The Retreat(23)

Chapter 11

I woke up with a hangover.

I had been drunk when I got back to my room. Mid-afternoon, unable to work, I’d gone to the Miners Arms. I didn’t remember seeing any of my fellow writers. I had a blurry memory of chatting to Rhodri about my dad and how I hadn’t inherited his practical genes. He seemed to find this hilarious, although most of the conversation was a blur. I told him about Priya too. I remembered getting angry and tearful – and, wincing, I shoved the recollection back beneath the blanket of my hangover.

Eventually I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower. Feeling better, I grabbed a coffee from the kitchen and went back to my room. I badly needed to get some writing done. I hadn’t added anything to my word count the day before. Time was running out.

I opened my laptop and found my work in progress open on the screen. As always, I started to read over the previous chapter before writing anything new.

The men went from house to house, looking for the right one. The one whose name was called. A girl or boy who no one would miss very much. They searched the land until they found that child. They knew it was the only way to save the skins they’d made. The child cried until she was an empty well with no more tears to cry. But nobody else cried. Nobody cared – except for one man, who wrapped her in his strong arms and whispered with his lips against her hair. Whispered that . . .

It ended abruptly, the sentence unfinished. I read over it again, perplexed. I had absolutely no memory of writing these words. Had I done it when I got back from the pub? I tried to peer through the haze of my hangover. I had a vague memory of sitting at my laptop when I got back, but was sure I’d just spent a few minutes checking my emails and Facebook.

But I really didn’t remember working on my book. And these words didn’t sound like mine. The voice was different. It didn’t fit into the novel, either.

I was clearly a bad writer when I was drunk.

And I wasn’t very good hung over, either. I attempted to work on my story, but it was no use. After trying to construct the same sentence three times, I gave up and went back to bed.



My phone woke me. It was dark outside and I couldn’t make sense of it, until I realised I must have slept through and wasted a whole day. I grabbed my phone. It was six thirty.

‘Lucas?’ It was Zara and she was whispering. ‘Can you meet?’

‘Yeah. Sure. Have you found anything?’

‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’

Thirty minutes later, still a little groggy, I entered the Miners Arms. A few eyebrows went up when I walked in, the kind of looks that said ‘Back again?’ Oh God, I hoped I hadn’t done anything too embarrassing the night before.

‘Lucas! We’re over here.’

It was Max, Suzi and Karen. Shit, I’d forgotten they’d be here. And there, sitting on her own in the corner, was Zara.

Max got to his feet, intercepting me. ‘What are you drinking? We were wondering where you’d got to. Been hard at work?’

‘Something like that.’

‘We’re just talking about all the weird stuff that’s been going on in the house. Karen found a dead sparrow in her bedroom today and totally freaked out. I mean, obviously it was that bloody cat, but she’s going on about how it’s a bad omen.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Anyway, what are you drinking? A pint?’

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Zara watching me.

‘Sorry, mate,’ I said. My tongue felt sluggish; how much had I drunk last night? ‘I’m, um, meeting an old friend. From when I was a kid.’

Max looked around. ‘Oh, right. Of course, you were born here, weren’t you?’ He snickered. ‘That’s probably why you’re so weird.’

‘Huh?’

He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Just kidding, obviously.’

I could feel his eyes on my back as I threaded my way between the tables to Zara. She sat hunched, a pint in front of her, cap pulled so low it touched her eyebrows.

‘You look rough,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. Not drinking?’

I groaned.

‘Ah.’ She fiddled with her beer mat and opened her mouth a couple of times, like she couldn’t figure out how to get started.

‘Have you found something out?’ I asked. ‘About Lily?’

‘Kind of. Well. Rumours. Rumours about this place.’ Her eyes flicked from side to side and she shuffled closer to the table as if she were afraid of being overheard. ‘One of the things you quickly discover in this job is that if you want to learn about a place, you should talk to a librarian. Not because they’ve read a lot of books or any of that old guff – no offence – but because they know the local people, they see the stuff they’re looking up, they overhear whispered conversations.’

‘Sounds sensible.’ I rubbed my forehead. I should have taken some painkillers before coming out.

‘So that’s where I went. Except the staff there were young library assistants, none of them with much knowledge of the town at all. To cut a long story short, I found out the librarian who worked there for donkey’s years retired a couple of years ago. And an old dear who was in there gathering a huge pile of crime novels told me he could almost always be found at the chess club.’