushed her way through the trailing greenery into the relative safety of the cave.
“BLOODY BLOODY BLOODY HELL,” she said, depositing him as gently as she could manage on the sandy floor. She was puffing and sweating now as well as utterly drenched and furious. It was not a good look.
“Hello,” came a quiet voice.
Chapter Eleven
Flora could barely see. The darkness inside the cave plus the stream of water plastering her hair over her head and across her eyes meant she couldn’t focus at all. She blinked, then rubbed her hands over her face to try and clear her vision.
Then she did it again, in the hope that what she had seen would go away.
Staring straight at her were about a dozen twelve-year-olds and a large, pink-faced man, all wide-eyed and gazing at her in bemusement. Some of the children seemed quite frightened. Flora wondered if she looked very peculiar.
Probably. She was plastered with mud from head to foot and had just dumped a gigantic whining dog on the floor.
She tried to think of a way to pass all this off in a casual fashion, as if it was the kind of thing one did all the time on Mure, but Bramble was whining pitifully, and the eerily quiet children were staring at her like she’d been deliberately torturing him.
“Uh. Hi,” she said. The man stepped forward carefully, in the calm way you might approach a dangerous animal.
“Are you all right?”
Outside, the rain pounded the hillside.
“Of course I’m all right,” Flora said, then realized she could hardly breathe and bent over.
“I was talking to the dog,” said the man. His accent was local, but when Flora lifted her head, she found she didn’t recognize him.
She blinked the last of the water out of her eyes.
“Sorry . . . are you guys some kind of lost tribe?”
But the man had already knelt down and was making soothing noises, gently stroking Bramble’s panting flank.
“It’s his paw,” said Flora. “Don’t touch it. He got it caught in some rocks.”
“He’s out of shape,” said the man, scratching behind Bramble’s ears.
“Don’t insult my dog,” said Flora sharply.
“Right. Sorry.”
He looked up at her. He was large, broad-shouldered, and heavyset, with thick hair; his eyes were a penetrating blue and he didn’t look very pleased.
“So why have you got him marching all over a mountain in a storm?”
“I could say exactly the same about you and your albino dwarf army,” muttered Flora.
“Do you always climb mountains in shoes like that?”
“Yes,” said Flora. “I like to feel the mud between my toes.”
The man’s face lost its stern expression for a moment.
“You’re from round here?” he said.
“Not really,” said Flora, lying. “What are you doing?”
“Charlie MacArthur,” said the man, sticking out his hand. “Outward Adventures. We’re on a trip.”
“And this is meant to be fun, is it?”
A ragged cheer went up from the little band.
“Of course,” said Charlie. “We’ve been far too hot today.”
“What’s wrong with your dug?” said one of the boys shyly. His accent was rough and westerly; Glaswegian, Flora would have said.
“I don’t know,” said Flora. “I think he’s broken his paw.”
There was a general murmur of sympathy from the assembled group. As Flora focused on them a bit more closely, she noticed they were a wary-looking collection, not noisy and confident like the large groups of children she saw marching up and down on the harbor wall, shouting and yelling at each other cheerfully, hurling chips for the seagulls, and generally acting like they didn’t have a care in the world, which they didn’t, because they were twelve.
This bunch was different. She’d been right: they were pale; they were scrawny too, swamped by their huge, obviously borrowed waterproofs. She glanced up at Charlie again.
“Can the lads pet your dog?” he said. “We’ll get him home for you. If you want. You know. If you don’t have a plan sorted.”
Flora straightened up and looked at him with narrowed eyes, not wanting to let her sudden relief show too much. She had enough annoying males patronizing her around here; she certainly didn’t need another one.