Mr. Nobody(23)
Best to focus on the job at hand. Finding out who this guy is. Graceford looks up from the walkie-talkie and sees him staring. She raises her hand. A thumbs-up.
It’s okay for now, Chris decides. Maybe he’ll try another chat with Zara tonight.
He looks at the beach, at the dark clumps scattered along its two-mile stretch, and makes his way down the steep dune to the first one.
10
DR. EMMA LEWIS
DAY 7—INTO THE WOODS
It’s a long drive to Norfolk, but the morning traffic loosens after London and cool January sunlight streams across the miles of empty English countryside as they roll past my car window. As I get closer, motorways turn into A-roads, then B-roads, and soon I’m winding right out onto the coastal way flanked on one side by ancient oak forest and on the other side by the vast planes of salty beach marshes that stretch out into the North Sea.
I collected the rental car early this morning; someone from Peter Chorley’s office arranged it, it’s all been made very easy for me. I just have to follow the reassuring voice of the satellite navigation toward the accommodation someone else has booked for me in Norfolk.
Above the glittering wet marshes, flocks of birds soar as I drive past, thousands of black pixels continually reconfiguring against the crisp blue winter sky, always almost on the verge of making sense. I crack my window and let the scent of the countryside roll in. Salt sea air, mixed with warm earthy forest mulch, and on its edges, the rich scent of bonfire. It hits me before I can anticipate it, the memory. The smell of burning leaves in the cold air, the crackle and spark. I try not to think of it and the sharp sad ache that always comes with the memory. I close the window and blast the heater on.
When I get to the postcode Peter emailed me all I can do is pull up on the verge of the B-road and stare at it, engine burring along, indicator clicking out time—it’s not what I expected, but the GPS reassures me I have reached my destination. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly, perhaps sterile student digs or a room in the hospital’s on-site student-nurse accommodation.
In front of the car sits a little wooden sign. The sign points off of the main road and down a thin graveled track leading into the heart of the woods. The sign, at a slight angle, reads CUCKOO LODGE.
Hmph. Okay.
No one mentioned that name in the email, which is slightly strange. But then, everything about this situation has been strange so far, so why break with tradition?
Luckily, there’s no other traffic on the main road, so I have a moment alone to reassess. I turn off the engine and scroll through Peter’s texts to check the postcode again. Did he mention a Cuckoo Lodge in his text message? His email gives only the satnav coordinates and the address: 1 Market Lane. I look up at the gravel lane through the windshield. Is that Market Lane? It definitely doesn’t look like it leads to market. Unless it’s a market in the woods. Did I type the postcode in wrong? I check the satnav postcode against the text info. No, it’s all correct.
I look down the bumpy little lane again. Dark woods rise high on both sides. It’s literally in the middle of nowhere.
This can’t be right, can it?
Why would Peter put me here? I mean, it’s not exactly near the hospital, or accessible in terms of local amenities, is it? I’d better make sure I stock up food if this is it because the nearest village, Wells-next-the-Sea, is a good twenty minutes’ drive from here.
But there’s only one way to find out if this is it, I suppose.
I restart the car, check my rearview mirror, and bump down off of the tarmac and onto the crunchy gravel of the lane. One Market Lane, here I come.
I’m sure there’s a reason Peter’s put me in the middle of nowhere. I guess he wants me as far from the media, and therefore the hospital, as possible. It makes sense. I’ll certainly be safely tucked away from the Princess Margaret Hospital. And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been slightly worried about ending up near Holt, near our old family home.
It’s impossible to say what effect seeing the old house would have. I haven’t been back there since it happened. We didn’t even go back for our things at the time; they wouldn’t let us.
I won’t go back now either, if I can avoid it.
I decide Peter must have partly chosen this location on my behalf. He’ll have put me here so I don’t even have to drive past my old home every day. Good old Peter.
I let down the window again; I need to wake up. The breeze flows in, bringing the scent of wet earth and dead leaves with it; no more bonfires for now.
The lane is longer than I had expected. The tall trees flank my car on both sides. The forest beyond on either side is dense. I’m right in the heart of the Norfolk National Nature Reserve; these woods go on for miles in either direction.
I catch a rustling motion in the undergrowth beside the car as it crackles along the gravel. At least no one can sneak up on you out here, which is reassuring—you’d definitely hear them coming.
A bird bursts from the woods to my right, soaring high across the track ahead, and then I see it. Cuckoo Lodge. The lane ahead opens out into a small clearing where the house looms, majestic, framed by forest.
It’s unexpectedly beautiful, placed right in the center of the dark clearing at the end of the long lane, an intricate little red-brick house hidden in the woods. A neo-Gothic Victorian dream with a wood gable over its front door, chocolate-box chimney stacks, and an engraved York stone plaque between its two uppermost windows, commemorating the date it was built. I squint up through the windshield but it’s too far away to read yet. I shiver and close the car window. There’s a chill in the air now.