Perfect Strangers

by Dani Atkins

  My stomach rolled at the sight of it, and when my eyes met his I swear I could almost taste the raw warm meat on my own tongue. I swallowed convulsively and tried hard not to be sick. Logan was game enough about it, I have to give him that. That first mouthful was chewed – extensively – and after a very long moment he even managed to swallow it down. But he reached for the water bottle I held out to him in readiness with comic eagerness and slowly laid the fish back down at his feet. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe we’ll just cook it later,’ he said.

  I resisted the urge to say ‘I told you so’ and I could tell that he really appreciated my restraint.

  I have no idea how many miles we walked that day. My journey wasn’t measured in metres, but in emotions. I travelled from optimistic to grumpy at the same pace as I went from wearily tired to practically catatonic with exhaustion.

  ‘You should have said that you wanted to stop,’ Logan chastised, watching me in concern as I collapsed into a crumpled heap on the ground when we finally stopped to make camp for the night.

  ‘I didn’t want to be a dead weight,’ I said, wincing as I slowly stretched out my aching legs. ‘And besides, the further the walk, the closer we get to being found. Right?’

  Logan answered with a smile that was beyond being just watery, it was practically submerged. I knew he didn’t want me to get my hopes raised, only to have them crashing down yet again. But thoughts of Kate, and being able to put an end to the agony she must be going through, were pretty much the only thing that had motivated me into putting one desperately weary leg in front of the other. It hadn’t escaped my attention that it was my sister, and her family who’d had kept me walking . . . not William. Five weeks after fleeing to Canada, looking for answers about my relationship, I’d begun my journey home still uncertain. But things were changing now; I could feel it happening. In the thin, cold mountain air, my vision was finally clearing.

  Logan dropped to a crouch in front of me, with a softness in his eyes as he spoke. ‘You are many things, Hannah Truman, most of them you don’t even realise yourself yet. But trust me, being a dead weight is not one of them.’

  I smiled, and realised once again how very much I liked this man, and how extremely lucky I’d been that out of all the passengers on the plane, he was the one to be here with me. Alone, I would have been lost – probably in the most literal sense of the word. At least with Logan, I knew I had a fighting chance of survival.

  We hadn’t spoken much on the second half of our journey, so perhaps it was the eerie silence of the wilderness that had spooked me so. I lost count of the number of times I’d stopped suddenly in my tracks, convinced that something – or someone – was watching us, following us. It didn’t matter how many times Logan assured me that I was just imagining it, I still couldn’t shake the feeling.

  ‘We’d know if something was there,’ he’d reasoned, his hand comfortingly patting my shoulder.

  ‘Would we?’ I asked, my eyes still fixed on the line of impenetrable undergrowth. ‘We didn’t know the wolves were there last night. How can you be so sure that they’re not tracking us right now, waiting for just the right moment to attack?’

  Logan’s eyes had clouded a little at my words, and I saw him look with greater intensity into the forested area before he replied. ‘Don’t you think if that was what they wanted, they’d have had their chance last night, while we were asleep? I think they were only curious, that they wanted to make sure we posed them no threat. Now they know that, they’ve probably forgotten all about us.’

  That might have been true if they were goldfish, but I was pretty sure wolves were an awful lot more intelligent than that; I decided it was wiser to keep the rest of my concerns to myself.

  I was getting pretty adept at fire-lighting skills, I thought, as I constructed a tiny kindling teepee and surrounded it with dry curly grasses. There were probably all manner of Girl Guide badges I’d now be able to claim, most of which had been beyond me the first time round. Perhaps I could get them retrospectively, I thought, smiling into the tiny flames licking their way up the sides of the wooden sticks.

  A shadow fell across the fire and I looked up to see Logan standing a few metres away, studying me with an expression on his face I hadn’t seen before.

  ‘What?’ I asked, feeling strangely flustered by his close scrutiny. ‘Have I got something on my face?’ I rubbed at my nose in case a charcoal smudge from the fire was there.

  ‘Yes, you have,’ he said, and something in his voice made every single nerve ending I had tingle, as though I was about to get a whole-body attack of pins and needles. ‘It’s called a smile, and it’s the kind that takes your breath away.’

  His words had exactly the same effect on me, and it was just as well I didn’t know how to reply, because I doubt I could have spoken right then. I looked through the distorting haze of the fire, and our eyes held a little conversation all of their own. This was a complication I didn’t need, and while I tried to ignore the strange fluttery after-effects, as together we rigged up a shelter for the night, I was suddenly hyper-aware of him in a way I hadn’t been before. When we were done, I looked down at the very narrow space we’d constructed, where in a few hours’ time our bodies would lay down together, and tried very hard to convince myself that exertion was the reason why my heart was suddenly hammering in my chest. But of course, it wasn’t.

  All afternoon I had carried the stick on which the fish we’d caught was skewered. After a while I’d had to prop it over my shoulder, in order to avoid the reproachful look I swear I could see in its eye. Logan had found that particularly amusing, so I think he was surprised to find that by the time we’d baked it over the flames, every last bit of guilt had been replaced by drooling anticipation. I’ve eaten fish in Michelin-starred restaurants, in haute cuisine hotels, and in establishments where your plate looks more like a piece of artwork than a meal. But nothing – ever – has tasted quite as delicious as that salmon did. Neither of us spoke as we sat side by side on a log, picking at the soft flakes of meat with our fingers. When there was nothing left except a perfect white skeleton, I licked the greasiness from my fingertips, stopping only when I was aware of Logan’s eyes following my actions.

  I threw the remains of our meal onto the fire and got to my feet, suddenly anxious to move. It was getting colder, but the sky was clear and bright and I didn’t think it would snow again that night. I walked to the edge of the river and looked up at the stars, searching for the brightest in the sky. It was a game Kate and I had often played as children: the first to spot the star could make a wish. Was she somewhere right now, looking up at the sky, and reliving that memory? Would it matter tonight which one of us saw it first, when I was pretty certain that we’d both be wishing the same thing?

  I heard the crunch of boots on shingle behind me, and felt Logan’s hand rest lightly on my shoulder as I continued to scan the diamond-speckled sky. ‘Looking for a plane?’

  ‘A star, actually. The brightest in the sky.’

  ‘Are you making a wish?’ He must have moved even closer, because I could feel the heat of his breath gently fanning the skin below my ear as he spoke. I nodded, keeping my eyes fixed on the heavens. ‘There it is,’ he said after a moment of searching. Gently he turned me, until I was facing the direction where he was pointing. ‘I believe it’s called the Dog Star,’ he added.

  Alpha Canis Majoris, I thought, still staring fixedly at the twinkling light over eight light years away from this tiny pocket of wilderness, where two lost survivors stood looking up at it. I felt Logan’s arms firmly encircle my waist, drawing me back to lean against him. I said nothing as I continued to stare skywards, wishing for all kinds of things that had no way of coming true.

  The fire was blazing and crackling fiercely, as we bedded down for the night. I wriggled awkwardly into the narrow shelter, hampered by the many layers of borrowed clothing I was wearing. Like an inelegant caterpillar I wiggled backwards, until I felt the long length of Log
an’s body behind me. His arms came around me automatically, drawing me back against him, as though we were a couple following the familiar dance steps we’d spent decades perfecting. How could his touch feel old and yet new, comforting but yet still intriguing all at the same time? These sensations were mine alone. I’m not stupid, I realised that. Logan would be justifiably horrified if he knew how badly I was misinterpreting every one of his actions.

  ‘Go to sleep, Hannah,’ he whispered into my hair. My eyelids felt heavy with exhaustion, so it was an easy command to follow. I was tumbling in that free-fall on the edge of oblivion, half of me lying on high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets with William behind me, the other half lying in the frozen Canadian wilderness with Logan. I felt the briefest of touches of lips on my hair, the brush of a kiss, and I had absolutely no idea which man had done it.

  The howling woke us both, cutting through the night, my sleep and my soul. It was a cacophony of sound, an orchestra of wails playing a symphony no one wanted to hear. It was a choir of many lupine voices, not just one.

  ‘Logan,’ I cried desperately, rolling over and groping for the comfort of his presence, blinded by the darkness. It took only seconds to realise that the space beside me was empty. Rabid with fear, I scrabbled out of the shelter and found him standing beside the fire, staring in the direction of the sound filling the frosty sky.

  ‘They’re coming, aren’t they? They’re coming after us,’ I predicted, peering into the darkened ring of light beyond our fire, expecting to see a circle of reflecting eyes staring back at me.

  ‘Of course, they’re not. It’s just the way the sound carries. They’re miles away.’ His comment would have been an awful lot easier to believe if he hadn’t been gripping the spear tightly between two white-knuckled clenched fists.

  Day Five

  This was the worst day. This was also the best day.

  By mutual unspoken agreement, Logan and I had wasted no time in packing up our overnight camp. Driven by fear-fuelled haste, the signs of our occupation were quickly and efficiently dismantled, re-packed, and extinguished as soon as the first grey spears of light penetrated the blackness of the night.

  If we’d not been frightened into movement by the wolves, we’d still have been in the clearing when the helicopter flew overhead . . . If we hadn’t been beneath the canopy of trees, we’d have been able to signal the aircraft . . . If William hadn’t cheated, I’d never have been in Canada . . . If I hadn’t been on the plane, then I wouldn’t be sobbing hysterically in Logan’s arms as the first – and maybe the only – opportunity of rescue disappeared into the distance with a throbbing pulse of rotor blades.

  Life is full of ‘ifs’.

  I screamed for them to hear me, even though I knew it was pointless doing so. I did it all, every single cliché. I jumped up and down, I waved my arms like windmill sails and I screamed at them to come back long after they were just a distant speck in the morning sky. Logan handled it all with a great deal more dignity. Perhaps he recognised futility better than I did. There’s a wisdom in knowing how and when to accept defeat. How to conserve your energy and not waste it on the unachievable. It was a life lesson that I should probably try an awful lot harder to learn.

  At the first sound of the rotors we had both frozen, staring with matching expressions of hope and amazement up through the thick lacy green branches hiding us from view. The trees were broad and dense, but up ahead – just two hundred metres away – they thinned out, and there was a clearing. We dropped whatever we were carrying and raced towards it, stumbling and tripping our way over snow, rocks, exposed roots and fallen trees, somehow never once falling. If we had left camp ten minutes earlier – or later – we would have been in the open when the helicopter flew over us. More ifs.

  Logan enfolded me into his arms, even when I could still see the helicopter disappearing into the distance. My sobs were raw and angry. ‘Is that it? They’re just giving up? Leaving? How can they do that?’ I cried against him for a long time, big fat salty tears, that were tainted with disappointment.

  ‘They’ll be back,’ he vowed. ‘I guarantee that they will.’

  He had no business making such a promise, and I had no business believing it.

  When I first saw the cabin, I didn’t think it was real. I thought it was a mirage, magically manufactured out of nowhere by my brain. I thought it had delved down deep into my psyche and plucked up the very thing I wanted . . . no, needed . . . the most at that moment, and somehow it had just made it appear in front of me. I only realised it was the real deal, an actual physical structure made of old and twisted split logs and planks, when I heard Logan’s exclamation beside me.

  He turned to me, and there was incredulity, wonder and joy all mixed up in his eyes. I swallowed a bubble of laughter which sounded a little too much like hysteria for my liking, and took the hand he was holding out to me. Together we ran the few hundred metres that separated us from the first sighting of civilisation that we’d seen in five days.

  Our pace slowed and faltered a little when we were close enough to see that the cabin was old, abandoned and dilapidated. Tears of disappointment stung my eyes. My hand fell from Logan’s and together we walked slowly up to the two shallow steps that led to the cabin’s narrow porch.

  ‘Careful,’ cautioned Logan, as I went to climb the steps. ‘The wood looks rotten.’ His warning was timely, because as I went to transfer my weight onto the tread I heard a loud and ominous crack. Luckily the planking only appeared to have succumbed to the elements here and there, and by walking in Logan’s footsteps I managed to make it to the cabin door without mishap. The door itself was warped and twisted in its frame, but in a move I’ve seen in dozens of action films, Logan effectively kicked it open.

  That the cabin hadn’t been used in a very long time was evident the moment the door swung inwards to reveal its interior. It was dark and smelled vaguely of damp and rotting fruit, and everything within it was covered in a thick layer of grey dust. The windows of the cabin weren’t glazed, but were covered by planks of wood hammered unevenly together to form shutters. Each one was propped open slightly, allowing daylight to slice into the darkened interior in a series of hazy chevrons. It took a second or two before our eyes fully adjusted to the dim light to take in what we were seeing. For a cabin that was so obviously abandoned, its last owner had left quite a few of his belongings behind.

  The cabin’s only room featured several items of rustic furniture, which I would bet good money had been constructed by its former occupant from the surrounding trees. There was a roughly hewn table and three chairs of differing heights dominating the centre of the room; a cupboard, with a door hanging on by just a flimsy hinge and a prayer; and a bench on which stood a large rusty enamel bowl, which might have passed for the kitchen or the bathroom – or possibly both. Against the back wall there was a low flat cot on which sat two small grime-covered pillows and a lumpy thin mattress covered with ticking, that might once have been blue and white, but was now just various shades of grey.

  ‘It’s a bit of a fixer-upper,’ declared Logan solemnly, as though he was an estate agent trying to make a sale. I laughed, and then began to cough from the dust still swirling in the air from our intrusion. ‘The maid’s been a little slack lately,’ Logan continued, running a single finger along the substantial layer of dust on the table.

  ‘How long has it been abandoned, do you think?’ I asked, already fearing I knew the answer.

  ‘Years, I imagine.’ I nodded sadly. Whoever owned the cabin had given up his hunting pursuits a long time ago, and was highly unlikely to put in an appearance during our visit. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t hospitable. Far from it. In the centre of the dusty table was an old-fashioned hurricane lamp, a box of thick white waxy candles, matches, an old – now rusty – hunting knife, and a half-empty (or full, depending on your optimism) bottle of whiskey.

  Logan fingered the assortment of items thoughtfully. There was quiet respect in his
eyes. ‘I think this is some sort of hunter’s code, to leave basic supplies behind for travellers.’

  ‘I’d have liked him more if he’d left a freezer full of food, or the keys to his car,’ I said, opening the cupboard door more widely to see what it held. I pulled out a rusty looking coffee pot and then saw something in the corner of the room that I hadn’t noticed before, a small black iron stove.

  I crossed over to it eagerly. ‘Now, I like him,’ I declared, struggling to wrench open the aperture at the front. After several fruitless tugs I stood back and allowed Logan to yank it open.

  ‘At least we’ll be warm and toasty tonight,’ Logan said, crouching down and peering into the stove, which still held a thick bed of ashes within it. ‘If I manage to get this thing going. And cosy too,’ he added, nodding his head in the direction of the low wooden cot.

  Inexplicably I felt the warmth of a blush heat my cheeks. It was crazy, I had slept in his arms every single night since the crash, sometimes wearing practically nothing at all. Yet the thought of climbing into something which was so obviously a bed seemed far more intimate than anything we had done before. I decided to push that particular thought back to the dark recesses of my mind, and worry about it later.

  Lighting the stove was our first priority, and I was extremely grateful that Logan seemed to have more than a passing knowledge of how to do it. I’d seen pictures of them in books, but I really didn’t have a clue how they actually worked. The stove put up a small battle of resistance to begin with. It smoked and belched out thick clouds of black smoke for so long I was worried we might actually set the whole cabin alight. But eventually the cobwebs, dust and accumulated filth lost their battle with the flames and gamely gave in. While we waited for it to get hot, I rinsed the rusty coffee pot a few dozen times in the river, until the water flowing from its spout was only a dingy beige, rather than the reddish brown colour that had flowed from it initially.