Never Alone (12 page)

After Sophie leaves, Sarah takes the dogs out up to the field but quickly regrets it; the rain starts off as drizzle and a few minutes later is needling into her cheeks, carried on an icy wind. By the time she is halfway up the hill the wind is strong enough to make her lose her balance on the tussocky grass. The dogs slink around the edge of the field, keeping to the shelter of the wall; they do their business quickly and Basil starts heading back down towards the house. The driving rain becomes sleety and quickly gives way to snow; the wind tugs at her waterproof hood and the flaps of her jacket. Her waterproof trousers whip around her legs.

When she calls to Tess, her voice is snatched away and disappears so quickly that it is as if she never opened her mouth.

‘Tess!’ she tries again, louder this time, holding a hand up to her eyes to shield them from the needle-like snow.

There is no sign of the dog.

‘Tess! Where are you?’

She looks down the hill to where Basil is crouching against the side of the back porch, waiting for her to get back. She half-expects Tess is down there somewhere too, so she heads down the hill. It is getting slippery; the snow is coming down in earnest now, turning the grass tussocks white and making every step awkward and hazardous.

Back at the house, there is no sign of the dog. Sarah lets Basil into the utility room, rubs him down roughly with the towel, and shuts him in there. Outside, the wind blasts at
Sarah the second she steps out from the shelter of the wall. She heads up the garden, keeping close to the low wall as she can.

‘Tess!’

The wind moans. She strains to listen, thinks she can hear something else above the noise of the wind: howling?

She continues up the hill, turning her head into the wind, seeing nothing but her wellies trudging through the wet white snow. After another twenty steps she stops, turns, shouts again. This time she hears something – a bark, from behind her, higher up the hill.

‘Tess! Where are you, you bloody dog?’

Another fifty paces and she hears it again, barking, each sound carried away on the wind. Out of the darkness a white shape looms up ahead. It’s the croft, the half-derelict shepherd’s shack. The door, which is usually half hanging off its hinges, is shut, and the snow is piling up against it.

‘Tess?’

Another bark, louder this time.

Sarah reaches the croft and pushes at the door. It’s jammed, warped from years of rain, and for some reason it has slammed shut. Sarah pushes harder, feels it give slightly. The wood creaks under her gloved hand. From behind the door, frantic barking. This time she uses her shoulder, one big shove, and the door bursts open, slamming back on itself.

Sarah is propelled into the dark space, sprawls across the floor. Her shoulder bashes into something solid and she feels a burst of pain.

Tess bounces around her, barking, stopping to lick her face, barking again.

‘Christ, Tess! How did you get in here?

The door is pushing against her foot, already trying to slam itself shut. The croft is small, two tiny rooms, and the roof is caving in in places. When they moved into Four Winds
Farm, Sarah and Jim had talked about renovating it, making it into a summer house or a log store, but in fact this far up the hill it’s too far away to be of any real use. A few items of furniture ended up here, an old kitchen table, a chest of drawers – against which Sarah has fallen – but as her eyes grow accustomed to the darkness Sarah realises there are other things here too. The fireplace has ashes in it, as though someone has built a fire. And a piece of plywood has been fixed, somehow, across the small broken window. In the corner, under the table, is an old dirty mattress and a sleeping bag. Next to it is a blue plastic plate and a flask. Sticking out from the bottom of the mattress is a newspaper and a magazine. Sarah reaches for them, pulls them free. It is too dark to see any of the text.

Tess is sitting in the doorway, looking anxiously from Sarah to the hill outside, back to Sarah again. When she gets to her feet, Tess starts barking again. She is looking into the darkness of the croft, baring her teeth, growling.

Sarah is jolted by a sudden fear that she is not alone. She looks behind her into the room, at the closed door that leads to the second room.

‘Tess? What is it, girl?’

Tess jumps, paws braced against the stone slabs. There is nothing in the room, nothing other than a faint bad smell – rotting food, damp clothes – and surely nobody could be in here? It’s freezing, bitterly cold. But then, there is the second door. Closed.

Sarah decides she is safe with Tess here, and walks the few paces to the door. Tess follows her but is going mad, barking and jumping in circles, and as Sarah approaches the door the dog jumps at it.

‘All right, girl. It’s all right! Tess, down!’

Hand on the door handle, Sarah’s bravery falters. ‘Anyone in there?’ she shouts. ‘I’m coming in with the dog.’

She pushes open the door.

Even in the darkness, Sarah can tell the room is empty. Tess runs in, races around it once, whines, scratches at the floor behind the door. It must have been a rat, a rabbit or something. Now that she thinks about it, maybe that’s what the smell is – fox or rabbit wee.

Behind her, the main door to the croft crashes shut again without her foot to hold it open, and she is plunged into complete, icy darkness.

It feels, just for a moment, like drowning. Sarah has to remind herself to breathe, as she feels around the walls, knocks against the chest of drawers and kicks the plastic plate away with a clatter. She can hear something – breathing, a snuffling – and something brushes against her leg. Panic grips her for a second until she hears a whine and remembers Tess. And then she finds the door. She tugs at it but once again the wood has scraped tightly against the doorframe and it’s stuck. She yanks at it, her shoulder hurting, terror making her strong, until it jerks free and she is out in the howling wind and the swirling snow once more.

‘Tess! Come
on
!’

The dog casts one last anxious look into the darkness and runs off down the hill. Sarah lets go of the door and the wind snatches it away, slamming it shut again.

She half-runs, half-falls back down the hill, slipping at least twice. The snow is so fierce now she can hardly see. Eventually she reaches the back porch, heaves the door open against the snow which is drifting against it, and stumbles inside. Tess follows, still turning in mad circles and barking. She pushes the door shut behind her and the noise of the wind suddenly dies.

‘Tess, for God’s sake, shut up!’

Basil is whining, crouched against the door to the hallway. Sarah catches Tess by the collar and drapes her in the towel,
rubbing her as dry as possible. Through her thick fur Sarah can feel that she is trembling. She opens the door and Basil rushes off, presumably to sit in front of the Aga. Tess doesn’t move. She sits by the back door, looking up at it intently while Sarah peels off her sodden coat and pulls her frozen feet out of her wellies, as if at any moment the dog is expecting the door to open and someone to walk in.

That night Sarah sleeps fitfully and wakes again before dawn. She lies in the dark listening to the house, wondering what has woken her. There is nothing, no sound; but now she is awake her brain has started fretting about the stresses that will form the shape of her day.

She must phone the bank. She cannot put it off any longer.

The snow has gone, except for a few sparkling patches on the summit of the hills; it’s a beautiful day, bright, chilly, full of promise. By nine she has walked the dogs, made toast and coffee and is in the studio, thinking about starting work. It’s cold in here despite the heater. Once upon a time this was Jim’s workshop, the place where he pottered and tinkered and hoarded power tools. He had cabinets on the walls with hooks holding hand tools, pencilled outlines so that if something was missing he would know what it was; a red tool chest containing spanner sets, plastic tubs with spares and broken things, a collection from a lifetime of keeping things that might one day be fixable or usable. When he died she spent one fraught weekend clearing it out, stowing the red chest out of sight in the barn, putting pictures of all the power tools up online and not paying much attention to how much money they sold for. She regrets that now. He must have spent thousands accruing it all; when it was empty she was barely eight hundred pounds better off.

She had wanted it all gone. There was so much to do and everything around her had reminded her of Jim. She wanted
to remember, but, if there was a fresh start to be had, she wanted it to start now. By that time, she had had a growing awareness of the financial problems and, despite knowing that it came from Jim’s attempts to keep his business afloat – loans taken out against other loans, contracts fulfilled at a loss to keep clients happy – she was angry at it, at him, at the idea of his spending money on power tools he was never going to use, and, worst of all, at his not having given her the slightest hint of the spiral of debt he had let them all be sucked into.

Louis had seethed at the clearout. Kitty had been gentle, tearful at times, begging her not to be too hasty. Sarah has often thought that she should have just been honest with them about the money; but back then she was anxious to preserve the memories they had of their dad, happy ones. And she’d thought she was being careful about what she was expunging from the house – nothing personal, nothing with specific memories attached, at least not at that early stage. But what was left behind was more about her than it was about Jim; the essence of him, his clothes, the things he touched, were all disposed of. He wasn’t the type of man to leave notes, and he was more often the one taking the photos than in them. And so, without fully realising it, she had pushed him away.

What is left now is a fragment, a shape without colour and form – like the workshop, whose walls and windows remain the same, but which inside is now painted, carpeted, with a big desk and bookcases from IKEA, their old sofabed, new cushions, a throw. If she stares at the walls hard enough she can just about imagine it the way it was. But nothing of that remains.

And she has produced good work in here; she believes that some of her finest illustrations have been born in this room since it became her space. The trouble is, nobody else seems to feel the same way.

It’s hard to keep going under those circumstances. It’s no wonder she’s struggling.

She tries to call Kitty to find out what train she is getting on Friday, but there is no answer. She sends a text instead, finishes her coffee and tapes a fresh sheet of watercolour paper to the board. She has had a new idea: animal superheroes. They don’t know they have superpowers. She is going to start with a pigeon who has phenomenal strength and no clue; the pigeon is responsible for pot holes and fallen trees. She sketches out a few scenes on her pad. Quickly the pigeon is joined by a supersonic goat named Carnage. She hasn’t thought of a good name for the pigeon yet; all that comes to mind is Bob.

An hour later, she has twenty or so quick pencil sketches. In each one, Bob the pigeon looks baffled; the goat looks vicious. She rests her head in her hands, pulling a face. It feels hopeless.

Her phone buzzes with a text and she snatches it up, relieved to have an interruption. There is a message from Kitty:

Sorry I missed u mum. Will call later xx.

This time Sarah senses something at the same time as the dogs do; from their respective positions on the floor of the workshop they both look up, ears pricked towards the door. Basil moves first, barking, tail wagging. Tess looks less certain.

What happened in the croft has unnerved her, she thinks. It’s broad daylight, the sun is shining, and yet the hairs are standing up on her arm.

She opens the door and Basil bursts through it, running straight for the house and barking at the door. Tess follows him, her head down, ears back. It’s not Aiden coming back, then; the car is still missing from its usual spot.

Sarah crosses the yard to the house and has her hand on the door when it opens from within, making her jump.

‘Christ!’

‘Ah, there you are! I was just leaving you a note.’

Will stands aside to let her in. He is all smiles.

‘I did knock,’ he says. ‘Thought you were out with the dogs.’

‘I was working,’ she says, and almost goes to apologise but stops herself. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve got something to show you,’ he says. ‘We’ll need to take your car.’

‘Where are we going?’ Sarah asks, again.

Will is sitting next to her in the front passenger seat of the Land Rover. He looks fresh and he’s fidgety, like a small boy with a secret, something that she finds a little disconcerting.

‘Surprise, I told you,’ he says. ‘Keep driving.’

They are headed into the moors, and, while it is a sunny day for a change, Sarah is in no mood for a mystery tour. She keeps thinking of the work she should be doing. A text interruption is one thing, but not an hour’s trip.

‘I guess Sophie told you,’ he says quickly.

Sarah glances across to meet his searing blue eyes, which are studying her face for any reaction.

‘That you’re seeing each other? Yes,’ she says.

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘What d’you make of it?’

She is surprised that he is asking. It’s not really any of her business, after all. ‘She seems happy,’ she says, in the end.

‘Yeah,’ he answers, still smiling. ‘I am too. She’s amazing.’

‘Just – you know – be careful,’ Sarah says. She can’t help herself.

‘I won’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re bothered about.’

‘I don’t want either of you to get hurt. It just seems like it’s the sort of thing that can’t possibly go anywhere.’

For the first time since she saw him in the town centre, the smile has dropped from his face and he looks thoughtful. He goes quiet for a bit and, not for the first time, Sarah thinks again about what happened at Louis’s birthday party. The details of it are hazy; the feelings that were left behind are anything but. She wants to ask if he has told Sophie; wants to assure him that she will not. But to ask would be to bring the subject up, and she cannot be sure that he hasn’t, in fact, forgotten all about it after all. If he has, that’s the best thing for all of them.