In a Dark, Dark Wood(80)

‘How much will it be, please? I’ve only got twenty pounds.’

‘It’s twenty-five normally,’ he says, taking in my bruises, ‘but for you I’ll say twenty.’

Thank God. I manage a smile, though my face feels like it is frozen, and might crack with the effort.

‘Th-thank you,’ I say, not stammering now, but my teeth chattering with cold.

‘Get in, love,’ he opens the door behind him, ‘or you’ll freeze. Hop in, now.’

I get in.

The car is like a cocoon of warmth that folds around me. It smells of worn plastic and pine air freshener and old cigarettes, the smell of every taxi everywhere, and I want to curl into the soft warmth of its seats and go to sleep and never wake up.

My fingers as I try to buckle my belt are trembling, and I realise how tired I am, how weak my muscles are after my hospital stay.

‘Sorry,’ I say, as he glances back to make sure I’m buckled up. ‘Sorry. I’m nearly there.’

‘No worries, love. No hurry.’

And then the buckle closes with a reassuring click and I sit back, feeling my body ache with tiredness.

The driver starts the engine. I close my eyes. I am away.

‘Eh, love. Wake up, Miss.’

I open my eyes, confused and bleary. Where am I? Not at home. Not in the hospital.

It takes a minute before I realise that I’m in the back seat of the taxi, in my hospital clothes, and the car has stopped.

‘We’re here,’ he says. ‘But I can’t get up to the house. The road’s blocked.’

I blink, and wipe the condensation off the window. He’s right. A road block has been put across the lane, two aluminium barriers lashed together with police tape.

‘It’s all right.’ I rub the sleep out of the corners of my eyes and feel in my pocket for the money. ‘Here you go, twenty, was that right?’

He takes the money, but says, ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right, love? Looks like the house is shut up.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

Will I? I have to be. There must be a way in. I imagine the police will have secured the property but I can’t believe they will have turned it into Fort Knox, not out here. There’s no one to come and disturb the scene.

The taxi driver’s face is unhappy as I get out the car, and he watches me, the engine idling, as I edge round the barrier. I don’t want him to. I can’t bear him to see me stumbling up the rutted track in my pathetic flip-flops. Instead I stand with my hands on the barrier, trying not to shiver, and wave at him determinedly.

He winds down the window, his breath gusting white into the cold air.

‘Are you sure you’re all right? I can stay if you like, tek you back to Stanebridge if there’s nobody about. I won’t charge. It’s on me way back anyway.’

‘No thanks,’ I say. I grit my teeth, trying not to let them chatter. ‘I’m fine. Thanks. Goodbye, now.’

He nods, still unhappy, and then revs the engine and I watch as his car disappears into the falling dusk, the red tail-lights illuminating the falling snow.

Jesus, this drive is long. I had forgotten how long. I remember the run, when I met Clare halfway up, my legs tired and aching and my skin cold.

That was nothing to this. What has happened to my muscles in hospital? I’m not even halfway up and my legs are trembling with those muscle shakes that come after you’ve pushed yourself too hard and too fast. My feet in the hard plastic flip-flops are bleeding, but they’re so numb I can’t feel any pain, I only know what has happened from the smears of red that mingle with the flecks of snow.

The mud, at least, has frozen, so I’m not fighting against the cloying lumps sticking to my feet. But when I stumble into a particularly deep rut there’s a crack, and my foot goes through the thin crust of ice into the freezing pool of muddy water beneath.

I gasp and make a kind of squeaking whimper as I pull my foot painfully out through the sharp ice. It is a thin, pathetic sound, like a mouse being caught by an owl.

I am so cold. I am so very, very cold.

Have I been very stupid?

But I have to carry on. I’m halfway. There’s no sense in going back – even if I could flag down someone on the road, where would I go? Back to the hospital and the waiting cuffs of Lamarr? I’ve run away, absconded. I have to see this through. There is no way back.

I force my feet, one in front of the other, my arms wrapped around myself for warmth, thanking God and Nina for the blue cardigan which is the only thing keeping me from hypothermia. The wind blows again, a low moaning howl through the trees, and I hear the snow shake and patter to the ground.

One more step.

And one more after that.

I cannot tell how close I am – with the house empty, there’s no glowing lights to guide me. I have no sense of how long I’ve been walking in this bitter cold. Only that I have to keep going – because if I don’t I will die.

One more step.

There are pictures in my head as I get closer. Flo, her face twisted with fear, the gun across her chest. Nina’s horrified expression, her blood-stained hands as she tried to staunch the flow.

James. James lying in a pool of his own blood, dying.

I know now what he was trying to say, when he said te … Leo?

It wasn’t ‘tell’ it was ‘text’. He was asking me why I’d brought him here. And why I’d let him die like this.