by Sara Foster
Callum’s eyes never leave the tree line as the trickle of runners becomes a stream. They sprint down the hill, some at full pelt despite the gruelling conditions and the medals already won. They rush through the finish line, stumble to a stop and are each collected by waiting arms.
‘Where the hell is she?’ Anya asks, her hands on her hips. Beside them, Zac doesn’t take his eyes off the horizon.
‘I don’t know – she should be here. They said she was towards the lead.’
As he says these words, the ground Callum stands on seems to shift beneath his feet, as though he’s surfing a tidal wave on this landlocked field in the rain. On all sides of them are congratulations and commiserations. The crowd flows and ebbs between their three still, expectant figures. None of them can bear to voice the fears that slide towards them, gathering like an avalanche, preparing to sweep them away.
But when no more runners come down the hill for a whole minute, then two, Callum and Anya turn to each other. For a fraction of a second they are caught in the mirror of one other’s panic, and then they rally.
Callum hurries back to the marshals, with Anya and Zac right behind him.
‘Jimmy, Georgia isn’t back yet,’ he says. ‘Please can you check on her?’
‘Really?’ Jimmy looks concerned. ‘Of course. Hang on a second.’ He puts his two-way close to his mouth, and turns away from the hubbub.
Anya is back on her phone. ‘I’m trying her mobile now.’ Her words are rapid, her tone breathless. Her hand is trembling. ‘Voicemail,’ she says, putting it on speaker so they can all hear. Callum watches the colour drain from her face.
Jimmy turns back to them. ‘The last marshal hasn’t seen her,’ he says, his brow furrowed. ‘He said he’ll walk the route, in case she’s had a fall.’ He claps Callum on the back. ‘Don’t worry, she won’t be far. She’s probably sitting somewhere with a sprained ankle, unable to get decent mobile reception.’
Callum’s thoughts skitter, desperately wanting to believe him. His instincts, however, are raging at him, convinced there is more.
Anya is right next to him. Instinctively his eyes find hers. The pause is swifter than a heartbeat, but in that second the chasm between them is no longer dark and deep and empty. Instead there is a roaring in Callum’s ears; all that he most loves and fears is tumbling over and over itself, filling every part of him. He knows Anya feels it too – their purpose united in the racing heart that’s lost somewhere in the woods above them.
Find her, Callum. Go.
And he is charging up the hill.
34
GEORGIA
As soon as Georgia turns onto the path towards home, everything seems different. Light makes new inroads through the trees; branches knit and weave fresh patterns above her, deflecting the rain. Water no longer invades her eyes and mouth, but glistens in soft, pretty drops that form shimmering crystals across the whole forest. She zigzags along the track, jumping over the biggest puddles, each step unwinding the mess in her head. She tries to shake the tension out of her muscles, but they react by squeezing tighter despite her encouragement. She’s going to be in pain tomorrow.
It has been hard to walk this route lately without thinking of Leo, because she always has to pass the very first spot she saw him. Will there ever be a day she comes this way and only afterwards realises he hasn’t gone through her mind? She hopes so. Perhaps if she walked here often enough with Danny, then those memories would replace Leo. But is Danny even speaking to her any more? He’s probably too busy celebrating. Before long he’ll be laughing about that photo with his friends.
Her good mood begins to disperse, and she quickens her pace. The sooner she is home, the better.
She imagines her parents waiting for her, back at school, and has a pang of guilt. They will be so disappointed. She debates turning around, just for them – but the thought of publicly coming in last is mortifying. Still, she can’t leave them waiting. She had better get in touch and let them know what she’s done.
She pulls her phone out of her zip pocket, and sees she has already missed a call. Before she can redial, it rings in her hand. To her surprise she sees Sophia’s name on the screen. Quickly, she answers the call.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Sophia asks without preamble. ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all morning.’
‘I’ve been running,’ Georgia says. ‘And before that, Zac disappeared with my phone. I’ve done something a bit crazy actually: I decided to walk home in the middle of the race – Mum’s going to kill me.’ Saying this out loud makes it ludicrously real. A hysterical giggle escapes her mouth.
‘Tell me about that later,’ Sophia cuts in, her voice stern, her tone sweeping the smile from Georgia’s face. ‘Listen to me now. My mum has just phoned yours. I had to confess everything. Mum is fuming, and Dad keeps looking at me like I kicked his puppy.’
‘You told them about the guy you were seeing?’
‘Yes, and listen, Georgia, I met him online. And, the thing is – I’m really, really, really sorry, but when I signed up for the dating site, I put your name in. I was just a bit nervous – it felt safer to combine our details. I thought you’d find it funny . . . it wasn’t meant to lead to all this trouble. But you’ve been so distant and serious lately that I couldn’t tell you. And then I had all these emails from different guys, and I got a bit distracted.’
‘You mean you pretended to be me?’
‘Well, only because I had to answer to the name Georgia, which was a bit weird, but I got stuck with it. No offence. I started seeing this bloke – Robbie. It was brilliant to begin with, but I didn’t want my parents to find out because he’s a bit older than us. What I didn’t know until the other day was that he also has a fiancée – the shit.’
While listening to Sophia, Georgia emerges from the woods a short distance from home. There’s about fifty metres of road before she reaches the house, and she immediately spots a white car parked just beyond their driveway. It’s facing her on the opposite side of the road, peeping around a bend.
‘I think his fiancée has gone crazy – I think she tried to run us over.’ Sophia is talking in a rush now. ‘I had a big fight with Robbie on Wednesday night. He told me that we needed to cool things for a while. I wanted him to front up and discuss everything face to face, so on Thursday I texted him Bethany’s address, asking him to meet me. When he didn’t reply, I thought that was it. But now I think maybe his girlfriend came to find me instead.’
Georgia is trying to take in all this information as she makes her way towards the house, when a woman with long, dark hair gets out of the white car, slamming the door. ‘Er, Sophia . . .’
‘When I came round, I had a voicemail from Robbie saying his fiancée had read the messages on his phone and gone berserk. And when Dad showed me the photo of the woman prowling round the hospital, something clicked. Then it came back to me – Danny running after you in the street and shouting, “Georgia!” I think she was waiting for me that night, and now she’s muddled up. She thinks you’re the one sleeping with Robbie.’
The woman stands by the car, shielding her eyes from the drizzle.
Georgia stops walking.
‘So, you think this is the person who tried to run us over?’ she asks quietly.
Her house is so close – she is almost at the wall that encloses the front garden. Surely she can get there without having to deal with this stranger.
‘I think she tried to run you over – and got me instead. Ironically.’
The woman takes a step forward. Then two. If Georgia doesn’t make a dash for it soon she will never make it in time; she is going to have to confront this woman.
‘Sophia?’ Georgia says uncertainly, stopping in the road.
‘What?’ Sophia’s tone is wary, she has picked up something in Georgia’s voice.
‘Do you think that woman is dangerous?’
‘Yes, Georgia, she rammed her car into me. That’s pretty fucking dan
gerous.’
‘Well, I’m walking towards my house, and there’s a woman watching me – she just got out of a white car. Do you think it’s her?’
The woman takes a few more steps, speeding up. Her face is blank. Determined.
‘Oh god, I don’t know!’ Sophia sounds panicked.
‘Sophia, what do I do?’
‘Are you on your own?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then run!’
There is no time to end the call. The woman is almost at the garden gate. Georgia doesn’t wait. She dashes for the cover of the woods, careening onto the muddy path once more. She continues at full speed for a hundred metres then looks around, hoping the woman won’t have followed, but she can hear jogging footsteps and then a high-pitched voice shrieks, ‘Stop, Georgia! I need to talk to you.’
The words jolt Georgia back into a run, but her phone slips from her grasp and disappears into a puddle with a plop. She curses and plucks it out, no time to check it, only to get further into the forest where she’ll be safe.
Ordinarily she would be confident in her sprinting ability, but her muscles are already screaming from the race, and before long she is reduced to a hobble. She swings around, eyes never straying from the path, straining to hear footsteps, but her own breathing is so loud in her ears she can’t make out anything else. A breeze blows from behind her, like icy breath on her neck, and she turns slowly in circles. Ten metres beyond her in each direction, the path bends out of sight. If someone is lurking, they could charge and be on her in seconds.
Trees and branches leer in. Each rustle becomes a whisper. There is a gurgling sound nearby, like a person struggling for breath. She tells herself it’s a small waterfall, but she doesn’t recall anything like that near here.
She bends double for a moment, trying to draw in oxygen, and when she straightens up the forest is spinning. There is no option except to hide, but she doesn’t dare take her eyes off the track. She staggers backwards until she is on thick grass, and her foot finds a divot as the ground slopes away. Suddenly she has lost her balance, flailing at nothing. She lands hard, jarring her back, her head cracking against something sharp. She sits up slowly as the back of her skull begins to throb, and she turns around to see a dark grey rock squatting in the grass, its surface a mass of jagged edges. Confused, she touches the back of her head, and the pain is such a surprise that she yells out and pulls her hand away. She smells hot metal and glances down to see her palm is a sodden mixture of dirt and her own bright crimson blood.
35
ANYA
As I watch Callum racing up the hill, there’s an almighty pressure building in my brain. I’m close to hyperventilating as I turn to the officials. There is already a flurry of activity, people leaning over paperwork, running pens down the sides of lists. I hear a familiar name mentioned, and freeze.
‘What did you just say?’ I ask Jimmy.
‘The sports teacher – Leo Freeman – was the last to see her. He’s helping the search now.’
I dash around to the marshals’ tent so I can see the list of officials and their numbers. There it is in black and white: Leo Freeman manned the penultimate checkpoint. This can’t be coincidence, surely.
His mobile number is written next to his name. I key it into my phone and dial.
It goes to voicemail. I want to yell, What the hell have you done to Georgia? It takes all my strength to restrain myself. ‘Leo, it’s Anya Turner. Did you see Georgia at your checkpoint? She’s not come back down the hill.’ Something about this still doesn’t make sense, but I don’t want to let him off the hook. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do,’ I hiss, before I hang up.
I am taking deep breaths, trying to calm myself, when I catch sight of Danny Atherton coming towards us. I skirt around the table and pounce on him. ‘I saw you arguing with Georgia before the race. What was all that about? Tell me the truth, Danny, I need to know right now.’
Danny holds his hands up in surrender. ‘She didn’t want to run with me, Mrs Turner. I don’t know what her problem was. When I saw her yesterday we were planning to pace each another, and then at the last minute she told me to back off. She seemed really upset, but I have no idea why.’
‘Mrs Turner!’ Jimmy Davenport gets up from his chair and walks across to join us. He rests a placatory hand on my arm. ‘Take it easy. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that she’s sprained her ankle somewhere and she’s either hobbling back to base or she’s staying put until someone finds her. Either way, we’ll have her down here in no time. Why don’t you go and wait in the sports hall, out of the cold and the rain?’
A small crowd are beginning to gather, following a crumb trail of whispers with their twitching ears and red runny noses. ‘Where’s Zac?’ I ask no one in particular, searching among the faces closest to me, trying to remember the last time he was by my side. I push through people, heading back to where we were standing. ‘Zac!’
Chris Jessop appears. ‘Anya, this way.’ She tugs on my arm, almost dragging me along, leading me around the side of the sports hall, to a quiet bench where Zac sits folded in on himself, his shoulders heaving as he sobs.
Chris pats my arm and leaves without a word. As I approach Zac I recall Helene’s words on the phone. ‘This man Sophia’s been seeing, he’s so much older than her. I can’t bear to think of them together. How can all this have happened right under my nose, Anya, without me having a clue? What kind of a mother am I?’
I think how neatly Helene had paraphrased my own internal commentary. I sit next to my son. ‘What’s wrong, Zac? What do you know?’
‘It’s all my fault, Mum,’ he says, reflections of his younger years re-emerging in his crumpled face.
‘How do you figure that?’ I ask, rubbing his back like I’ve done so many times when he’s been sick or plagued by nightmares.
He won’t look at me. ‘It’s Georgia. I’ve handled everything so badly. She’s never going to speak to me again.’
My body goes cold. ‘Tell me.’
He stares miserably at the ground and sighs, then begins to bite his thumbnail, something I haven’t seen him do in years. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘The night Georgia and Sophia were in the accident, I found a photograph.’
I brace myself. I don’t want to know. But I have to know.
‘A photo of . . .?’
Zac pauses, catching my eye, his expression pained.
‘There’s no time, Zac,’ I say as steadily as I can. ‘Georgia is missing. Tell me.’
‘It was a photo of Mr Freeman. He was . . . in bed.’
I want to be sick. ‘And?’
‘It’s not disgusting – he was just asleep. But I think Georgia must have taken the photo.’ He gulps. ‘It was hidden in her room. I saw it by accident. But – Mum, I copied it onto my phone. Not to show anyone, just – I felt I needed evidence, until I decided what to do. But it got into the wrong hands, and now it’s on Facebook.’
I’m desperately trying to fit all these pieces together, to form a picture of what might have happened. ‘Does Georgia know?’
‘Danny showed it to her when they were about to start running.’
‘And what did she do?’
‘Nothing. But she looked devastated.’ Zac turns away from me. ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’
My mind is reeling. These past few days I have felt paralysed by fear, but not any longer. ‘You can be sorry later,’ I tell him. ‘For now, you need to help find your sister. Let’s go.’
I jump up, my mind in overdrive trying to figure out my next move. Then it comes to me. Callum is heading for the woods, and he doesn’t know the danger. I need to warn him about Leo.
36
CALLUM
As Callum stumbles up the hill he wishes he wasn’t wearing wellingtons. They’re fine for standing around in a muddy field but the worst footwear for a scramble – he’s slipping all over the place.
‘Callum!’ Over his shoulder he sees Mike McCallister scrambling up the slope after him
.
‘Not now, Mike.’
‘The organisers are saying they’re a runner short,’ Mike gasps as he tries to keep up. It seems the man can’t take a hint. ‘Is it your daughter who’s missing?’
Callum clenches his jaw, keeps moving forward. ‘Yes – she’s usually one of the first across the line. She must have had an accident.’ He pictures Georgia prone and vulnerable somewhere on the mud-slicked course. He had heard a few of the runners mention fog. It would have been easy to get disorientated – one slip and she might have taken a hefty fall, especially on the ridge, with all that loose shale and the tenacious rain. He tries and fails to brush away the worst images of the few broken bodies he has encountered, eyes eaten to the sockets by crows. He staggers forward, grabbing at the ground, trying hard not to heave up his breakfast.
His nausea has given McCallister the chance to catch up with him. ‘Come on, mate, it’s not a good idea to go rushing off alone when you’re in this state. Let me help.’
‘There’s no time.’ Callum waves him away and pushes on, finally reaching the top of the slope.
‘Well, then, I’ll come with you. You might need an extra pair of hands.’
There’s no one Callum would less rather search with, but he doesn’t have the strength to argue. He’s about to disappear into the woods when McCallister says, ‘Hang on, shouldn’t we do this in reverse?’
It’s an oft-used protocol if someone has disappeared on a circular route: to begin at both ends of the journey and meet in the middle. ‘Okay,’ Callum puffs, seizing the opportunity to be rid of him. ‘Let’s split up. You start at the beginning, and I’ll take the end.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better to stick together?’ McCallister calls after him, but Callum is already racing away. He doesn’t want company; he doesn’t need stretcher-bearers for his daughter. He’s capable of the impossible when it comes to Georgia. Besides, he’s the most experienced member of the mountain rescue team – whatever situation she’s in, he will get her out.