The Snakes

by Sadie Jones

  He pulled out and started off again, onto the narrow ribbon of a road.

  She couldn’t see any other cars now. Her mind dipped in and out, like lying down in snow. The pulse throbbed in her bruises. She imagined her blood crowding in, her cells, rallying to heal. She closed her eyes.

  She opened them. And then it was twilight, and the pine forests were closer to the car. She licked her lips and dislodged a scab. She could see a gorge to one side, and ribbed, streaky rock dropping away to invisible ravines.

  ‘Almost there,’ he said. ‘Almost. Jesus. Another campsite. Every place in the whole of this goddamn country. OK, this is good, this is good, right here.’

  They turned. The car bumped, slowly, up a hill. She pictured the metal tyre iron, lying on the back seat. She imagined herself reaching into the back, and the feel of holding it in her hand. She couldn’t reach it with her broken arm. She couldn’t turn to look. And she had no rage. She didn’t think she’d do it even if she could. She was wounded enough for both of them.

  ‘Into the wilderness,’ he said.

  The pine trees thinned, and she could see long slopes going downwards, and no houses, not one, and no lights. She was far from help. She couldn’t fight. She had to not think about it, that he was taking her somewhere nobody would see him. All she could do was not give way. All she had was that. She needed to be able to think. But she couldn’t think, her mind kept failing her, and knowing that it was failing was desperate, and made her want to cry.

  ‘Just up here?’ he said, like looking for a picnic spot.

  The car crawled then surged and crawled again, on rocks and into potholes. Nausea hit her like a punch, and waves of pain, and sudden sweat. She closed her eyes and dreamed of seabirds, soaring and white above a choppy sea. She heard kindly voices, talking, in another room. Up here, they said, just look, it’s beautiful. She heard him whoop. A crass sound. A cowboy sound. She opened her eyes.

  ‘Fuckin’ yeah,’ he said. ‘This. Is. Perfect.’

  The car stopped. He turned the music off. In the sudden quiet her blood rushed, and she felt terror, and a sad longing to be safe.

  ‘Where’s Dan?’ she asked. She whispered it.

  He turned the engine off.

  ‘Let me help you.’

  He got out of the car. The fresh chill of altitude blew over her, and the smell of the pine trees. He opened her door.

  ‘Careful,’ he said, standing above her. ‘You look like shit. No offence.’

  He watched her haul herself up, holding on to the door. Her head fell forward.

  ‘Over here,’ he said, snapping his fingers at her.

  She leaned on the car. She looked around. It was almost night. There was nothing, just the line of pines across the short grass, which was almost invisible now, and rocks, and the smell of the mountains. Below them, she could just see the track they had driven up, curving out of sight. On the other side of the track was big, dark forest.

  ‘Look at that,’ he said, surprised. ‘Your shoulder. Your bone. Shit. When did you do that?’

  ‘When I fell.’

  ‘Huh. OK. It’s good you’re here.’ He went to the back of the car and opened the boot. ‘Must’ve dropped it. Damn.’

  She didn’t know what he meant. His words fell out, incontinent, his only company. He shut the boot and rubbed his hands back and forth over his skull, and laughed ruefully.

  ‘Rookie move.’

  Bea rested, taking in the space around it, and how far it was to the trees. The pain in the right side of her head was louder. It was cacophonous, and hard to connect to anything beyond it. Russ leaned into the car, and pulled the snake trap from the back seat. He tested the weight of it, pleased.

  ‘Hell yeah,’ he said, then took it to the back of the car and tried to cram it into the boot, but it wouldn’t fit.

  Seeming to remember something, he put the trap onto the ground, carefully, and rested his foot on it, as if it would run away. He reached into the boot, groping.

  ‘Got it.’ His hand emerged with a black spotlight torch.

  He switched it on and put it down next to the trap. The beam shone haphazardly onto the car wheel. In the almost-dark, he leaned into the shadow of the boot, and began to haul and pull at something.

  She knew what he was doing. She couldn’t see, but she knew – from the way his arms moved, and the way he was bending to see inside. It was intimate.

  The ground was cloudlike as she began to walk, and there was a noise like water rushing. He leaned into the boot of the car, straining and tugging. She saw Dan’s hand, loosely hanging, then his arm, over the rim of the boot. Russ bent his knees, out of sight for a second, then straightened, with an effort. He had his arms around Dan’s torso, and Dan’s arm hung near the parking light, his hand illuminated by the red glow.

  ‘Dan?’ she said.

  Russ strained, and took a half-step back. He dragged Dan out, clumsily, over the sill, and dumped him on the ground, heavy, curled up, like an embryo, facing away from her. His T-shirt had ridden up to show the skin at the small of his back. Russ stepped away.

  Dan didn’t move. His knees were bent. His feet, in their trainers, lay one on top of the other, quite neatly.

  ‘Dan?’

  It was three steps to reach him, then she knelt. His hand lay palm upwards, the arm bent back awkwardly. His head was in darkness, facing away. She couldn’t see his face. She touched the crease of his palm with the tip of her finger. His fingers didn’t move.

  ‘Dan?’ she whispered.

  She heard Russ start talking, somewhere. She touched Dan’s shoulder. He didn’t respond. She tugged, one-handed, and his upper body rolled. His head fell towards her, and his cheek hit the ground. His eyes were open but not looking. She touched his cheek. It was warm. She touched his mouth. Her fingers rested on his lips but she felt no breath, and his eyes stayed open, shining. She touched his neck, no rise or fall, no pulse, no flicker on the skin. His fixed eyes didn’t blink.

  ‘Dan?’

  She couldn’t look at his eyes. Slowly, she moved her hand, along his cheek, under his ear, to the back of his neck. Her hand knew the feeling of his dense, soft skin, and the shaved-close touch of his hair, and how the gradual fade went softer over the base of his skull, and the roundness of his head. Her fingers felt their way, but there was no smooth dome. She felt the bone give way to breakage, pulp, then nothing, touching the ground where the ground shouldn’t be, and wetness. She felt the jagged splinter of his skull and pulled her hand away. Her breath was quick, then panting, her body jerking at each breath, and she couldn’t stop. Without wanting it, she looked back to Dan’s blind eyes. Then there was no sound, not even pain, just silence.

  Slowly, she straightened up. Unaware of herself, she travelled him. The dip above his collarbones, the ribbed neck of his T-shirt, the rest of it, hoisted up, his bare stomach, his belt buckle, the denim of his jeans, and a big, blackish stain, which must be blood. His legs looked uncomfortable, knees bent and feet side by side, neat. She could see the soles of his trainers, the rubber treads on them, impossibly exposed. She looked down, at his hand again, and how still it was. She wiped her fingers on the grass and pulled his T-shirt down over his stomach as well as she could. She put her hand over his eyes. She had the idea she could hide the horror from him. He didn’t seem to have left his body, but his body was dead. It was him and not him. Terrible. Horror. She could not take her eyes off him. His corpse. She could not take her eyes off his corpse. She smelled cigarette smoke, drifting.

  ‘OK, now,’ said Russ. ‘Get over.’

  He pushed her and she fell onto her side. From the ground, her eyes stared at Dan’s dead eyes, a foot away. Then his head jerked. She watched it slide, in increments, away, out of her eyeline, as Russ dragged his body. She stayed staring at the empty place. This was their end. Like a marriage, like a birth, this was their end. This. There wasn’t more. Russ was pulling him away from her, into the dark. She lay and stared at the ground wher
e his body had lain.

  The greys and browns of the earth and trees were vague and fuzzy in the night. She heard the rustling cracking sound of twigs and Russ’s steps and the corpse, dragged up the hill towards the treeline. The sound grew quieter. She tried to get up to crawl, but she couldn’t use her broken arm to take her weight. Slowly, she got to her feet, and stumbling, walked to the car.

  The doors were closed. The car looked dark and uninhabited. Her body began shaking, uncontrollably. She was freezing cold, juddering. She stood trying to control her shaking body, knowing Russ was coming back. It was as if he were still next to her, talking. But he wasn’t. She was alone. She tried the car door but it was locked. Her body stopped shaking and she turned her head. Her interrupted vision drifted slowly, adjusting to the distance, towards the place that he had gone. Night had almost fallen, and it was dark towards the trees. She could see the beam of his torch, uneven, and his silhouette.

  She was alone and free. Her pain had gone. Quickly, she looked around. The cold air moved across her face, her body faded into insignificance in the open night. Without hesitating, she turned down the hill, and started towards the track she knew was just ahead. Beyond it was the forest. She began to run, feeling nothing. She focused on staying upright, holding her right arm across her body, to keep it as still as she could.

  She was running. She thought she was. Quickly. Across the grass, the track, the dried earth. Her foot hit a rock and she stumbled badly. Halted, she listened for him behind her, but could only hear her breath. She ran on, painless, disconnected, all she knew was running. The trees were very black in the spaces in between. They looked like refuge. She fixed her eyes on the black spaces, imagining hiding in them, hearing her feet patter on the ground. She ran on, warm and weightless. She would hide. He would not find her in the dark. Her mouth was open, dripping blood or saliva. She observed it from far away, going on, running, thinking she was running. It occurred to her she might be dreaming because she had no pain. She might still be in the car or kneeling on the ground. She heard nothing. She felt nothing, just the air on her face.

  And then she reached the trees. She stopped, because she was too out of breath to go any further. Her vision blackened, opening and closing like shutters banging in her head. The woods and the horizon and the sky tipped and tilted and spun. She put her hand out to break her fall, but it wasn’t the ground under her hand, it was the trunk of a tree. She held onto it. Getting her balance, she walked into the woods.

  She walked through the trees, and their presence was like company. She was among them, like stepping into a crowded cave; no, higher than that, a huge hall, filled with silent guardians, waiting for her. She heard a wind, like whispering voices, far above her, and slippery pine needles beneath her feet. She couldn’t see. She held her arms out, to feel her way, groping, blind. Her breath rattled and the pain came back, and awful terror. She summoned all her courage, and held it tight, imagining the thousands and thousands of trees around her, solemn in the dark. She felt bark under her hands. She felt her way along, and around a massive trunk, and then there was a space, just nothing, and then another tree, under her fingers, and she put the flat of her hand on it, and went to it. The branches creaked. She took a step, and then one more, sensing them allowing her through, still and watching. After each step she asked her body to take one more, but the steps got smaller and her mind failed. She tried to fall slowly but it was a long way.

  Her face rested on the ground. She thought it was the ground. She felt the resin-smelling pine needles and the sandy earth. She heard an owl, and for a moment remembered the bedroom at Paligny, and listening to the owls outside in the night, hunting for mice. It seemed so long ago. She would try to crawl. She stretched her hand out into the darkness and felt roots going into the ground. Her fingers moved over them, like raised letters she couldn’t decipher, but it was only her hand that moved, her body was still. Her hair lay on the pine needles. She knew that there were snakes nearby. She could sense them in the dark. The owls were high above her in the sky, gliding as they hunted. They were hanging in the air, and looking down on the sandy ground and the hard roots, on the pine needles, and the snakes in curls, and small flowers studding the dark earth. They saw the gentle mice and the blameless snakes, and they saw her.

  She thought of the white folded paper, left on the ground, unread, and all her rage, forgotten. She thought that when she saw Dan again and they were travelling together she’d tell him that she didn’t need to be worth more than gold. She would tell him all her truths and trust him to hear her. Then she remembered she would not see Dan again, and that he’d gone. And there would be no baby. It was not for her.

  She couldn’t feel anything under her fingers now. Her hand slipped and rested. She turned her head, weightlessly, and looked up to the invisible sky. She was smaller and smaller, she was diminished, dissolving, quiet. She was only her eyes, and her eyes saw moonlight, shining high above her, the furthest, smallest gleam of it, touching the tallest of the trees. Acutely, cleanly, perfectly, she felt the kindness of the night surround her. She had nothing. She was nothing and content to be.

  She didn’t hear Russ coming for her, so she wasn’t frightened. And she didn’t know how easily he found her, across the track, on the empty ground before the edge of the forest, just a short walk from the car. But she saw the sweeping torchlight, silvery and bright. Inside her head were worlds as big as oceans. She gave herself up to them, and her death was nothing to her, because she was not there.

  Acknowledgements

  There is the very long time alone with a story, and then there are the people who turn it from private to public. Thank you to Clara Farmer, whose unique talent makes books more themselves. Thanks to Caroline Wood, who is both reader and champion, and to Rachel Cugnoni and Richard Cable. Many thanks to Suzanne Dean and Lily Richards, for the cover design, and to Harriet Dobson, Fran Owen and Sophie Mitchell – not least for their patience.

  I am lucky to have Terry Karten’s insight and faith, and many thanks also to Stephanie Cabot and Jonathan Burnham.

  Dr Charlotte Harris helped me enormously with the research into French criminal procedure. Any inaccuracies were made either in error, for which I apologise, or to suit my story, for which I can’t.

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  Copyright © Sadie Jones 2019

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  Author photograph © Jonathan Greet

  Sadie Jones has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Chatto & Windus in 2019

  penguin.co.uk/vintage

&nbs
p; A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473558700

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  PART TWO

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  PART THREE

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  PART FOUR

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright