“—stick all our rubbish down a hollow tree so no one finds it—”
“How much money have you guys got?”
“My confirmation money’s all in the bank, I can’t get it.”
“So we’ll get cheap stuff, milk and bread—”
“Eww, milk’ll go bad!”
“No it won’t, we can keep it in the river in a plastic bag—”
“Jamie drinks chunky milk!” Peter yelled. He jumped at the wall and started scrambling up to the top.
Jamie leaped after him. “I do not, you drink chunky milk, you—” She grabbed Peter’s ankle and they tussled on top of the wall, giggling wildly. I caught up with them, and Peter shot out an arm and dragged me into the scuffle. We wrestled, yelping and breathless with laughter, balancing dangerously half over the edge. “Adam eats bugs—” “Screw you, that was when we were little—”
“Shut up!” Peter snapped suddenly. He shook us off and froze, crouched on the wall, hands out to silence us. “What’s that?”
Motionless and alert as startled hares, we listened. The wood was still, too still, waiting; the normal afternoon bustle of birds and insects and unseen little animals had been cut off as if by a conductor’s baton. Only somewhere, up ahead of us—
“What the…” I whispered.
“Shhh.” Music, or a voice; or just some trick of the river on stones, the breeze in the hollow oak? The wood had a million voices, changing with every season and every day; you could never know them all.
“Come on,” said Jamie, her eyes shining, “come on,” and launched herself like a flying squirrel off the wall. She caught a branch, swung, dropped and rolled and ran; Peter was leaping after her before the branch stopped swaying, and I scrambled down the wall and chased behind them, “Wait for me, wait—”
The wood had never been so lush or so feral. Leaves threw off dazzles of sunlight like sparklers and the colors were so bright you could live on them, the smell of fertile earth amplified to something heady as church wine. We shot through humming clouds of midges and leaped ditches and rotten logs, branches swirled around us like water, swallows trapezed across our path and in the trees alongside I swear three deer kept pace with us. I felt light and lucky and wild, I had never run so fast or jumped so effortlessly high; one shove of my foot and I could have been airborne.
How long did we run? All the familiar loved landmarks must have shifted, turned out to wish us good speed, because we passed every one of them on our way; we jumped the stone table and soared through the clearing in one bound, between the whip of the blackberry bushes and the rabbits poking up their noses to see us go by, we left the tire swing swaying in our wake and swung one-handed round the hollow oak. And up ahead, so sweet and wild it hurt, drawing us on—
Gradually I became aware that under the sleeping bag I was drenched in sweat; that my back, pressed against the tree trunk, was so rigid that I was shaking, my head nodding in stiff convulsive jerks like a toy’s. The wood was black, blank, as if I had been blinded. Far off, there was a quick pittering sound like raindrops on leaves, tiny and spreading. I fought to ignore it, to keep following where that frail gold thread of memory led, not to drop it in this darkness or I would never find my way home.
Laughter streaming over Jamie’s shoulder like bright soap-bubbles, bees whirling in a sunbeam and Peter’s arms flying out as he leaped a fallen branch whooping. My shoelaces coming undone and alarm peals rising fiercely somewhere inside me as I felt the estate dissolving to mist behind us, are you sure, are you sure, Peter, Jamie, wait, stop—
The pittering sound was catching all through the wood, rising and falling, drawing closer on every side. It was in the branches high overhead, in the undergrowth behind me, small and swift and intent. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. Rain, I told myself with whatever was left of my mind, just rain, though I couldn’t feel a drop. Off at the other side of the wood something screamed, a shrill witless sound.
Come on, Adam, hurry, hurry up—
The darkness in front of me was shifting, condensing. There was a sound like wind in the leaves, a great rushing wind coming down through the wood to clear a path. I thought of the torch, but my fingers were frozen around it. I felt that gold thread twist and tug. Somewhere across the clearing something breathed; something big.
Down by the river. Skidding to a stop; willow branches swaying and the water firing off splinters of light like a million tiny mirrors, blinding, dizzying. Eyes, golden and fringed like an owl’s.
I ran. I scrabbled out of the clutching sleeping bag and threw myself into the wood, away from the clearing. Brambles clawed at my legs and hair, wing-beats exploded in my ear; I shoulder-barged straight into a tree trunk, knocking myself breathless. Invisible dips and hollows flicked open under my feet and I couldn’t run fast enough, legs crashing knee-deep through underbrush, it was like every childhood nightmare come true. Trailing ivy wrapped my face and I think I screamed. I knew beyond all doubt I would never get out of the wood, they would find my sleeping bag—for an instant I saw, sharp as reality, Cassie in her red sweater, kneeling in the clearing among falling leaves and reaching out a gloved hand to touch the fabric—and nothing else, ever.
Then I saw a fingernail of new moon between racing clouds and knew I was out, on the dig. The ground was treacherous, it sideslipped and gave under my feet and I stumbled, flailing, barked my shin on a fragment of some old wall; saved my balance in the nick of time and kept running. There was a harsh gasping sound loud in my ears, but I couldn’t tell whether it came from me. Like every detective, I had taken it for granted that I was the hunter. It had never once occurred to me that I might have been the hunted, all along.
The Land Rover loomed up radiantly white through the darkness like some sweet shining church offering sanctuary. It took me two or three tries to get the door open; once I dropped my keys and had to grope frantically in the leaves and dry grass, staring wildly over my shoulder and sure I would never find them, until I remembered I was still holding the torch. Finally I clambered in, banging my elbow off the steering wheel, locked all the doors and sat there, gasping for breath and sweating all over. I was way too shaky to drive; I doubt I could even have pulled out without hitting something. I found my cigarettes, managed to light one. I wished, badly, that I had a stiff drink, or a large joint. There were huge smears of mud across the knees of my jeans, though I didn’t remember falling.
When my hands were steady enough to push buttons, I phoned Cassie. It had to be well after midnight, maybe much later, but she answered on the second ring, sounding wide awake. “Hi, you, what’s up?”
For one hideous moment I thought my voice wasn’t going to work. “Where are you?”
“I just got home like twenty minutes ago. Emma and Susanna and I went to the cinema and then had dinner at the Trocadero and, God, they gave us the loveliest red wine ever. These three guys tried to chat us up, Emma said they were actors and she’d seen one of them on TV in that hospital thing—”
She was tipsy, but not actually drunk. “Cassie,” I said. “I’m in Knocknaree. At the dig.”
A tiny, fractional pause. Then she said calmly, in a different voice, “Want me to pick you up?”
“Yeah. Please.” I hadn’t realized, till she said it, that that was why I had rung her.
“OK. See you soon.” She hung up.
It took her forever to get there, long enough that I started imagining panicky nightmare scenarios: she had been splattered across the highway by a truck, got a flat tire and been abducted from the roadside by human traffickers. I managed to pull out my gun and hold it in my lap—I had enough sense left not to cock it. I chain-smoked; the car filled up with a haze that made my eyes water. Outside, things rustled and pounced in the undergrowth, twigs snapped; over and over I whipped round with my heart racing wildly and my hand tightening on the gun, sure I had seen a face at the window, feral and laughing, but there was never anything there. I tried switching on the roof light, but it made me feel too conspicuous, like some primitive man with predators drawn by the firelight circling just beyond its glow, and I turned it off again almost at once.
At last I heard the Vespa buzzing, saw the beam of its headlamp coming over the hill. I got my gun back into its holster and opened the door; I didn’t want Cassie to see me fumbling with it. After the darkness her lights were dazzling, surreal. She pulled up in the road, bracing the bike with her foot, and called, “Hey.”
“Hi,” I said, stumbling out of the car; my legs were cramped and stiff, I must have been pressing both feet against the floorboards the whole time. “Thanks.”
“No problem. I was awake anyway.” She was flushed and bright-eyed from the wind of driving, and when I got close enough I felt its cold aura striking off her. She swung her rucksack off her back and pulled out her spare helmet. “Here.”
Inside the helmet I couldn’t hear anything, only the bike’s steady hum and the blood beating in my ears. The air flowed past me, dark and cool as water; cars’ headlights and neon signs streamed by in bright lazy trails. Cassie’s rib cage was slight and solid between my hands, shifting as she changed gears or leaned into a turn. I felt as if the bike was floating, high above the road, and I wished we were on one of those endless American freeways where you could drive on and on forever through the night.
She had been reading in bed when I rang. The futon was pulled out, made up with the patchwork duvet and white pillows; Wuthering Heights and her oversized T-shirt were tumbled at the foot. There were semi-organized heaps of work stuff—a photo of the ligature mark on Katy’s neck leaped out at me, hung in the air like an afterimage—scattered across the coffee table and the sofa, overlaid with Cassie’s going-out clothes: slim dark jeans, a red silk handkerchief top embroidered in gold. The chubby little bedside lamp gave the room a cozy glow.
“When did you last eat?” Cassie asked.
I had forgotten about my sandwiches, presumably still somewhere in the clearing. My sleeping bag and my thermos, too; I would have to get them in the morning, when I picked up my car. A fast finger ran down my neck at the thought of going back in there, even by daylight. “I’m not sure,” I said.
Cassie rummaged in the wardrobe, passed me a bottle of brandy and a glass. “Have a shot of that while I make food. Eggs on toast?”
Neither of us likes brandy—the bottle was unopened and dusty, probably a prize from the Christmas raffle or something—but a small objective part of my mind was pretty sure that she was right, I was in some kind of shock. “Yeah, great,” I said. I sat down on the edge of the futon—the thought of clearing all that stuff off the sofa seemed almost unimaginably complicated—and stared at the bottle for a while until I realized I was supposed to open it.
I threw down way too much brandy, coughed (Cassie glanced over, said nothing) and felt it kick in, burning trails of warmth through my veins. My tongue throbbed; I had apparently bitten it, at some point or other. I poured myself another shot and sipped it more carefully. Cassie moved deftly around the kitchenette, pulling herbs out of a cupboard with one hand and eggs out of the fridge with the other and shoving a drawer shut with her hip. She had left music on—the Cowboy Junkies, turned down low, faint and slow and haunting; normally I like them, but tonight I kept hearing things hidden somewhere behind the bass line, quick whispers, calls, a throb of drumbeat that shouldn’t have been there. “Can we turn that off?” I said, when I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Please?”
She turned from the frying pan to look at me, a wooden spoon in her hand. “Yeah, sure,” she said after a moment. She switched off the stereo, popped the toast and piled the eggs on top of it. “Here.”
The smell made me realize how hungry I was. I shoveled the food down in huge mouthfuls, barely stopping to breathe; it was whole-grain bread and the eggs were redolent with herbs and spices, and nothing had ever tasted so richly delicious. Cassie sat cross-legged at the top of the futon, watching me over a piece of toast. “More?” she said, when I had finished.
“No,” I said. Too much too quickly: my stomach was cramping viciously. “Thanks.”
“What happened?” she said quietly. “Did you remember something?”
I started to cry. I cry so seldom—only once or twice since I was thirteen, I think, and both those times I was so drunk that it doesn’t really count—that it took me a moment to understand what was happening. I rubbed a hand across my face and stared at my wet fingers. “No,” I said. “Nothing that does any good. I can remember all that afternoon, going into the wood and what we were talking about, and hearing something—I can’t remember what—and going to find out what it was…. And then I panicked. I fucking panicked.” My voice cracked.
“Hey,” Cassie said. She scooted across the futon and put a hand on my shoulder. “That’s a huge step, hon. Next time you’ll remember the rest.”
“No,” I said. “No, I won’t.” I couldn’t explain, I’m still not sure what made me so certain: this had been my ace in the hole, my one shot, and I had blown it. I put my face in my hands and sobbed like a child.
She didn’t put her arms around me or try to comfort me, and I was grateful for this. She just sat there quietly, her thumb moving regularly on my shoulder, while I cried. Not for those three children, I can’t claim that, but for the unbridgeable distance that lay between them and me: for the millions of miles, and the planets separating at dizzying speed. For how much we had had to lose. We had been so small, so recklessly sure that together we could defy all the dark and complicated threats of the adult world, run straight through them like a game of Red Rover, laughing and away.
“Sorry about that,” I said at last. I straightened up and wiped my face with the back of my wrist.
“For what?”
“Making an idiot of myself. I didn’t intend to do that.”
Cassie shrugged. “So we’re even. Now you know how I feel when I have those dreams and you have to wake me up.”
“Yeah?” This had never occurred to me.
“Yeah.” She rolled over onto her stomach on the futon, reached for a packet of tissues in the bedside table and passed them to me. “Blow.”
I managed to work up a weak smile, and blew my nose. “Thanks, Cass.”
“How’re you doing?”
I caught a long shuddery breath and yawned, suddenly and irrepressibly. “I’m all right.”
“You about ready to crash?”
The tension was slowly draining out of my shoulders and I was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life, but there were still quick little shadows zipping past my eyelids, and every sigh and crack of the house settling made me jerk. I knew that if Cassie switched off the light and I was alone on the sofa the air would fill up with layers of nameless things, pressing and mouthing and twittering. “I think so,” I said. “Would it be OK if I slept here?”
“Sure. If you snore, though, you’re back on the sofa.” She sat up, blinking, and started to take out her hair clips.
“I won’t,” I said. I leaned over and took off my shoes and socks, but both the etiquette and the physical act of undressing seemed way too difficult to negotiate. I climbed under the duvet with all my clothes on.
Cassie pulled off her sweater and slid in beside me, curls standing up in a riot of cowlicks. Without even thinking about it I put my arms around her, and she curled her back against me.
“Night, hon,” I said. “Thanks again.”
She gave my arm a pat and stretched to switch off the bedside lamp. “Night, silly. Sleep tight. Wake me up if you want to.”
Her hair against my face had a sweet green smell, like tea leaves. She settled her head on the pillow and sighed. She felt warm and compact, and I thought vaguely of polished ivory, glossy chestnuts: the pure, piercing satisfaction when something fits perfectly into your hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I had held anyone like this.
“Are you awake?” I whispered, after a long time.
“Yeah,” Cassie said.
We lay very still. I could feel the air around us changing, blooming and shimmering like the air over a scorching road. My heart was speeding, or hers was banging against my chest, I’m not sure. I turned Cassie in my arms and kissed her, and after a moment she kissed me back.
I know I said that I always choose the anticlimactic over the irrevocable, and yes of course what I meant was that I have always been a coward, but I lied: not always, there was that night, there was that one time.