Without a Compass

by Helen Juliet

  Without a Compass

  Helen Juliet

  Without a Compass

  Copyright © 2017 by Helen Juliet

  ISBN-13: 978-1-9997067-2-2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  DEDICATION

  This one was a true group effort.

  John, Mum, Alyson, Ed, Amelia, Kelly and Lex.

  You know what you did. Thank you.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book would not be what it is by a long shot if it wasn’t for my beta readers, editor and wonderful cheerleaders. Thank you to my family, Mum and brother John, for their honest opinions and being there to keep me sane on the dark days. Alyson Pearce from Between The Lines Editing always does a sensational job of polishing my words, and this time was no exception. Thank you especially to Ed Davies and Amelia Faulkner for their patience and generosity in helping me to make this story the very best it could be by imparting so much of their invaluable knowledge.

  Thank you to Natasha Snow from Natasha Snow Designs for the beautiful cover. It really brought Riley to life and inspired me in my writing no end! Thank you also to my IC girls for making this cover a treasured birthday present that will stay with me always. Hastings, Anna, Stefslavsky, Nikki, Webby, Crockers and Hannah, you’re the best.

  Thank you Dan for all your continuous love and support.

  Finally, I’d like to thank our own little pack of Westies; Data, Worf and Tuvok. All three of those rascals went into writing Bia (and Spock!), and this was my small tribute to how having an awesome dog can mean the world.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  1

  Riley

  Riley’s arse was numb and not in a good way.

  He fanned his t-shirt away from his chest and drained the last of his warm, flat Coke. No matter which way he squirmed in the seat he couldn’t seem to get comfortable anymore, and the belt was cutting across his neck.

  He glanced at the display on his phone. It was attached to the car’s dash and showed he was supposed to make a right turn soon. But the signal was intermittent and he wasn’t sure if it was coming up, or if he’d missed it already. None of these country lanes had road names on them and he found himself forcing down a wave of panic.

  “Just breathe,” he said soothingly to himself. Luckily, a dirt layby presented itself up ahead, so he slowed the car to a halt and waited for the map to catch up with his location. He was ahead of his own estimated schedule anyway, so one more pit-stop wouldn’t hurt.

  He detached the phone from the claw-like contraption clamped into the grills of the central air vent. His VW Polo, Betty, couldn’t be accused of having air conditioning per se. But she was giving a jolly good go at pushing the warm gusts of air about the interior of the car.

  Riley rested his arm on the car door where his window normally was. Even having that down hadn’t done much to ease the heat from where the afternoon sun was blazing down overhead. He rubbed the back of his damp neck and refreshed the app in the hopes of encouraging the SatNav to wake up.

  It was only his own clock he was against. He still didn't want to be late. He didn't want to get lost on the back roads of Cumbria either. It wouldn’t get dark for hours, but Riley wasn’t keen to take any chances. The sooner he got to the campsite, the better.

  He let out a small moan while his phone considered reloading the route, then rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “I will be a good sport,” he muttered, banging his head against the cracked leather. “I will be a good sport.”

  Camping. Whoever invented that nonsense needed punishing.

  He’d had to endure enough of these kinds of trips as a child. Freezing cold water and slowly deflating air mattresses and dinners out of cans. Nettle stings and insect bites. Either scorching sunshine or lashing rain and only a thin tarpaulin to escape from both.

  How many summers had he dreamed of going somewhere with a swimming pool and all-you-can-eat buffets, like the other kids in his class? At least after he’d put his foot down as a teenager he’d got to stay behind at home. He genuinely thought his days roughing it in a sleeping bag were done, but here he was, in sunny Cumbria.

  He bumped his head again and groaned. “I will be a good sport,” he whispered, forcing down the dread threatening to crawl up his throat once again.

  Movement caught his eye out the passenger window. He lifted his head to see a curious cow from an adjacent field had come to inspect him and his quietly sizzling car.

  The sight made him laugh, draining away some of the tension he’d been holding in his body. The sudden appearance of a barnyard animal was not something he was normally faced with on day to day basis.

  “Hello there,” he said softly as she chewed on some cud. He reached over to tentatively touch her wet nose.

  She startled him with a loud ‘moo’. He drew his hand back, but then he laughed at himself.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing here too.”

  He ruffled his hair from where it had stuck to his head. A mud-and-dust-splattered white van sailed past him on the road, but Riley wasn’t in their way, so he turned back to the cow.

  “Urgh, you probably love it here, don’t you? Lots of fresh air and no one else around to bother you but other cows.”

  ‘Moo.’

  Despite being painfully aware of how far he was from civilisation, Riley had to admit it was beautiful scenery. The lack of rain had made the landscape more yellowy than green, but the rolling hills were calming on his fraught nerves. The air was fresh in a way you simply couldn’t get inside the M25.

  If he appreciated the little, pleasant things about this holiday, he was sure it would become a lot more tolerable. It wasn’t the usual kind of get-away he preferred, but it was still a week away from the office.

  Thankfully the map sorted itself again and worked out where he was, so he restarted the engine. The cow gave him a final, baleful ‘moo’ and wandered away from the noise. “Bye Daisy,” he said with a wave. She swished her tail back at him.

  He double-checked his phone was tightly secured in the clamp again and then poked it for good measure. It wasn’t going anywhere and the map was blinking encouragingly at him. He glanced in his rear-view mirror in case any other vehicles had snuck up on him while his phone was recalibrating.

  He’d managed to l
eave just enough of a gap through the back seat and the boot for him to be able to still see out of the window. The rest of the space was packed tightly with all his creature comforts and basic necessities (as well as the not so basic, he wasn’t ashamed to admit.) Even the passenger seat next to him and its foot well were stuffed with his duvet, pillows and a number of blankets.

  He gave the phone one last look-over, checked again that the coast was clear, then put the car in gear to set off once more.

  Twenty minutes. That was how long Maps reckoned until he would reach his destination. Riley figured he’d make the most of his last few moments of solitude and turned up the music blaring from his speakers via the phone’s Bluetooth. Foo Fighters was playing and that seemed as good a band as any to have a shouty sing-a-long to.

  He just needed to get out of the car, stretch his legs and stop thinking of all the fabulous places he could have reached after seven hours travelling by a sensible means, like a plane. “This isn’t about you,” he said soothingly. He took a deep breath. He’d fobbed his family off the past few years and he owed them, big time.

  He continued to negotiate the increasingly winding country roads, cataloguing all the ways he’d devised to make this next week as comfortable as possible. Yes, he was being forced to a Scout retreat. Yes, there would be communal shower blocks and campfire food for the foreseeable future. But there would also be his family, who he genuinely had missed the past couple of months. He just wished they didn’t have this bloody obsession with the great outdoors.

  “Phone charger in the car, and portable battery charger,” Riley recited softly to himself, making another turning and heading up a steep incline surrounded by trees. He exhaled slowly, centring himself. “Lovely new air mattress and battery-operated pump. Snuggly sleeping bag, cute new rustic wear, and a shit-tonne of booze.” He smiled at his reflection. “It’s going to be fine!”

  He almost believed himself.

  No, it would be fine. He wasn’t a spoiled city brat; he was going to embrace the holiday in the spirit it was intended. This was what his dad loved doing above anything else, and it was his fiftieth birthday, so what he said, went. There would be lots of food (even if it was tinned) and games and he and his mum could have a decent catch-up. She was hopeless at talking on the phone, always getting distracted by something. She certainly never replied to emails unless it was purely in emoji form. He wanted to hear his brothers’ news and tell them his. All that would make camping during a heat wave totally worth it, he was positive.

  Besides, they were in the Lake District. Not only was it stunningly beautiful, there were, as the name suggested, an inordinate amount of lakes. If everything got too much, he’d just jump in the nearest body of water and cool off for a while.

  Sadly, there would be no one for him to wiggle his arse for like there usually was. The kind of gay resorts he’d normally spend a week at would often have someone by the poolside who appreciated his more slender frame. In the half a dozen holidays he’d been on since leaving home, he’d managed his fair share of hookups.

  This retreat was just for leaders and their families, not the Scout troops themselves. So it was mostly going to be a couple of dozen adults and maybe the odd child or teenager loitering around. Riley sighed. This would be a wholesome holiday – aside from the copious amounts of beers and spirits he’d packed.

  He could survive a week without a pretty boy to look at.

  Probably.

  2

  Kai

  There were really only so many pictures of sheep a man could look at before he lost his mind.

  “Oh, yes, she’s lovely,” said Kai through a tight smile. He glanced nervously at the empty country lane in front of them, then back to the driver of the Ford Transit van he’d thumbed a ride from. He had one hand on the wheel, and the other was holding a well-worn pocket photo album in front of Kai’s nose.

  “Ahh, yes,” said the driver fondly. “That’s Sally.”

  Despite the heat, the driver was still in a shabby waxed jacket, flat-cap and Wellington boots. His cheeks were reddened by spider webs of burst blood vessels and his hands were cracked from decades of manual labour.

  Kai had felt he could trust a working man like that as much as he could really trust anyone. But he hadn’t counted on Sally. Or Jem. Or Florence.

  “She won me the blue ribbon last year, such a pretty girl.”

  Kai had to chuckle at his driver’s enthusiasm. Wilbur, he was pretty certain he’d said his name was. Wilbur was proud of his stock alright. Kai couldn’t say he’d ever thought of sheep as being lovely before, unless it was in his mum’s lamb stew. But Sally did have a kind of cuteness to her face, he supposed.

  He didn’t ask if she’d ended up in anybody’s stew.

  Wilbur handled his van along the winding country lanes with the ease of someone who’d driven these roads for years. He knew when to swerve and when to slow down. Still, Kai kept an eye on the Maps app on his phone, ensuring they were headed the right way.

  He’d managed to get a bus from Oxenholme train station as far as the little market town of Broughton-in-Furness. But after that, his only option had really been to take his chances and hitch-hike the rest of the way to Seathwaite.

  Kai knew his size meant he could worry less when putting himself at the mercy of strangers. He doubted he had anything to worry about if he got in a random car. He suspected it had probably put him at a disadvantage the other way around. Several drivers had sped past him, most of them women. No doubt they took one look at his muscular bulk and his tattoos and sailed right on by.

  Kai couldn’t say he blamed them. But the sunshine was baking and he had been relieved when Wilbur had brought his van to a halt. He had swung the passenger door open to invite Kai in without so much batting an eyelid. Seathwaite wasn’t even really on his way, he’d told Kai once they’d set out. He’d have to double back on himself once he’d dropped Kai off. But he’d seemed eager for a bit of company, so Kai was willing to look at a few more photos.

  The breeze from the open window was refreshing against his exposed skin. Thanks to his work uniform, it wasn’t often he got to have his arms bare or the tattoos on them showing. He leant his left elbow out of the window and enjoyed feeling the sun beating down. He noticed they zipped past a small, silver car parked in a layby. A cow looked to be very interested in inspecting the driver, and Kai smiled at the sight.

  They had cows and sheep in fields around where he’d always lived. Those between schools and hospitals, business parks and housing estates. Out here, aside from the occasional road or farm house, there was nothing but nature as far as the eye could see. He took a deep breath, inhaling the fresh air through the window, and grinned to himself.

  It had been ages since he’d been properly camping. Jessica hadn’t been into the great outdoors, unwilling to even try to be adventurous. It was probably a sign that they had never really meant to last.

  He sighed, and let himself be distracted by Emma, an adorable Herdwick lamb. She was much blacker than the other sheep he’d been shown.

  The whole point of taking up Brendon on his offer to go on holiday with his family was so he wouldn’t have to go away alone. It had been six months since he and Jess had parted ways. It had been amicable, both of them realising it wasn’t meant to be. But at times like this, he really missed the companionship of being in a couple.

  He knew as well that being single had stopped him hanging out so much with Brendon and Slady, who did absolutely everything together. They never made Kai feel awkward or unwelcome. But there always came a point where they would get cuddly and Kai would want to extract himself so as not to be a third wheel.

  It wasn’t just them he was joining for this week, however. That was one of the reasons he’d been happy to accept the invitation. Brendon’s parents had always treated him like yet another son, and his younger brothers were pretty cool to hang out with despite the age gap.

  Not that he’d seen the middle brother, Ri
ley, in a few years. He almost certainly wouldn’t be there for this holiday. He’d always been different to the rest of the Andersons, interested in other things. He was gay so that was probably to be expected. Guys like that didn’t like camping much, did they? They liked…the theatre. And Lady Gaga.

  Still, Kai hadn’t minded him hanging around with him. He wasn’t one much for talking, but he always had strange little projects or hobbies going on. Like his obsession with the Olympics back in 2008, or the notebook he’d kept on him when he was studying astronomy. He’d be a bit older now, wouldn’t he? Maybe twenty? Twenty-one? Kai raised his eyebrows to himself. It’d be interesting to see how he’d turned out.

  “Right,” Wilbur announced. He snapped his photo album shut like a crab closing its claw and pocketed the little book. “Seathwaite, m’boy.”

  They had slowed down as they approached a cluster of buildings. They were a mixture of cobblestone and grubby white wash finishes. Mostly two-story homes with one-story farm related structures interspersed. People nodded and waved at them as they came to a halt by one of the swing gates.

  Kai couldn’t help but grin as he turned in his seat, taking in the rugged hills that rose up from three out of the four sides around the tiny town. On the fourth side beyond the rusted gate, fields stretched out, reaching for the hills further in the distance. They were home to herds of sheep kept penned in by lopsided cobblestone walls. The few clouds that were in the sky cast dark shadows across the grass which appeared to chase the livestock as they grazed.

  “It’s gorgeous,” he said. Wilbur was smiling when he turned to face him once again.

  “That it is, lad,” he agreed. “Now, you want the Turner Farm, yes?” Kai nodded. “Take that track up there. It’s about a twenty-minute walk, although on your young legs, it’ll most likely be less.”

  Kai held his hand out. “Thank you so much sir,” he said, giving him a firm shake. “I really appreciate it.”