Pine

by Francine Toon

  Once a farmer complained that he had found ivy garlands around his cattle in the field some way from their house. No one ever admitted to this. Christine looked as though she had no idea about the incident, yet Niall remains convinced to this day it was her doing.

  Ann-Marie clears her throat in the dingy pickup. ‘I wanted to say … Lauren was asking the other day. About … I thought I should tell you. She seems quite disturbed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She … she seems troubled. She wanted to know about … her mum.’

  The truck drifts out to the middle of the road and Ann-Marie clutches the handle.

  ‘Y’all right, Niall?’

  Niall suppresses a hiccup and mutters, ‘Fine.’

  ‘I just thought I should tell you. I realized – I realized I don’t really know what happened.’

  ‘I don’t want to chat about that.’ The memories fade into the black. These Walkers can’t leave him alone. ‘Like mother like daughter,’ he mutters.

  ‘What was that?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s hard,’ Ann-Marie replies.

  ‘I’m not being funny, like, but – I don’t know. Coming into my truck and chatting about that?’ A bitterness overtakes him. ‘You’d better mind I don’t tell your parents about your sneaky wee drink habit.’ The road stretches ahead. ‘Wouldn’t be so perfect to them then, would you? Jeez.’ They drive some way in silence before he starts to talk again. ‘You’re just like – you’re just like your mother. Ask any more of those questions and you can … piss off back to Edinburgh.’ The last phrase comes out as a mumble.

  He glances over and sees Ann-Marie looking resolutely out of the window. He starts up again. ‘I’m not talking about that, OK? She’s gone. Gone. Nothing is “conclusive”. It was all fucked up and she’s gone.’

  ‘OK. I’m sorry,’ Ann-Marie says.

  He indicates and the clicking noise soothes the silence. They turn off the main road and drive down the forest track. The uneven stones and potholes make the ride bumpier. The pines are dark and dense. No other cars are about. Niall dips the headlamps to a half-beam that spreads into a yellow pool of light in front of them.

  ‘You all right, Niall?’ she asks again.

  He grunts.

  Ann-Marie crosses her legs in the tight space. ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m fine!’ He swerves the truck into the road and Ann-Marie jolts to one side, clinging to the door handle. ‘Jeez.’ Niall carries on looking ahead but he can see her out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘OK. Niall? I’m fine just here. Here.’ When he looks over properly she is pressed against the door.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he murmurs. One hand reaches about for a can or a hip flask in the space near her legs but finds nothing.

  ‘Look,’ she says. ‘Please. This is nearly me home. Just drop me in the passing place. I can walk the rest of the way, no bother.’

  ‘No, no, I have to get you home.’ The truck bumps against the roadside and drifts closer to the stony verge.

  ‘Niall, please.’

  ‘Can’t have you walking.’ He says it almost sarcastically.

  ‘Niall. I don’t feel well. Please. Please. Stop right here. Stop here in the passing place. It’s almost … We’re almost at our house.’

  ‘Fine.’ He jerks the vehicle into the lay-by and they lurch in their seats again. ‘Ann-Marie. You’re a young girl. I canna … let you out.’

  ‘What?’ She curls back into the corner of the seat and the curve of the door.

  ‘I canna.’ He touches her on the shoulder, his fingers clumsily brushing her lapel. ‘I canna have you walking that way. On your own. In the trees and that.’

  Ann-Marie looks at him and he sees then that she is scared. The trees are better than he is.

  17

  In a camp bed in the downstairs study of Billy’s house, Lauren wonders what’s happened to her father. If he is with Sandy, she can’t understand why he hasn’t texted her or phoned. She has to go to school tomorrow. Maybe he’s drunk. Maybe he had an accident. She tries to remember what he said he was doing that day, but it doesn’t come to her. She tries to think hard, to pick up psychic signals of some kind, but there is nothing. Before she went to bed, she looked out of the ground-floor window to see if she could catch sight of the pickup, but the road was empty.

  Lauren is woken in the night by the Mathesons’ home telephone. She can hear Kirsty padding downstairs, her soft speech, her intake of breath. She jogs upstairs again. Some time later, Lauren hears a rumble of discussion in the kitchen next door. Kirsty is standing on the other side of the wall. She sounds upset. ‘We should.’

  Lauren listens hard.

  ‘I know. I know. But we should.’

  Then there is quiet, followed by a soft tap on her door. ‘Hi,’ Kirsty whispers. ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Lauren whispers back.

  Kirsty crouches by the camp bed, her face close. ‘I was just wondering. When’s the last time you saw Ann-Marie?’

  ‘When she was babysitting.’ Lauren looks out of the door, as if Ann-Marie might be there.

  ‘Did she tell you anything? Say that she might be going somewhere?’

  ‘No, why?’ Something is sinking inside her.

  ‘OK. Don’t worry. You try and get back to sleep.’ She walks out, more quickly than usual.

  Lauren lies very still in bed, barely breathing to try and hear more. Craig is pacing the room and Kirsty is talking on the phone again. Their discussion grows a little louder. Lauren tilts her head towards the wall.

  ‘We’ll do what we can,’ Kirsty says.

  ‘We can’t both—’

  ‘Why not?’ Kirsty says.

  ‘Now is not the time to be a smart alec. You stay here. We’ve got work tomorrow. The kids need you. Your phone working OK?’ Craig says.

  ‘Fine. But don’t – don’t talk to me like that,’ says Kirsty.

  He sighs. ‘I’m knackered. This is odd. Not just her, it’s Niall. Eh?’

  Lauren squeezes her eyes closed.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Craig continues. ‘Need to be safe.’

  Their voices dip, and Lauren moves closer to the wall but can’t catch the words. Soon she hears Craig ask for the keys, close the door and speed away in his car. The house ebbs back into silence and Lauren pulls the bobbled duvet over her head to think. Under the padding she hears the shrill call of the phone again and pokes her head out to listen.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. He’s away out. Don’t worry, Angela, we’ll do all we can. No, no, she hasn’t heard anything. Oh, right, I see. Diane. OK, well, like I say, Craig’ll have a wee look around.’

  Lauren wonders what Diane might have to do with things. She tries to imagine a situation in which her father and Ann-Marie have ended up spending time together, but it’s such an odd idea, like a rabbit eating a dog, instead of the other way around. Billy’s walkie-talkie is lying by the side of her bed. She takes it under the covers. ‘Billy,’ she whispers. ‘Are you there, Billy?’

  Only static answers as she puts the radio down on her bedside table.

  She tries to sleep, but her body is too alert. Impulsively, she reaches for the radio again. ‘Bill—’

  A young woman’s voice replies, ‘Go to sleep, Lauren. Stay in bed.’

  Lauren jumps and pushes the device off the table. She looks around, as if the young woman might be in the room with her, but she isn’t. The radio bounces on to the floor and the battery flap springs open. The static stops and the room is silent, except for the ticking of the clock.

  There is a gentle knock on the door again and Kirsty peers her head around the side. ‘Everything OK? You made a noise.’

  ‘Oh, did I? I’m fine.’

  ‘You mustn’t worry.’ She begins to close the door, her head tilted to one side.

  Lauren looks down at the floor. She feels a little silly, because the woman doesn’t seem real any more. ‘Kirsty?’


  ‘Mmm-hmm?’

  ‘Where’s Ann-Marie?’

  ‘Ann-Marie is being a silly teenager …’ Kirsty tightens her grip on the door. ‘She’ll be with friends or something. She’s on holiday at the moment, isn’t she? Craig’s out and I might … nip out too, so you’ll sit tight here, won’t you? You’ll try and get some sleep now? I can give you one of Billy’s school jumpers for tomorrow. Or we can drive past by your house.’

  Lauren nods and pulls the duvet over her head. She wishes she had her worry dolls to talk to or her knife to flick. She thinks of her father and imagines him falling into a ditch or getting lost on the single-track lane. She texts him again and hears the front door slip shut and realizes she is alone with Billy and Lewis.

  She slips in and out of sleep for a while, but when she wakes up it is after midnight and the house is still empty. Anxiety twists around her like ivy. She lies there, remembering what Craig and Kirsty said, how they mentioned Diane. They should have been back by now. Your mum and now your dad and now Ann-Marie, a voice inside her is saying. She can’t think, only feel what it would be like without them, as though they had all been swept away by a wave.

  The dark outside is huge and cold, but she knows she should be out there. It’s no good trying to sleep. She feels as if she could run a mile. The grown-ups drive everywhere in their cars. They don’t know the fields like she does. She could walk the Loop through the woods blind.

  She thinks of her dad and how he walks Jameson in the dark at Cowrie Point. Perhaps he’ll be OK. But perhaps he has been drinking again. Perhaps he came home and is so fast asleep, he didn’t hear Craig ring the doorbell. Ann-Marie, on the other hand, doesn’t really live here and is used to the city. It’s easy to imagine her losing her way.

  She creeps upstairs and softly knocks on Billy’s bedroom door. When there’s no answer she goes in, making out her friend’s sleeping body on a bed along one wall. Out of his window, she sees a couple of cars parked at the side of the road at the front of the house and three spots of light in the fields to the right. The night is clear and still; snow gleams. The neighbours must be searching. The realization stings her like ice.

  She hurries downstairs and puts her wellies on, leaving a note for Kirsty. She stops still, remembering the woman’s voice over the radio. Outside looks dark, but there are people with torches and if she were to scream they would hear her. She knows she has to be brave. Then she realizes she is the only one with the key to her house and decides that is where she should start looking. If her father is home, she’ll text them. She makes her way back over the dark field towards her home. She doesn’t feel scared if she stands still and lets her eyes open up to the dark night around her, remembering it is the same place it was in the sunlight. The neighbours’ torches are bright specks behind her, but when she stands still, she can hear the voices of Malcolm and Angela calling: ‘Ann-Marie! Ann-Marie!’

  Back at her house she peers into the front drive and sees the pickup there, frosted over, like a dark block of ice.

  She runs up to her father’s bedroom. ‘Dad! Dad?’ The house is still chilly and dark. She hears Jameson behind her, barking, excited she is home. She ignores him and, switching the lights on as she goes, creeps into her empty bedroom and then the bathroom. Nothing. She yanks back the mildewed shower curtain. The bath is empty too. She picks up the torch from the landing cupboard on her way back downstairs.

  He is not sitting on the sofa or cooking in the kitchen. The house is vacant, yet she still calls his name, hoping she’s made a mistake. He wouldn’t go far without his pickup.

  The only room she has not checked is the one she is not allowed to go into. She tries the door and finds it unlocked. (Has it always been unlocked?) Inside, cardboard boxes are heaped in a corner. A woman’s dress is draped in a dry-cleaning bag over the yellow sofa and a pair of women’s boots stand by the mantelpiece. Extinguished candles are sitting in a line. Lauren leaves quickly and calls out for her father once again. She opens the sliding door and peers around the garden. It’s only the dark, she tells herself. The dark can’t hurt you. Her body feels skittish.

  A buzzard is sitting on the fence post, watching her. It takes off into the sky, towards the woods. ‘Dad?’ She doesn’t know why she is calling for him. She takes her mountain bike from under a tarp, clicks on the front light and wheels it along the back way, where the edge of her garden meets the fields and a track runs in between. She can see lights bobbing at the edge of a distant field.

  She drags her bike over the snowy field, then hauls it over the paddock fence to the start of the Loop. The track is almost too dark to see, but she has walked it so many times, and ridden her bike here too, it should seem easy. Before she can scare herself, she tears up the track into the acres of woodland ahead, away from the lights of the search party. The bike throws a shaky beam in front of her and then the old water tanks. She doesn’t dare to look inside, this time. The trees start to close in around her. She wonders if Ann-Marie or her father have headed along the Loop and fallen somehow on the way. It doesn’t lead anywhere, so it doesn’t make sense. She is sure for a moment that she hears Diane’s voice in the fields shouting too, far away, but it’s hard to hear over the tyres whipping the stony track and the noise of her own breath. Just a little further along the path, she gets to their usual spot by the hut. In the dark, it’s just a faint shape among the trees. The sight is familiar yet unnerving. She closes her eyes and hears the flapping of wings.

  She carries on further along the Loop, as the trees thicken and the forest deepens. She thinks if she rides along here, calling, maybe she’ll get an answer. The path seems to go on for hours. She can’t ride very fast in the dark, but she rides fast enough not to feel scared at the prospect of cycling into a black hole.

  After what could have been two hours or five, her adrenaline is running out. The path she is on becomes narrower until grass is brushing her legs. She looks around, hard. It dawns on her that she is not on the Loop any more, but a narrowed animal track. Suddenly she is moving fast, downhill, unable to stop.

  A rock looms in the darkness and she turns sharply and then pounds to the ground with a clatter of metal. The bike light goes out. The breath has been knocked from her lungs. She lies there as the damp from the slushy grass seeps through her trousers and chills her tired body. At that moment she is too tired to cry and too angry with herself. Part of her wants to sleep. She has never been so aware of her childishness.

  In a patch where the moon is big, she spots an old saucepan in the undergrowth and a rusty beer can. These objects are strange. The only signs of life she has seen before are from a very long time ago: the stone foundations of a croft, an old bridge. She wonders how long she will have to walk to try and find a way out.

  When she looks up she realizes that hidden among the trees is a tumbledown house, without a roof. Lauren stands her ground, feeling fear curl around her arms and legs. She begins to walk away, her steps turning into a run. After at least a mile, when she can’t run any longer, she finds a gorse bush and crawls beneath it.

  Niall is walking through pitch black, the crunch of ice and rocks beneath his feet, the smell of the pine fresh and frosty, heavy with snow. He knows he is getting closer to the centre of the forest and he knows he shouldn’t be there. All at once, a small, dark-haired man steps out from behind a tree, dressed in a cloak of moss and dead bracken. ‘I’m looking after the lost girl,’ says the man. ‘Come with me.’

  Niall can see bugs crawling in the man’s cloak, earwigs and brown lacewings, crane flies and iridescent leaf beetles.

  They start walking along narrow, shadowy paths. ‘She’s just around the corner,’ says the man. ‘I found her.’

  The dense ferns brush against Niall, their leaves as high as his chest. He has to wade through, pushing against the undergrowth, feeling bugs crawl under his sleeves. Moonbeams light the path as he follows the small, shaggy-cloaked man with a shining lantern and staff. ‘I live alone,’ the
man says. Niall notices they are among birches now and he has a strange feeling he is at his grandfather’s cottage in Gairloch and he’s telling him the myth of the Ghillie Dhu. The cloaked man begins to turn around as a cold dread seeps into Niall’s bones and he springs awake in the dark, then passes out again.

  18

  Some hours pass. Lauren stops herself from falling asleep completely in the bushes. Her dad once told her of mountaineers who went to sleep in the snow and never woke up. She sings songs to herself in her head. ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ and ‘Stairway To Heaven’. She closes her eyes for minutes at a time, dazed with cold, and then opens them. At last, the forest begins to get a little lighter. She realizes she is far away from any path and the trees look identical around her. In the distance, she can see spots of light. They are not torches exactly, but more like fireflies, if those existed in Scotland. Something ephemeral, she has heard told in stories. She follows them, over the mossy forest floor, past boulders and banks of ferns for a couple of miles. The birds are starting to call. Her legs are about to give out when she realizes she is walking alongside the edge of the forest, glimpsing the fields between the trees. The early morning is still dark, but deep grey rather than black. It will not be light for hours.

  By the time her whole body is nearly numb with cold, she hears her name being called. This time there is a strong light growing out of the main path. ‘Is that you, Lauren?’