‘What?’ she replies aggressively.
‘The neighbours,’ he says.
‘Well go inside, then!’
He knows it’s hopeless. She’s not going to be talked out of anything. He still can’t believe she’s taken a phone call at two in the morning and simply got dressed and headed for the car, but he’s known her long enough that he can tell when there’s no point arguing. He knows, too, that she’s not telling him the whole story. Has known it over and over again through the course of their relationship, the way her eyes glaze and her jaw sets when certain subjects come up. She’s a fucking oyster, he thinks. And she can be such a bitch when she wants to head a subject off. And I’m so soft that I just let it pass because I don’t want to distress her, even though everyone knows that sometimes you have to lance a wound to let it heal. I’ve got to change. Once I’ve found a job and the balance is restored, I’ve got to toughen up, or we’ll be skating round stuff in our eighties. I love her so much, but sometimes I think we’ve only got half a relationship.
He shakes his head. Turns back to the house. ‘OK. Well, there’s no point arguing. Just so you know. I’m not happy. I’m pissed off, actually. You promised you’d be here, and I’m not happy.’
She almost relents. Remembers Amber’s threat and finds herself torn in half. ‘Jim,’ she says.
‘Whatever,’ he says.
‘Come on. Don’t let’s…’
‘I’ll see you in Hereford, eventually. Keep me posted. If that’s not too much trouble.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Kirsty. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sure,’ he says, before he closes the door. ‘Sure you are.’
Kirsty waits in the drive until the hall light goes off. If I carry on lying like this, she thinks, we’re going to be in trouble soon. He’s not stupid. Tolerant, but not stupid. I see him, sometimes, wondering, when he looks at me. It’s only because he’s such a gentle soul, because he doesn’t want to push me, that we’ve survived this far. I’m so lucky I found him. I can’t think of another man who’d leave me alone like this.
She gets into the car, pulls out the phone. It takes a few rings for Amber to answer, and when she does, it’s in a low voice, as though she’s afraid of being overheard.
‘It’s me,’ Kirsty says. ‘I’m on my way.’
She hears Amber inhale heavily, hears tears in her voice when she answers. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’
‘Are you safe?’
‘Sort of… I think so. I’m on the pier. At the end.’
Kirsty sees her in her mind’s eye, huddled on the benches in the bullring of faded Edwardian amusements beyond the train terminus, her face periodically lit by the orange warning light on top of the shabby helter-skelter. Maybe I should call someone, she thinks, do her a favour by betraying her. But no: there’s no way she can call anonymously, not in a world where phone calls are routinely traced. And just because it would be the better thing to do doesn’t mean that Amber will see it that way and keep quiet about her.
‘It’s going to be an hour and a half. Will you be OK?’
‘I hope so,’ says Amber. ‘No one ever comes here at night. The gates are locked. I used my Funnland ID card to break through the lock on the staff entrance. It’s only a Yale.’
‘OK,’ says Kirsty. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
She hangs up and turns the key in the ignition. She has no idea what she’s going to do once she gets to Whitmouth. Hopes she’ll drown her rage and resentment long enough to formulate a plan on the long drive over. Otherwise, God knows, the chances are that Jim’s wish that she’d open up more might come appallingly true.
Martin watches the Renault back out of the drive and start down the road. He puts his seat upright and starts his engine, but leaves the lights off as he pulls out of his parking space, to avoid alerting her to his presence. Waits till she’s turned the first corner before he pulls out and flicks on his beams. The roads are empty enough at this time of night that he will have little trouble finding her again, and he figures that the most powerful weapon he will have when they reach their destination is the element of surprise.
4.15 p.m.
The gate is locked and an electric fence runs through the hedge. The farmer’s keeping sheep on the field this year, and everyone knows that sheep are a bugger to keep in. The gate, meanwhile, is rickety: half off its hinges, all splinters and creosote, the crossbars too close together to allow even their undersized bodies to slide between.
‘Right, well,’ says Jade, ‘we’ll have to climb over.’
She eyes Chloe appraisingly. The kid seems to have gone wobbly in the last fifteen minutes, as though her legs are losing the ability to hold her up. Has fallen down every hundred yards, and takes longer, each time, to get up.
‘You should take that thing off,’ she says, tweaking at the strings on the anorak. ‘You must be boiling.’
Chloe is sluggish, unresponsive. She seems to have lost the will even to cry. Even when she caught her shin on the barbed wire two fields back, she let out little more than a dull moan of pain. Only another four fields till we reach the river, thinks Jade. A good thing. I don’t know what to do with her. I think she’s getting ill.
She has severe doubts that they will find Debbie at their destination, but they’ve come this far and the shrieking, splashing party that takes place on the Evenlode every afternoon of the summer is the nearest source of help she can think of. She and Bel unzip the anorak, peel the passive child out of it. Her thin white arms are covered in bruises, her skinny-rib top stained with sweat. For the first time they see that her hair is a bright, golden blond, curls plastered to her scalp like astrakhan. She staggers slightly; her eyes seem to have gone blank. She snatches the jacket from Jade and clutches it to her chest like a teddy bear.
‘Come on,’ says Jade, in a tone more gentle than she’s used all afternoon. ‘See over there?’
She points to a line in the grass that emerges from the woods to their right and slashes across the heat-scorched meadow. ‘See it? That’s the stream. When we get there, we can have a paddle and a drink. Cool you off a bit. And then we just have to go along it till we get to the river.’
Chloe looks ahead without interest. ‘Come on,’ says Jade again. She puts a foot on the bottom rung of the gate, grabs the top to show how it’s done.
‘I’m not sure…’ says Bel.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ says Jade. ‘I’ve been climbing gates since I was three.’
She’s not sure how much truth there is in this statement, but she knows she’s been doing it for years, and anyway, it’s not as if climbing gates is a highly rated skill. Besides, there’s no other way through she can think of, short of breaking it down. She scales the gate like a ladder, swings her leg over as though she were mounting a horse. Sits astride it, looks down at the others. ‘Easy-peasy,’ she says. Swings her other leg over and drops to the ground. Chloe stares, her mouth half open.
‘Go on,’ prompts Jade. ‘Give her a hand.’
Bel shuffles the kid forward. Her feet seem to be made of concrete. They drag and catch on the ground as though they’re too heavy for her legs. Bel gets to her knees and lifts one of Chloe’s feet on to the bottom bar. Tries to clamp the child’s hands on three bars up, but Chloe refuses to let go of the anorak. After several goes, Bel unpeels a single arm and hooks it through the rungs. ‘See?’ she says. ‘It’s like a ladder.’