by Fay Sampson
Millie shook her head, fighting for breath. ‘I never found her. Frances told me . . . how to find the summer house. She said Tamara was hiding there. But I got lost. All these twisty paths. And . . . and there are these spooky things. I bumped right into one. It was hanging from a tree. A giant bat. I didn’t know it was made of willow, did I? I nearly died of fright. And it was getting so dark. All I wanted to do was to get back to the house and Dad.’ She clutched her mother. ‘Will she be all right? Has Reynard come? Does he know she’s hiding?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid he’s guessed. But it’s all right. He’s down at the boat.’
‘The boat?’
‘Didn’t you know? No, of course you didn’t. Frances was expecting him to come by car, but instead, he and that woman Pet took the boat. It’s down at the landing stage.’
‘But he’s not coming to look for her?’
‘He came up to the house. Frances wouldn’t tell him anything, so he went back to his launch. Only . . . Pet isn’t there. We’ve a horrible feeling she’s up in these woods, searching for Tamara. And she’s probably seen the summer house. Nick’s trying to get to it first. I just pray he does.’
‘Why? What would she do?’ Millie’s eyes shone wide in her pale face.
‘I don’t know. Whatever she thinks will help Reynard’s career.’
‘Mum!’ Millie’s fingers clenched tight around Suzie’s arm.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘We have to hurry.’
The knowledge that Tamara was alone shocked Suzie. In the anxious minutes before she met Millie, she had been consoling herself that there was little Petronella could do against two girls. The news changed everything.
‘Do you know the way?’ Millie panted. ‘I lost it.’
‘Sort of. Did Frances tell you to look for this white summer house?’
‘Yes. She said it looked a bit like a Greek temple.’
‘Then I’m sure that’s what we saw. To the right of the landing stage, on a little hill. Nick’s heading for it.’
‘I hope he had more luck finding it than I did,’ Millie complained. ‘The paths keep twisting and forking.’
Suzie increased her pace. But Millie was right. It was hard to keep her sense of direction.
‘Should have brought my knapsack. I always carry a compass on the moor.’
‘Ow!’ Millie had collided with something in the gloom. ‘I’ve stubbed my toe.’
Suzie’s brain was working fast. It was becoming harder to see where they were going. Outside the wood, the long summer day had not completely faded, but here they were stumbling through a different world. Branches reached out to claw at them. Shadowy undergrowth masked the cavities around tree roots and uneven stones. It would be so easy to miss a fork in the path and lose the summer house entirely. She wondered if she dared call out to Nick.
But who else might hear her?
A sudden clearing surprised her. The air was lighter. She had the sense of trees retreating. But the path ended in grass. Could she find it again on the other side? There was a dark clump of bushes in the centre, masking her view.
Millie pushed through the leaves to overtake her. ‘Come on, Mum!’ She plunged forward. And screamed.
Appalling images raced through Suzie’s mind of what Millie might have found. She dashed after her.
She stopped short, aghast at the different horror which confronted her. These were not bushes in the centre. And it was nothing like what she had imagined.
Rearing in the half light in front of her was a leg. A crooked leg whose joint was almost on a level with her eyes. Beyond it was another. And yet more. A gigantic dark body hung suspended between the many splayed legs. An enormous spider.
Millie was clutching her, shivering uncontrollably, trying to drag Suzie back.
‘Mum! It’s horrible! Is it alive?’
Suzie tried to still her own pounding heart. ‘No. Don’t be silly.’ She put out an unwilling hand and felt the crooked leg. ‘Look. It’s just another willow sculpture. It’s quite clever, really. I wonder if Frances makes them.’
‘It’s sick! Why would anyone want to put something so gross in their wood?’
‘I dare say it just looks a fun thing in daylight.’ Is that true of this whole evening? she wondered. Will we wake up in the morning and wonder how we could ever have believed the sensational ideas that are frightening us now?
But Tamara was terrified of something. Both day and night.
‘I’m getting disorientated. I think we have to get round to the other side of this spider. The path should go on from there. I only hope there isn’t more than one choice.’
Rationality did not entirely take away her reluctance to pass that massive brooding figure. It had been fashioned in realistic detail. Head and thorax, prominent eyes. Eight rearing legs. The raw materials of the forest had been fashioned into something much more sinister.
‘Help me,’ she said to Millie, when they had rounded it, giving it a wide berth. ‘Can you find anything that looks like another path? I really don’t want to get lost and have to blunder through the trees.’
‘Listen!’ Millie said suddenly. ‘What was that?’
Suzie held her breath. The evening bird-calls had fallen silent. Then, distant but urgent, she heard a shout.
‘Tamara! Look out!’
‘That’s Nick! Something’s happened. Quick!’
She dashed into the trees towards the call. Her desire to find a proper path was forgotten. She plunged through bushes, avoiding at the last moment tree trunks that rushed towards her in the gloom. Her feet caught in looping brambles, sending her pitching forwards, almost to the ground.
‘Wait!’ she gasped to Millie.
They listened again. There was nothing now.
Desperately hoping that she had got the direction right, Suzie ran on again. The slope was rising. She could only pray that she not been wrong about the origin of that single cry. That this was the mound on which the summer house stood. That Tamara and Nick were there. And no one else.
The sky was grey above her now. She snatched at hope. The trees had been felled around that white building glimpsed from the river.
It was there, up in front of her. Glimmering in the dusk. Faintly Grecian. A little building with a pillared porch.
She stopped to draw breath.
Millie whispered beside her. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? Where she’s hiding?’
‘Was hiding. Why did Nick shout to her like that?’
They scrambled up the last incline.
Slowly, Suzie mounted the porch steps. She peered inside. ‘Tamara?’ her voice asked softly.
Nothing stirred. No sound of frightened breathing.
Millie joined her. ‘It’s me, Tamara. Millie.’
There was no answer.
‘She’s not here.’ Millie turned on Suzie, accusingly.
Suzie nerved herself to go inside and feel the shadows.
There were plastered walls, a cold stone floor. Suddenly, she recoiled, thinking she had touched something living. But it was only the softer feel of cloth. There was a line of serrated metal. A zip.
‘She was here,’ said Suzie, backing out. ‘There’s a sleeping bag.’
‘Then where is she? And where’s Dad?’
Suzie turned. The river glistened faintly below them, like a snail track winding between woods and fields. More clearly than she had expected, she picked out the white of Reynard’s launch, the gleam from the cabin. To her immense relief, there was no sound of the engine starting. Petronella must not yet have got Tamara to the boat. If that was her plan.
But would she have still wanted to, knowing the Fewings were in pursuit? Might she have felt driven to act more quickly than faking an accident on the river?
On a sudden impulse, Suzie dashed around to the back of the summer house.
A broader track led down through the trees, towards the unseen road. Even as she stared down it, Suzie caught a glimpse in the dusk of a running fig
ure. Dark top, lighter trousers.
‘There she goes!’ She pointed.
‘Who?’ Millie cried. ‘Tamara . . . or that Petronella woman?’
The thought flashed through Suzie’s mind that she was supposed to be watching the boat and Reynard. But the drama that mattered was right in front of her. Whoever this was, she was running away from the river.
Suzie did not make a conscious decision. Her feet were flying down the mound. She was aware of Millie sprinting beside her, pulling ahead.
The track that cut through the trees on this side of the hill was broad. For a few blessed moments they were running in grey half-light, not the darkness of the woods. Yet as they plunged lower, it became harder to distinguish the pale trousers of that racing figure in front of them.
Then the ground levelled out and the shadows were upon them again. The broad ride separated into smaller paths, forking in all directions.
Suzie came to a panting stop. Millie had plunged down the path most directly in front of them. Suzie could hear the sound of her daughter’s progress as she pushed through the leaves.
Nothing else. Tamara – or was it Pet? – was too far ahead to be heard. Or else – her mind shrank violently from the thought – Pet had caught up with Tamara and stopped the sound of her running.
There was a new sound in the trees to her right. She spun round, tense and fearful.
The tall figure that broke out of the bushes was, she realized suddenly, the one she most wanted to see.
‘Nick!’
He came to an abrupt halt. ‘What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were watching the boat.’
It was not the welcome she needed, but she flew to him, all the same. She clutched his bare arms and felt the sweat of his running. ‘I heard you call out to Tamara. Why? I met Millie. We saw someone running from the summer house.’ It came out as ragged and incoherent as her breathing.
‘I caught sight of Petronella climbing the hill. I wasn’t near enough to stop her. All I could do was shout out to warn Tamara. I saw her make a run for it. I was trying to catch up, but I lost them.’
‘That way,’ Suzie said. ‘Towards the road. One of those paths into the trees. Millie ran on ahead of me.’
She could see Nick thinking swiftly. ‘You take the left fork,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll go right. With luck, we’ll make contact with each other when we get to the road. If one of us hasn’t overtaken them first.’ He darted a swift kiss at her. ‘Take care of yourself.’
‘And you.’ She fled again.
The wood was doubly scary the second time, and on her own. Darker still, lower down. She lost the path almost immediately. She was dodging through tree trunks, hoping against hope she was running straight and not veering in a circle. She longed to stop and listen for others running. But the figure she had seen was a long way in front. She had to catch up.
She prayed that Millie was safe, plunging recklessly ahead on her own.
She gasped as a branch caught her across the face. She struggled free.
The wood was silent.
What if she had run too far? What if Tamara was crouching in some gully, waiting for the sounds of pursuit to move beyond her? How could they find one frightened girl in this vast darkness?
Petronella had seen her fleeing. How close was Suzie behind them?
There was a sudden brilliance of light between the branches. It was seconds before her panicked mind could make sense of it. The light swept past and disappeared.
‘The road!’ She heard herself gasp the word aloud.
Her eyes had been dazzled by the passing headlights. She stumbled on blindly through the trees. She did not see the ditch until she tumbled into it. The leaf mould at the bottom was damp and sticky. Then there was a bank to climb before she felt the solid familiarity of tarmac.
She stood uncertain. If Tamara had got this far, what would she do? On the far side, there was the glimmer of open fields. She listened for sounds, of pursued or pursuers. The rustle of leaves mocked her. She could not tell whether it was a breeze in the branches overhead or someone running hard further away.
Even as she wondered what to do, another set of headlights swept towards her. She shrank back. It was foolish to think that the car could be personally threatening, but she had an overwhelming feeling that she did not want to be seen.
The car sped past her without stopping, then slowed for the bend. She watched the tail lights disappear.
Moments later, there was screech of brakes. It seemed to go on for ever. Then, silence fell, except for the sound of the engine, still running but stationary.
Suzie’s shocked brain took seconds to catch up with the possible meaning.
‘Millie!’
She remembered her slim blonde daughter sprinting ahead of her, plunging into the woods alone. Had she come dashing out from the trees, while Suzie, clumsier, had fallen? Straight out on to the road, in the path of the car sweeping round the bend?
It seemed impossibly far to that curve in the road. Her feet would not pound the tarmac fast enough. Her breath was ragged, almost sobbing.
Even before she rounded the bend she heard the voices. High and agitated. At least two, a man’s and a woman’s.
She raced into the scene, brightly lit by the standing car’s headlights.
She still could not see what lay in front of the bonnet. A young man standing over something. The woman was almost hidden as she knelt on the road.
Suzie could only see the feet that protruded beyond the nearside wheels. Trainers.
Millie had been wearing trainers.
She felt physically sick.
She had not realized that she had stopped running. She forced herself to walk forward. Past the dark rear of the car. Into the beams that illuminated the road in front.
The girl lay face downward. Wavy dark hair tumbled about her head. Not Millie.
Tamara.
Guilt swallowed up the first wave of selfish relief. Guilt, and pity.
The young man was talking fast. ‘Is she all right? I jammed the brakes on as fast as I could. It was my first emergency stop. I didn’t even stall the engine.’
She read the shock in his voice, gabbling inconsequential things. Probably a newly qualified driver.
He knelt beside the body. The headlights shone full on his face.
‘Tom!’ she cried, incredulous.
The woman looked up. ‘She’s still breathing, thank the Lord.’
The unmistakable Pennsylvanian accent of Prudence.
TWENTY-NINE
Incomprehension paralysed Suzie. She must have passed from reality into waking dream.
Prudence had a practical hold on the situation. ‘Get your emergency services,’ she ordered Tom. ‘I don’t know the number.’ She turned her face up to Suzie. ‘And don’t you blame Tom. He slowed right down for that bend. We couldn’t see a darn thing outside the headlights. She just came rushing out on to the road. And he’s right. He did a really good stop. Couldn’t help hitting her, but it might have been worse. He didn’t run over her.’
Tamara stirred and moaned.
‘Should we move her off the road?’ Suzie asked. Other questions whirled through her head. How could Tom and Prudence possibly be here, in rural Warwickshire, when she had left them more than a hundred miles away?
‘No, I think we’ll just get her into the recovery position until we see how bad she’s hurt. Could you get in the car and find those – what do you call them? – those lights that flash on and off.’
‘Hazard lights.’
‘Right. And there’s a coat of mine on the back seat.’
As she turned to obey, Suzie was relieved to find that Tom had got control of his panic. He was talking crisply into his mobile. ‘. . . Just west of Little Fairings. We must be pretty close to a place called The House in the Forest.’
She set the orange lights flashing and came back with Prudence’s jacket. The other woman had turned Tamara’s head sideways. Her face looked ghos
tly in the artificial light, between the heavy waves of dark hair.
Suzie knelt beside her and eased the jacket under her head. There was a panicked skip of a heartbeat as she felt the stickiness of blood. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘Just lie still. The ambulance is on its way.’ She took the girl’s hand.
‘How are you feeling?’ Prudence asked. ‘Do you have a pain anywhere?’
‘My head hurts.’
An enormous relief took hold of Suzie. Tamara’s speech was slurred, but at least she was alive, conscious, coherent.
She felt ashamed that part of her terror was not just that Tamara would die, but that Tom might have killed her.
She realized she was shaking.
‘Now, before you get mad with Tom,’ Prudence said, ‘let’s just get one thing straight. The hire car’s mine. I got this idea. If I’m flying out of Birmingham airport tomorrow, Warwickshire is kind of on my way. So why not? Well, I was having kittens, having to fly back to the States not knowing how this all was going to turn out. It was my idea to bring Tom along as the second driver.’
‘But how did you find us?’
‘Seems you told Tom where you were headed. Since then, he’s been imagining goodness knows what, when you folks weren’t answering your phones.’
Suzie had a guilty memory of seeing Tom’s name on an incoming call and switching her mobile off. ‘No, sorry.’
‘We covered the distance in pretty good time. He drives well, your Tom.’ She bent over Tamara. ‘What were you running away from?’
‘Someone . . . up to the summer house . . .’ Tamara’s speech was heavy with silences.
Suzie squeezed her hand. ‘Nick was coming to help. Did you know it was him?’
‘Someone else . . . woman . . .’
‘Petronella,’ Suzie said softly.
She felt the spasm of the girl’s hand within her own.
‘It’s all right. She’s not here. She can’t get you now. You’ll be safe in hospital. We’ll look after you.’
Tamara’s eyes closed. Suzie tapped her cheek. She had a feeling you weren’t supposed to let the victim of an accident drift into unconsciousness. She shouldn’t have blurted out the most frightening subject.