The Hollows(2)

She looked at me like I’d just told her we’d have to slaughter ourselves a pig for supper.

‘I told you,’ I said. ‘When I booked it.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘I’m almost certain I did.’

‘But . . . I can’t get 4G either. I can’t get any signal at all.’ She sounded increasingly panicked. ‘Have you got one?’

I had already checked. ‘No. Frankie, that was the whole point of coming here. To get away from everything. No social media. No YouTube. No news. A whole week and a half without staring at a screen. Just you and me.’

I had to admit I had been slightly hesitant about it myself. Ten days without being able to refresh Twitter or check my emails? But then I had thought about it properly and realised how wonderful it would be.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I never get to see you . . .’ I was about to launch into a speech about how I didn’t want her to spend our time together glued to her phone, but managed to stop myself. I knew it wouldn’t go down well. ‘There’s so much to do here,’ I said instead, trying to sell the positives.

‘Like what?’ she said, squeezing her phone like it was a friend who was about to abandon her.

‘We can get out into nature.’ I mentioned archery again. Boating on the lake. ‘It’ll be good for us. You can still write in your bullet journal. Read. And I think I saw some jigsaw puzzles over there.’

‘Jigsaw puzzles? ’

It was as if I’d told her that, once she’d slaughtered the pig we were having for supper, she would be expected to knit a blanket using its entrails.

‘What if there’s an emergency?’ she said. ‘What if I want to talk to Mum?’

‘I’m sure there are payphones.’

She looked blank.

‘You know, phones where you have to put a coin in a slot.’

She reacted like this was the weirdest thing she’d ever heard of.

‘It will be cool. I promise.’

I remembered my grandparents going on about how in the olden days they would have to make their own entertainment, using such maddening phrases as ‘only boring people get bored’ and talking about the fun they’d had with an old tin bucket and a stick. I laughed to myself.

‘What’s so funny?’ Frankie demanded.

‘Oh, nothing. I was just thinking, maybe we could go scrumping for apples.’

She shot me a look of contempt, the kind that only a fourteen-year-old girl can muster, and stamped back to her room, slamming the door behind her. I tried not to react, to suppress my irritation. This was her vacation as much as mine, and she was almost an adult now, as hard as that was for me to admit.

I went out to the rental car, trying to stay resolute in my belief that a lack of Wi-Fi was a good thing, and got our suitcases out of the trunk.

‘Hey.’

I looked up, startled.

There was a man standing maybe five metres away, by the tree line. He was in his late forties, I guessed, same as me, and was wearing shorts, a faded Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and a San Francisco Giants baseball cap, with black Converse on his feet.

He strode over, a big grin on his face.

‘David Butler,’ he said, shaking my hand. He gestured down the path. ‘We’re staying at the next cabin over. Number twelve. There’s no cabin thirteen. I guess they decided that would be a bad idea, with this place’s history.’

‘Tom Anderson,’ I told him. Then: ‘What do you mean, “this place’s history”?’

He didn’t answer my question. ‘Oh, you’re a Brit. Did you come all this way to stay here?’ He sounded impressed. I noticed that he had a tattoo of a circle with a cross through it on his upper arm, kind of crudely drawn. There was something familiar about it.

‘It’s complicated.’

‘Oh yeah?’

He was a stranger. I didn’t need to explain anything to him. But I figured I was going to get asked about this a lot so I might as well be open.

‘I’m here with my teenage daughter, Frankie. She lives in Albany with her mum, my ex-wife. I come over to the States once a year to see her, and last summer we stayed in New York but it was so insanely hot I couldn’t face it again.’

‘Very wise.’

‘Yeah. I thought so. My daughter seems less impressed.’

‘Let me guess. There’s no internet! It’s child cruelty! My son is exactly the same.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Just turned fifteen.’ David removed his baseball cap and scratched his head where a cowlick stuck up. ‘I’m trying to remember if I whined as much when I was that age. Pretty sure I did. Least that’s what Connie says. That’s my wife.’ At the mention of her name, he must have remembered something because he said, ‘I’d better get back.’

‘Okay. Nice to meet you.’

He turned to go, then stopped. ‘Hey, we’re gonna be neighbours. We should get to know each other. Why don’t you come over later? I’ve got some steaks for the barbecue, plenty of beer and wine.’

‘I’m not sure. I’m pretty jet-lagged. I flew over from London overnight and I’ve been awake for . . .’ I had actually lost count. ‘Twenty-four hours?’