In a Dark, Dark Wood(5)

‘Don’t apologise to me.’ She folded her long legs into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and stuck the keys in the ignition. ‘I hate being driven. Driving is like karaoke – your own is epic, other people’s is just embarrassing or alarming.’

‘Well … it’s just, you know … living in London, a car seems like a luxury rather than a necessity. Don’t you think?’

‘I use Zipcar to visit Mum and Dad.’

‘Well.’ I looked out of the window as Nina let in the clutch. We did a brief bunny hop across the station car park before she sorted it out. ‘Australia’s a bit of a trek in a Volvo.’

‘Oh, God, I forgot your mum emigrated. With … what’s his name? Your stepdad?’

‘Philip,’ I said. Why do I always feel like a sulky teenager when I say his name? It’s a perfectly normal name.

Nina shot me a sharp look, and then jerked her head at the sat-nav.

‘Stick that on, would you, and put in the postcode Flo gave us. It’s our only hope of getting out of Newcastle town centre alive.’

Westerhope, Throckle, Stanegate, Haltwhistle, Wark … the signs flashed past like a sort of poetry, the road unfurling like an iron-grey ribbon flung across the sheep-cropped moors and low hills. The sky overhead was clouded and huge, but the small stone buildings that we passed at intervals sat huddled into the dips in the landscape, as if they were afraid of being seen. I didn’t have to navigate, and reading in a car makes me feel sick and strange, so I closed my eyes, shutting out Nina and the sound of the radio, alone in my own head with the questions that were nagging there.

Why me, Clare? Why now?

Was it just that she was getting married and wanted to rekindle an old friendship? But if so, why hadn’t she invited me to the wedding? She’d invited Nina, clearly, so it couldn’t be a family-only ceremony or anything like that.

She shook her head in my imagination, admonishing me to be patient, to wait. Clare always did like secrets. Her favourite passtime was finding out something about you and then hinting at it. Not spreading it around – just veiled references in conversation, references that only you and she understood. References that let you know.

We stopped in Hexham for lunch, and a cigarette break for Nina, and then pushed on towards Kielder Forest, out into country lanes, where the sky overhead became huge. But as the roads grew narrower the trees seemed to come closer, edging across the close-cropped peaty turf until they stood sentinel at the roadside, held back only by a thin drystone wall.

As we entered the forest itself, the sat-nav coverage dropped off, and then died.

‘Hang on.’ I scrabbled in my handbag. ‘I’ve got those print-outs that Flo emailed.’

‘Well, aren’t you the girl scout of the year,’ Nina said, but I could hear the relief in her voice. ‘What’s wrong with an iPhone anyway?’

‘This is what’s wrong with them.’ I held up my mobile, which was endlessly buffering and failing to load Google Maps. ‘They disappear unpredictably.’ I looked at the print-outs. ‘The Glass House’, the search-header read, ‘Stanebridge Road’. ‘OK, there’s a right coming up. A bend and then a right, it must be any time—’ The turning whizzed past and I said – mildly, I thought – ‘That was it. We missed it.’

‘Fine bloody navigator you are!’

‘What?’

‘You’re supposed to tell me about the turning before we get to it, you know.’ She imitated the robotic voice of the sat-nav: ‘Make a left in – fifty – metres. Make a left in – thirty – metres. Turn around when safe to do so, you have missed your turning.’

‘Well, turn around when safe to do so, lady. You have missed your turning.’

‘Screw safe.’ Nina stamped on the brakes and did a fast, bad-tempered three-point turn just at another bend in the forest road. I shut my eyes.

‘What was that you were saying about karaoke?’

‘Oh it’s a dead end, no one was coming.’

‘Apart from the other half dozen people invited to this hen-do.’

I opened my eyes cautiously to find we were round and picking up speed in the opposite direction. ‘OK, it’s here. It looks like a footpath on the map but Flo’s definitely marked it.’

‘It is a footpath!’

She swung the wheel, we bumped through the opening, and the little car began jolting and bumping up a rutted, muddy track.

‘I believe the technical term is “unpaved road”,’ I said rather breathlessly, as Nina skirted a huge mud-filled trench that looked more like a watering hole for hippos, and wound round yet another bend. ‘Is this their drive? There must be half a mile of track here.’

We were on the last print-out, the one so big it was practically an aerial photograph, and I couldn’t see any other houses marked.

‘If it’s their drive,’ Nina said jerkily as the car bounced over another rut, ‘they should bloody well maintain it. If I break the chassis on this hire car I’m suing someone. I don’t care who, but I’m buggered if I’m paying for it.’

But as we rounded the next bend, we were suddenly there. Nina drove the car through a narrow gate, parked up and killed the engine, and we both got out, staring up at the house in front of us.