by Beth Moran
22
It was the book club’s spring bank holiday barbeque. We were sampling Jamie’s homemade sourdough when Sarah’s phone buzzed.
‘Kiko’s not coming.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘Adam’s working. If he bothered to give her a bit of notice she could sort a babysitter.’
‘That’s such a shame.’
‘Yeah. Like it was a shame she missed the Christmas party, and the book festival. And hasn’t managed a trip to visit her parents once, since they moved back to Japan.’ Sarah tapped out a reply before scooping up the plate and gliding towards the café door. ‘I’ve suggested she spend the evening booking herself that trek. He can find out what it’s like to have to drop everything because the other parent’s suddenly unavailable.’
‘Surely that can’t end well.’
‘It’ll end with her coming home to a husband ready to hear what she’s got to say. That’s better than the alternative ending, when she doesn’t come home at all.’
‘Are we ready to start?’ Frances asked, once everyone had loaded up their plates and got comfortable on the patio sofas. ‘I need an early night tonight and don’t want to miss any updates.’
‘Why don’t you kick us off?’ Ellen asked. We sat back to hear about the Big Zipper.
‘It was simply marvellous!’ Frances told us, eyes sparkling. ‘Like flying. I’d forgotten what it felt like to move without creaking and groaning. I enjoyed it so immensely, they let me have another go free of charge.’
She paused, looking down, and, for the first time, seeming every one of her eighty-four years. ‘It’s crept up on me. This old body. Sometimes I go to stand up, or bend down, and I forget how bloody slow I am. It won’t do what I tell it to any more. Especially the cancer parts. They are the most misbehaved of all. I knew this must happen, but I somehow wasn’t expecting it. To be so tired.’
She looked round at us all, trying to discreetly hide our sniffs behind gingham napkins. It didn’t take long for the steely glint to return.
‘What’s next?’ Ellen asked, dabbing at her eyes.
‘A camel trek.’
Of course it is!
Lucille showed us a leaflet entitled ‘Tough Muck’. The picture on the front was of a man, crying, neck-deep in swampy water, blood smeared across his forehead. She tugged at the lapel of her designer jacket while we read about the ten kilometres of mud, near-impossible obstacles, pain and torture. She twiddled a Tiffany bracelet with her manicured fingers and patted her coiffed hairstyle.
‘I don’t understand,’ Ashley said, peering at the photo of a woman, T-shirt hanging off one shoulder, clinging to a rope halfway up a rock-face, a tyre on her back. With her teeth bared like a rabid wolf, beneath the filth her face looked like a purple skittle.
Lucille shrugged. ‘If Frances is wild-swimming and camel-trekking, a straightforward race didn’t seem enough. It’s not until September, I’ve got time to train.’
‘It looks awesome,’ Jamie said. ‘I quite fancy it myself.’
‘Pshaw.’ Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘You do stuff like that all the time, only with maniacs shooting at you and bombs going off in the background. That’s why your Christmas Book Club Challenge is perfecting a pie-crust.’
Jamie cleared his throat. ‘Actually… a lot of my job is just sitting around. Watching and waiting, gathering information. Meeting with clients. I’m starting to leave the running around to the younger guys.’
‘Ooh, you’re still young,’ Ashley said, looking pointedly at Sarah.
Jamie’s face was starting to resemble the purple woman on the leaflet. ‘Maybe. But you reach a point when risking your life day in, day out starts getting old. When you get, um, ready to settle down a bit.’
Everyone in the room held their breath. Except for Sarah, who leant forwards and grabbed another handful of sweet-potato crisps.
Ashley lightened the mood for us with her detective’s board, pointing out progress made in narrowing down the Hillary hunt. It was more a list of assumptions than anything approaching an accurate investigation, but at least she’d kept it legal for now. And when Lucille started to question her methods (‘Just because most of her books feature rivers, it doesn’t mean she lives near one’), Sarah said, ‘Oh, put a sock in it, Lucille.’ Normal relations were resumed.
I updated everyone on progress with the cottage, and lack of progress in finding anything out about my family.
Ellen told us about her midwifery lecturer, who couldn’t mention any female body parts without breaking out into a sweat and stuttering. ‘He gave the whole session on anatomy facing the projector screen, and the remote kept slipping out of his hands. Some of the students are merciless. They keep asking him to repeat himself, and pretending they can’t read the labels on the diagrams. One asked if the plural of vagina was vagini. It took him three minutes to get the answer out.’
By the time she’d finished her second glass of wine, Sarah was ready to tell us about her latest dud date.
‘Was he terrible?’ Ashley asked. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse than last time.’
‘Nah.’ Sarah shrugged. ‘He wasn’t terrible. He seemed all right. Was nice-looking, and we had an interesting conversation, found some things in common.’
‘Sounds like a right dud!’ Lucille snarked.
‘No. This time the dud was me.’
The sausage from Jamie’s hotdog shot across the patio and landed in a plant pot, leaving him gripping an empty bread roll. ‘He thought you were a dud?’
‘No. He asked to meet up again.’
I asked, ‘So, what then?’
‘I just… felt nothing.’ She tore a strip off her napkin. ‘He was a nice bloke. I had a fun evening. But the thought of going through all that palaver again, shaving and plucking and straightening my hair. Dressing up. Asking all these questions, waiting to spot the clues that he’s a wimp, or a scumbag, or a member of UKIP. I can’t be bothered. I suddenly realised I could take it or leave it. So, I left it.’
‘Fair enough,’ Ellen said. ‘But love’s not always lightning bolts.’
‘I know.’ Sarah pulled a wry face. ‘Which made me decide I’m not up for dating right now. When the right man doesn’t feel right, perhaps the right thing is to forget men altogether.’
‘Maybe you just didn’t fancy him?’ Ashley blurted. ‘Maybe because your heart already belongs to someone else. It seems a little early to give up on romance altogether.’
I kept my eyes firmly on Sarah and off Jamie. I couldn’t bear to look.
‘Nah. Life isn’t a Hillary West novel, Ash. I dunno what I was thinking, really. I’m happy with just me and Ed. I’m relieved it’s over.’
‘Quite right,’ Lucille, miraculously, agreed. ‘You don’t need a man to complete your life, Sarah. Most men are more hassle than they’re worth – I said most men, before you bite my head off. They distract you from who you are until, before you know it, you’re living your life, making decisions, choosing an outfit to please them, not you.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with making decisions to please someone else. That’s called compromise,’ Ellen interrupted. ‘It’s how marriages succeed.’
‘There is when it’s at the cost of your own self! Look at Kiko! Except you can’t, because she’s missing our barbeque, sacrificing her needs to please a man. Again.’
‘Then again, thinking about it, I’ve changed my mind.’ Sarah waved her glass at Lucille. ‘Maybe I will try a few more dates. Find a nice man to take care of me, pay off my credit card and squish spiders. Put up shelves and change the oil in the car. Tell me who to vote for.’
‘Anyone fancy a top-up?’ I said, before things got out of hand. There was a lot more food to chuck around and drinks to hurl than usual. And I was wearing my new slippery shoes. Which reminded me…
I managed to corner Jamie in the kitchen when we were clearing up.
‘I have a strange request.’
‘Okaaay?’
‘Do you have a photo I cou
ld borrow?’ I explained what it needed to be like.
‘I’m finding it hard to work out why you need a high-res image of me.’
‘I’m finding it hard to work out a good explanation.’ I sighed. ‘My twin sister is marrying my ex and they want photos of me and my plus one for the reception.’
Jamie glanced behind him. ‘Jenny, is this a roundabout way of asking me to be your date? Because, well—’
‘No! No. Not at all. I gave a fake name, thinking I could tell them he’s sick, but then they asked for a picture. I need it by June.’
‘You’re going to your twin sister’s wedding. To your ex. Alone. With a picture of a poor, sick, fake boyfriend. Is there a worse way to spend a day?’
‘Sitting at home cursing yourself for still not plucking up the courage to ask out the woman you’re in love with?’
Jamie gave me a sharp look. I shrugged. ‘You’re right. The wedding is worse.’
He scrolled through some pictures on his phone. ‘I have a few from my army days. But nowadays I keep a low profile. I deliberately don’t have any images on the website.’
‘Maybe if you had one without a weapon in your hand? Or a can of beer? And your clothes on?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Right. Well, I think I’d better pass. But thanks for that interesting glimpse into your previous life.’
His eyes darted over my shoulder. ‘It was a long time ago. And not as bad as it looks. Stuff happens in the military that, well. It’s hard to explain.’
‘Don’t worry.’ I winked before turning to join the others. ‘I won’t tell Sarah.’
‘What?’
‘You should tell her about it yourself some time. Take her out for a drink. Or a bite to eat at Scarlett’s. She loves it there.’
I whirled away, bumping into Sarah in the doorway.
‘What are you grinning about?’ she asked.
‘Ask Jamie. He’ll tell you everything.’ Then I remembered the first part of the conversation about the non-existent plus one and the photo. ‘Actually, don’t bother. It really wasn’t that funny. I think I ate too much cheese.’
I asked Will about a picture one evening when I’d ended up staying until after the kids had gone to bed. Embarrassed about the real reason, I made something up about a Father’s Day present. Will turned on the laptop and we spent an amusing hour going through the photo albums. It soon became apparent that there wasn’t a single picture of him this century without his wife or a child in tow. And I was not sending Martha Marsh a photo of a man with a curtains hairstyle. Or wearing a baseball cap back to front.
‘I have a work headshot.’ Will clicked onto his school’s website.
‘Yeah, I was thinking of a more casual look. One where you’re smiling.’
‘I am smiling!’
‘No, Will.’ Ellen lifted her head out of a textbook. ‘It’s the same face you pull when your parents come for dinner. Or when someone tells you triplets must be a nightmare.’
‘I’m trying to smile.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t worry.’ I got up to go. ‘It was only an idea. Thanks for letting me look.’
I declined a lift home. It was a clear night, and those old photos had conjured a twinkle in Will’s and Ellen’s eyes that made me figure they wanted some alone time.
I needed some alone time myself, to think about Fake Photo Plan C. Mack.
Maybe I should just ask him if I could take one? I reckoned that confidential laptop of his could take a decent picture. I considered the likelihood of Mack adopting a cheerful, attractive pose while I snapped away.
And then I heard it.
A noise in the trees to my right.
I cycled this path several times a week. Had been here countless times in the dark.
The sounds of the forest had become as natural to me as the hum of traffic used to be.
This sound was not a natural one. Crackles. Crunches. Something big was moving in the darkness of the trees.
I took a deep breath, tried to keep listening over the frantic hammering of my heart and restarted the bike. Went through all the possible things it could be: a deer? Horse? A large dog? Would a badger make that much noise?
But as I cycled on, fighting to keep the handlebars steady, the crunches continued alongside me.
Not crunches. Footsteps. Running, several metres to the side.
I sped up, almost dizzy with panic. The fence separating the footpath from the forest suddenly seemed like the flimsiest, tiniest, most pointless barrier possible.
My ragged breaths echoed off the tree trunks. The headlamp penetrated about three metres in front of me. To the side, beyond the fence, there was only blackness. And footsteps crunching through the undergrowth.
It must be an animal, I repeated in my head. It’s following the light.
And then it coughed.
Deep.
Either a man, or the kind of woman you didn’t want chasing after you in the middle of a forest in the pitch black.
23
Six minutes from home. I bumped and rattled, careened and skidded over branches and loose stones. I was fast these days, and could have followed the path without the lamp, I knew it so well. But I was also petrified and the thought of crashing, or falling, kept my fingers on the brake, legs restrained.
Another couple of minutes. The path curved. I braced myself, kept the bike as close to the left as I could. Thought about turning back. Or abandoning the bike and legging it into the forest on the other side, finding a tree to hide behind and calling for help.
Calling who, Jenny? I screamed in my head. And telling them what? That I can hear footsteps? That there’s something moving about in the forest?
I held my breath, gritted my teeth and kept on going. And, as I whizzed past the bend, nothing leapt out. I listened hard but couldn’t hear the footsteps any more. The only sounds were the whirr of pedals spinning at about two hundred miles per hour and my heart trying to escape out of my chest.
Until the path straightened out again, when a burst of laughter exploded into the night. Deep, raspy, gleeful. It sounded like sticky, black slime would if it could cackle. Like the menace that had roamed the labyrinth in my head for three long years after my breakdown.
I couldn’t even remember the last half-mile. I must have dumped the bike beside the door because that was where I found it in the morning. Throwing myself inside, hands shaking so hard it took three horrible attempts to get the key in the lock, I slammed the door, locked it, and hurtled straight up the stairs before throwing up the whole of my guts, my newfound confidence, my can-do attitude and any peace I’d managed to garner through finally owning a home, in one ugly splatter.
Pride abandoned, I tried banging on the wall between the two cottages, but there was no response. I didn’t have Mack’s number, of course, so couldn’t call him. I felt too scared to go back downstairs, let alone outside to knock on his door. Should I phone the police? To report that a man in the woods laughed?
Head whirling, I couldn’t form a coherent thought. The ebbing adrenaline left me trembling and exhausted.
I wedged a chair under the bedroom door, crawled into bed and pulled the duvet over my head. Some hours later I drifted off to sleep, the distant echo of cackles reverberating through my nightmares.
After unconsciously pressing the snooze button a few times, I finally dragged myself out of bed in time to pour half a gallon of coffee down my throat and swap the clothes I’d slept in for something that didn’t reek of cycling for my life. I felt desperate for a shower, to scrub off the terror and the bad dreams, wash that laugh out of my eardrums, but it would have to wait. Shaking off the temptation to call Tezza, I decided the best way to deal with my churning stomach and frazzled nerves was to get right back in the saddle. Literally.
Stepping out into the spring sunshine, seeing the butterflies dancing past, I sucked in a lungful of fresh, bright air and took a good look around. A little brown bird hopped across M
ack’s picnic table. I spied a rabbit disappearing into the bushes. It seemed more likely I’d encounter Snow White skipping through the woods than a freaky, creepy cackler. With no time left to work myself into a state, I picked my bike up and creaked off, managing to look behind me no more than every ten metres or so.
And if I arrived at work a little dishevelled, and somewhat clammy, hey, at least I was on time.
For reasons I hadn’t yet made up, once the kids were in school I cycled back home along the main roads. What a lovely change, I trilled, ambling alongside houses and hedgerows. Ooh, look, some sheep. And a middle-aged couple on a ramble. All these sights I’ve had missed if I went the normal, boring, quicker, lunatic-riddled route.
After stashing the bike away, I knocked on Mack’s door. Or possibly pounded, continuously, for the six minutes it took him to open it.
‘What have you done now?’ he rumbled. ‘I’ve not had breakfast yet so it had better be good. Or should I say bad?’ He peered at me through bleary eyes. ‘You’re dry. And clean. That’s a hopeful start.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘There’s no emergency?’
‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’ To my horror, a glob of panic started working its way up my oesophagus. I blinked, hard, and did my utmost to swallow it back down. ‘Were you out running late last night, in the woods near the Common? Because if you thought it was funny, to race beside me when I couldn’t even see it was you, it wasn’t. And I really didn’t appreciate being laughed at, when I was quite clearly scared out of my wits, because whoever that was was definitely laughing at me, not with me.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Mack stepped back, hustled me inside and sat me down, his face waking up.
Oh. Not him, then.
Quietly, fighting to keep my voice steady, I told him what had happened.
‘Have you spoken to the police?’
‘I was kind of hoping I wouldn’t have to.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m choosing not to get offended by that, appreciating that me being the creep is slightly less horrific than it not being me, and that you’re clutching at straws here.’