by Mick Kitson
We turned the rabbit over and put more salt on it and it smelled lovely and was going brown and gold like toffee and hissing. The fire was getting really hot and Peppa laid out on the bed and took off her Helly Hansen and trainers and joggy bottoms and stretched out in her knickers and vest and went ‘Aaah, lovely warm – these are prickly Sal’, patting the pine branches.
The rabbit tasted good and it was all cooked through and Peppa ate most of it but I had a leg and a lot of meat from off the top along the spine they call the saddle. It is good to eat freshly killed and cooked meat because it contains small amounts of vitamin C which you need so you don’t catch scurvy which makes your teeth fall out and you go mad. Old sailors and people on Arctic expeditions used to get it before they started eating lemons which have a lot of vitamin C in them, and so does kale and red peppers. But I also had multivitamins for us so we didn’t get scurvy or other illnesses caused by vitamin deficiencies like osteoporosis, osteopenia and gout.
We boiled water from the burn in the kettle and had tea with McDonald’s milk and sugar. We had a mug each, they were enamel and mine was blue and Peppa’s was green.
I banked up the fire with new wood all along and Peppa jumped up and ran down behind the shelter to do a wee and a poo in the latrine I had dug with a stick on the first day we got here. She went barefoot and came hopping back going ‘Oooh it’s fucking cold . . .’ The latrine was the first thing I made when we got to this site, it’s about seven metres away from the shelter, down from it in case it rains but close enough so you can still see the fire glow from it. But it is black out there behind you when you are going and you have to face the shelter so you can see the fire and not think about the black behind you. You wipe your bum on grass. I had cut a big bunch of it and put it by the latrine on a flat rock where you can see it and it will dry a bit.
It was probably only about 6.30 but Peppa climbed into the double sleeping bag on the bed and I took my shoes off and took off my fleece and got in with her and she wriggled and went ‘weeeeeeeecosy!’ We had two blankets as well, one was a fleece blanket from IKEA and one was an old pink pure wool blanket with a satin edge I brought from the flat where it had been in the airing cupboard for years and nobody used it.
The rabbit skin on the frame was lying flat on the damp leaves with the skin down and the fur up. I didn’t want it to dry out because tomorrow I was going to scrape all the bits of meat and fat off it and then cure it with wood ashes and wee and oak leaves, which have got tannin in them and they are meant to make the skin soft and supple. Inuit women chew the skin side and mash it all up with spit to stop it drying hard and snaggy. The chewing breaks down the skin tissue and I think spit must preserve it too because that is how they cure skins and furs. But you can make it soft with wee and ashes and oak leaves, where you make a paste and spread it on and let it soak in for a few days, and that preserves it according to a site I looked up about curing skins and furs. I didn’t know if it would work or not.
Peppa went on the fire side and I went on the tarp side but I was really warm even though the wind was getting up again and swishing the last leaves on the birch trees, but it must’ve shifted from north because it wasn’t coming in from the top like the night before. It was hitting the back of the tarp and making it billow in and out so it was probably a westerly or a northwesterly, but I didn’t have my compass to check and I was starting to feel very sleepy.
Peppa said ‘Tell me about the Sioux and the Buffalo.’ She likes me to tell her stuff every night and I like it too. Sometimes I have to make things up if I don’t know all the correct facts and dates and places but I don’t tell her because she thinks I know everything. And mostly I do. Especially about the Sioux and the Buffalo and the Indian wars of 1860s in the Great Plains.
So I told her about how the Dakota Sioux migrated to the Great Plains in the eighteenth century and built a culture based on hunting the millions of Buffalo that lived on the plains in herds so big a man could ride past one for a whole day and not see bare ground. And how the braves would ride alongside the herds and use their horses to split off small groups and drive them away across the plains towards a cliff edge where they would all run over and be killed in their hundreds on the rocks below. It was the most dangerous way of hunting the Buffalo and that was why they did it because a brave could show his courage and skill on a horse, and one successful hunt in the autumn would provide food and shelter and clothing for the entire tribe for a whole winter and the winters in the Great Plains were savagely cold with feet of snow and freezing north winds.
And when I got to this bit Peppa was asleep and I kissed her ear and made a spoon behind her and listened to the wind and crackle of the fire with my eyes closed.
Chapter Three
Hooks
When I woke up I started to worry straight away that it was four days since we ran and this was the fourth day here and they would definitely be looking for us all over. I think it was our fourth day here. I think they would’ve found Maw in the room by now and she had a phone so she could phone out. But the room was locked from the outside and the key was on the carpet and there was no way she could’ve killed Robert and then locked herself in there from the outside so that proved she didn’t do it.
And they would’ve found Robert on my bed and all the blood from his throat where I stabbed him three times. And blood up the wall too, on the wallpaper with monkeys on it. And Peppa gone too and her room just normal. They didn’t know about the school uniforms we wore or the rucksack or the backpack Peppa carried or the hockey stick case with the gun and the rod in it, so if they looked for things missing they wouldn’t know what was and wasn’t there. I knew what was there and what we’d taken but the polis and social workers wouldn’t know that. They’d find my T-shirt and jeans and knickers with Robert’s blood all over them in the washing in the bathroom so they’d know it was me. They’d find the lock on Peppa’s unlocked door and the key on the floor so they’d know I locked her in and it wasn’t her.
I wondered if Maw had gone on telly asking us to come back and saying we weren’t in any trouble. Or if they thought I had kidnapped Peppa. And they wouldn’t find the knife because I had it with me. I got rid of all the phones I used to look stuff up and I dumped the laptop in a skip the day before I did it. I threw the phones off the wall into the sea where it is deep even at low tide and you go spinning for Mackerel.
They would also find the phones Robert got and brought back and the cards he had and they knew him anyway because he had been in the jail once and he had a court appearance coming up in November for theft. They’d find bits of weed and speed and mandy all over the place and they’d know it was Robert’s. And they had been to our flat twice two years ago, once when Robert was hitting Maw and me and once when Maw nicked two bottles of vodka from the Spar and got seen with them walking up to the flats and somebody shopped her.
If the polis were clever they’d trace the things I bought on the stolen cards over the eight months when I was planning it, but I’d put all those cards back in Robert’s drawer or chucked them and most of them had been cancelled by the time I tried to use them. But if one copper was clever enough to look at purchases on stolen cards from Robert he’d see all the stuff I bought on Amazon like a tarp and a compass and the knife and mess tins and Peppa’s trainers and the rucksack. And if he thought about it he might’ve had an idea what I was going to do. But coppers are not that clever and most of them I have met or seen on the telly are really thick and they don’t arrest the people they should and they do arrest the people they shouldn’t.
When they came round when Robert was hitting Maw the woman copper asked Maw if she was alright and Maw said aye and it was all just a rammy and shouting and no hitting. And the woman copper said to her ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ and Maw said ‘Aye.’ The man copper had taken Robert in the other room when she said this to Maw. And she didn’t ask me anything but I wouldn’t have told her anyway because they’d bring the social in and we’d
get split up. Peppa was watching telly.
You could hear everything in our flats. A guy called Big Chris lived above us. He sometimes bought weed and mandy off Robert. At night you could hear him banging and screaming and crying. I don’t know why. We nicked his broadband most of the time because Robert got his wifi code. Robert got phones and SIMs too, some of them could get 4G. I mostly went to McDonald’s to get online when I was buying stuff with the cards. I used to get a McFlurry and sit facing the door so I could see who was coming in.
I got the school uniforms from a charity shop in August. They were two blazers and skirts and ties and blouses and mine was a bit tight but Peppa’s fitted her and I paid ten pounds for them and told the wifey in the shop they were for a school play. They were from a posh school in Glasgow and had gold and red badges with ‘Ad Vitam’ embroidered on them and that means ‘for life’ in Latin.
We both wore our walking trainers with them and they looked alright and I carried the rucksack and the hockey stick case and Peppa carried the backpack. And we left the flat at 6.00 a.m. and nobody saw us, and we went through the close the back way and up the alley and climbed over the fence onto the path by the park that led along to the train station, so we didn’t even walk on any roads or places where people would be and we got the 6.15 to Glasgow and I bought the tickets in the machine with the cash from Robert’s wallet. I worried on the train and in Glasgow that we’d see kids who went to the posh school in real life and they’d know we didn’t go to their school and they’d remember us. But we didn’t.
In Glasgow where we changed trains it was crowded and there were hundreds of people all over rushing and walking and talking on phones and nobody even looked at us. When we got on the train to Girvan there was only one old wifey in the carriage and she smiled at Peppa and it was like she was going ‘She looks so sweet’. I just wanted people to see two nice posh little girls going on a train to a posh school and they did.
Peppa asked if we had to talk posh if we talked, and I said no, don’t talk till we get to the forest. Or if the police issued descriptions Maw would tell them what we would be wearing and then people would look for two girls wearing those things and not school uniforms like we were. If they saw us on CCTV we’d be two posh girls in school uniforms not two schemies from our flats and I told Peppa to look down all the time at the station so they didn’t see our faces.
With the sleeping bag and the blankets and lures and spinners and the kettle stand and kettle the rucksack was heavy, but it was properly packed and had a waist strap so once it was on it was easy to walk with. Peppa carried most of the food in her backpack and also the first aid kit and spare paracord and the slingshot and some fishing stuff and airgun pellets.
At Girvan we went in a café by the station and Peppa had a big Scottish breakfast and I had bacon and egg and sausage and toast. The man in the café just said ‘There you go girls’ when he brought the food and that was all he said and we paid and went and then got the X22 to Newton Stewart which goes all along the edge of the Galloway forest park. I had to get the map and keep checking for our stop and I rang the bell when we were near it by a village called Glentrool.And the bus stopped and we got off and the driver didn’t even look at us.
Then we walked up a little road towards the village and when we came to a green wooden sign that said ‘Galloway Forest Park’ we went into the car park and then walked along a path through some pine woods. We went into the woods and changed our clothes and buried the school uniforms and the two phones we had. I took the batteries and the SIMs out and put them in a bin in the car park because phone batteries have lithium in them which could leak out and cause pollution in the soil.
Then we climbed a bit and the path came round and out and we were looking down a valley towards Loch Trool and there were mountains with forest going up on either side and far away at the end on the other side was a bit that stuck out into the loch called the Bruce’s Stone where Robert the Bruce lived and fought the English with a gang of men in 1307. He had lived wild in the hills and slept in caves and shelters.
It was all lit up with sunshine, and from the height of the sun and working out the times we’d been on the train and bus and walking I reckoned it was only about just before 11 o’clock in the morning.
And the night before I had killed Robert and locked Maw in her room.
I could feel the start of the glow of the sun through the trees but it was still dark and Peppa was fast asleep. It was really cold and there was frost on the burned ends of the sticks in the fire and the whole length of it was dusty ash but I could see some smoke coming from the middle where there were lumps like charcoal. The stone we cooked the rabbit on was split into three flat ovals that looked like roof slates, like we’d sliced it. I thought they’d make good plates.
We had two head torches and a solar charger but I was trying to get used to the dark and seeing and the more you sit in the dark the easier it gets to see. Even in pitch black you can sense things like animals do. And I am not scared of the dark and neither is Peppa. At night here it is so black and there is so little light pollution from towns and cars you can see the Milky Way and the stars give you a bit of light to see by even if there is no moon. It’s only glow and not proper light and it starts to go down before the sun comes up and that is one way you can tell when dawn will be if the sky is clear.
The wind was picking up now and it was a cold one. I slid out of the sleeping bag and found my trainers and joggers and pulled them on. I zipped my fleece up and then blew the embers back to glowing and started a little fire with three half burned twigs. I crumbled some dry birch bark on and it fizzed and cracked and gave me more flame, then I started building a pyramid fire with ends of burned sticks and some of the sticks from the dry pile and waited for it all to take and a nice yellow flame to come out. The wind was catching the smoke and sending it straight away from me so the wind was a northwesterly and it was starting to blow.
I got the kettle and ran down to the burn to get water. In the SAS Survival Handbook it tells you to always filter water even if it comes from a running burn, but I read in other places that so long as you boil it, it’s safe because boiling kills bacteria like Weil’s disease which comes from infected rodent urine, and also kills parasites and flukes.
The burn was bubbling and rushing and there was a stone where you came out of the woods where you could kneel and fill the kettle in a fast-moving bit that ran over smooth rock and as I knelt to fill the kettle I looked up and there was a deer. There was enough light to make it out standing still as stone and staring straight at me from only about six metres away on the other bank. It was a young doe and I froze as still as it.
And we stayed like that. Paused like a DVD and staring, and I tried to become aware of my breathing so I didn’t think and move and so I wouldn’t feel the cold stone under my knees. And my breathing slowed so it was soon so slow I didn’t know it. Then I felt a sensation like someone very gently tapping the top of my spine, slowly just tapping. And I saw things starting to drop down around the deer like little pricks of light, and they dropped with each slow tap. I stopped feeling the stones under my knees and hearing the burn bubble and the leaves moving. The air stopped going in and out of my lungs and I felt light and then not there and just looking out again at the deer and the lights that dropped in lines like rain coming down dead straight. The deer just moved out of my vision like someone leaving a picture. It moved slow and calm and made no noise.
Then the sun was up and a slice of it was pushing over the top of the mountain above the forest and I stood up and walked back to the shelter with the kettle full.
Peppa was awake and squatting by the fire and she was eating the Dundee cake and she said ‘I want tea Sal.’
She fed sticks into the fire and I put the kettle on the frame to boil and got the enamel cups and put teabags in them. We had loads of teabags.
I said ‘We’re not gonna hunt deer.’
And Peppa said ‘Alright.’ Then sh
e said ‘How long have we been here?’
And I thought for a minute and said ‘I can’t remember.’ And I couldn’t.
I knew it was days and nights but I couldn’t remember how many and in my mind I went through all the last day cooking the rabbit and doing the skin on the hoop of alder and Peppa doing slingshot and snaring the rabbit and the big Trout and the worm in Peppa’s fingers and seeing the warren and Peppa calling Bear a wanker and coming down the slope in the sun and going through the wood and eating belVitas for breakfast and waking up and feeling Peppa to see if she was cold and then being asleep and then there was a day before and I might’ve built the shelter that day or I might have built it the day before that or before that and dug the latrine and the long walk over from Glentrool with the rucksack and sweating in the sun and I didn’t know when that was or if it was yesterday.
Peppa said ‘You alright Sal?’
I think I started to panic then because my breathing got fast and I felt butterflies in my chest. I only panic if I can’t remember things I need to or if I don’t know where I am or if we lose the map or the compass. When I tried to go into my memory for the days just past it felt like a big mush and I didn’t get the pictures and things in order, I got a big rush and a mush.The number never just came into my head like it had.
Then I got the tapping on my spine again and started to see the little light pricks dropping slowly and I started to get more calm.And I tried to become aware of my breathing and felt calmer and the little lights dropped down in the wood behind Peppa’s head and then I went warm and wanted to smile.
I said ‘I couldn’t remember.’
And Peppa said ‘Never mind. It doesnae matter.’
And she was right, it didn’t. I tried for things that did matter. And I got that the size 10 and 12 hooks and the split shot were zipped into the inner pocket of the top part of the rucksack with the wire traces and the plastic pack of spinners and I had the rabbit liver and heart and kidney on a stone for bait and the rod was 2.3 metres fully extended.