‘Shh, baby, it’s all right.’
I break away and race up the stairs to see another man in my office sitting at my desk, all my things stacked in a cardboard box at the side. David chases after me but can’t reach me
before I get to my desk.
‘You didn’t waste your time, did you?’ I say. ‘How long have you been planning this?’
‘Rachel, this is crazy, you’re not thinking straight. You’re my wife, I love you.’
The man at the desk looks startled, and he stands with his arms stuck to his sides. My diary is open on my desk in front of him.
‘What are you doing with my stuff?’ I ask him.
‘I was inputting your appointments to the computer. You know, to make it easier for when you come back.’
I pick up the book and hurl it in the man’s face. The diary hits his temple and he cries out as he holds his hands over his face, expecting more. David comes up behind me, clamps his arms
round me and frogmarches me into his office. He locks the door behind him and takes out the key then walks behind his desk. I stand in front of him shivering.
David remains standing and breathes in and out slowly. He leans over his desk, balancing his weight on to his steepled hands, and looks at me.
‘No one will believe you, Rachel.’ Another breath. ‘You have no friends. Even your sleepover buddy won’t be answering his phone any more. Or dealing his shit coke.’
He delivers his words with slow ease, and I hold my hands together tight in front of me to stop them from shaking, turning over in my mind the three days David’s had to prepare for this
moment, and what could have happened to Will in that time. David stands up straight. ‘This is the end of it, the last of your behaviour I’ll tolerate. If you don’t stop
you’ll see that your little holiday with the dogs isn’t the worst I can muster.’
I blink so the tears won’t come. I open my mouth to speak but there is nothing I can say and no way I can win this. I turn from David and rattle the door. ‘Please, I want to go
home.’
David comes round to the door and stands in my way. ‘Why don’t you go to the bathroom and get yourself cleaned up. Have a little self-respect. Even for a nutter you look
terrible.’ He opens the door and walks out, shutting it behind him. Through the panel I hear him say, ‘Graham, I’m so sorry. Guys, everyone,’ he calls to the office.
‘I’m sorry you had to witness that. Rachel’s going to be OK, she just needs some rest, it will take time, that’s all. We’d both appreciate your discretion in this
matter while she gets her life back on track.’
I go into the bathroom to throw some water on my face. As I look in the mirror I realize David is right. I do look insane.
Every time I’ve tried to contact Will these last few days, his number rings out then goes to voicemail. I keep telling myself no one else would bother to keep his phone
charged, but without hearing his voice I’m desperate to know for sure that he’s safe. In the absence of any other course of action, I’ve forced myself to believe that David
hasn’t yet got to Will, and the meaning of Will’s silence is simply that he does indeed hate me.
There’s been a fire at the protestors’ camp in the woods. No one was killed but two people have been hospitalized with burns. Accusations of arson and thuggery
fill the headlines of the local news. The leader of the protest movement is in prison accused of supplying class A drugs. The police found a huge haul at the camp when they were investigating the
fire, the drugs somehow having danced away from the flames. It will take some time to get the accused, Tyrone Aldridge, to trial, but it will be long enough for the trees to come down.
Tyrone’s previous record was for dealing cannabis, and will probably contribute to the weight of evidence against him, although its seems that class As are a whole new venture for a man who
claims to need little of what money can buy.
All of David’s phone calls are taken in private these days, but I catch snippets of his conversations with my ear to the door when the dogs don’t give me away. Enough to tell me he
was involved in these events. David’s constant snuffling nasal drip tells me he’s still sourcing coke, only now it must be from a new connection, and without having to ration his intake
in accordance with my ability to supply, he’s clearly upped his daily quota from functioning to dependent. He jumps when the dogs bark, and scratches as if there are insects beneath his
skin.
Local news bulletins talk of children from the camp being taken into care, and their tearful mothers plead to the camera. It terrifies me to think of loving someone that much – it’s
far easier to turn in on myself, or squash things down. This long-held practice of denial cultivates flashpoints of pain in the day-to-day mechanics of eat and sleep, though there was a soft place
I used to visit when I thought of Will. This has now gone, replaced by an ache which at times grows so vast even I cannot endure it, and the only thing to topple it is alcohol. So I drink all the
time now, whatever I can afford, which is generally supermarket own-brand spirits. Being back at home in the aspic of order and David’s rules, I bear the self-loathing in a creeping fog of
booze. Compliance is easier than trying to outwit him, and there’s a simple reassurance in the habit of our relationship, like returning to my natural state. In the sterile environment of our
home, my subjugation is a martyr’s weight, the cloak of David my own self-imposed muzzle. It’s only at night when the hungry dog visits my sleep that I’m reminded it’s still
possible to put some things right.
It’s a Tuesday afternoon and David’s at work. He’s on location today with a recently appointed head of TV for a satellite channel. She’s turning up to check in on a
production, and David’s gone under the guise of the big overseer of the project, but really he’s there to pitch new ideas. It’s the first day David hasn’t called me at home
on the hour, every hour. I received only one call this morning and then one at lunchtime, so I take this rare opportunity to drive to Blackthorn Lane. The petrol gauge flashes red. I park in the
same car park as before, where three padlocked Portaloos have joined the digger at the edge of the tarmac. The route into the woods is wider now, scarred by Caterpillar tracks and lined with tree
stumps and piles of logs. This woodland has seen more action in the past couple of months than it has in the last few decades as Alex’s grand scheme for an estate of detached houses, fenced
and gated to keep out the rabble, has finally been given the go-ahead.
In the back of my car, I lift the boot cover and take out my dad’s old winter coat from its hiding place. The jacket I’ve been wearing up until now is lightweight, and when David
cleared my clothes he didn’t leave me anything warm. Or perhaps that was part of his plan to keep me at home. This coat is broader than my shoulders and the hem touches my calves, but beneath
it’s like I’ve disappeared. With the musty wool close round me, I make my way from the car park and into the woods in the direction of the caravan. The burnt-out camp is further up the
road, but the faint char of wood still hangs in the air.
Rain has blackened the trees with a steady patter that echoes against the bare walls of nature. Deep swallows of mud-soup suck at my boots. There’s barking in the distance but it’s
too energetic to be the dog I’m looking for, and moments later an excited Great Dane bounds from the trees. The dog’s fur and paws are filthy, and it leaps up to my height and covers me
in dirt. I push the animal away but it growls. A man strides from the woods in knee-high wellies, his angular body pressed inside a scuffed waxed jacket. It’s Alex.
‘Get down, get down,’ he calls from a distance. ‘Suza, come here.’ Then he shouts, ‘DOWN, GIRL!’ The dog scampers back to him. He holds her lead in his hand
like a whip and fastens it to her collar. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says as he comes closer. ‘Rachel? Is that you? I didn’t recognize you.’
‘Hello, Alex.’
‘Are you OK? God, I’m sorry about the mess.’
I look down and wipe my front with my gloves, turning the paw prints into streaks. ‘I’m fine. Nothing the cleaners can’t handle.’
The dog jumps and barks again. ‘Stop it,’ he shouts, but she’s still trying to get at me. ‘Enough!’ He smacks the dog’s nose with the end of the leather lead.
She yelps and falls into line. ‘The bitch gets very excited when she’s in heat.’ Alex moves closer to me, his complexion cracked with red veins. ‘Does David know
you’re here?’ The animal’s whine is high and she pulls at her lead, rasping for air as the collar pinches her windpipe. She sparks up again and barks, making me jump, and Alex
re-swipes her nose.
‘I don’t know what’s got into her,’ he says. ‘We don’t come across many people on these walks any more, not since the diggers moved in. I like to come up here
and check on progress as much as I can. My family’s been after these woods for years now, so it gives me great satisfaction to see all of our hard work finally coming to fruition.’ He
studies my face and I look down. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
The dog circles his legs, tangling her lead round him so that he jolts and spins to retain his footing.
‘I’m fine,’ I say again. ‘I needed some fresh air, that’s all.’
‘Yes, I see,’ he says, leaning in. ‘I heard you’d been having a few . . . um. Well, not been feeling yourself.’
The wind sweeps a fresh blast of drizzle into my face. I pull the coat round me and Alex watches my hands near my chest for a second too long. His mouth opens to a slit. Inside the hole of his
lips it is black.
I take a couple of steps back. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.’ The dog sniffs my leg and moves up to my crotch. I push hard at her muzzle and walk away.
Alex nods in the direction I’m travelling. ‘You’ll not get far up there. An area’s been cordoned off but the police have finished with it now.’ He begins to walk
towards the car park as the dog yanks him along. ‘Nasty business. Still, no one that’ll be missed. They’ll be doing us all a favour when they shift that pile of junk
anyway,’ he calls. ‘You should be careful out here after dark. It’s not the safest place for a woman on her own.’
He disappears into the trees. Only the barking and his calls travel back on the wind. I worry what he’ll say to David. I’ll call Alex later, I decide, and ask him not to mention
having seen me.
I have an extra bag, heavy with dog food, wire cutters and a torch. The strap slips from my shoulder. I hoist it up. In the distance, a horizontal white line shudders in the wind, and as I get
closer the material comes into focus: white plastic striped blue with the words POLICE and DO NOT CROSS. It circles the trees around the caravan, and closer in, next to the vehicle, more tape is
propped up on metal canes. Some of the strips of plastic are broken and they flip and snap in the wind. The police have linked Seamus’s body to the caravan during my three lost days, but I
already have everything of importance – Seamus’s paperwork, plus the photo of Claire – so they’ll still have problems identifying him. For now Seamus belongs to me.
At home I’ve been researching Manorhall Construction on the internet, the company from which Seamus received payslips, and the business through which David’s money has been
filtering. Information is scant; there were only a couple of archived news items from the seventies relating to this same land – a large area was to be cleared to make way for flats to house
the overspill of employees at a new cement works. After a protracted court case over Seamus’s on-site injury, the legalities unearthed other business malpractices, but from there the online
trail goes dead, almost as if the information’s been deleted at source. I imagine Alex would hate having this damning information in the public domain, and he has enough money to erase his
mistakes.
The treasure Seamus discovered in these woods is again in danger, but there would have been little he could have done this time round to stop the encroaching development. Even so, he gave the
woods an extra thirty years. I think again of Claire. If Seamus was my father, it would matter to me how he lived.
I look behind and around me, and when I’m confident I’m alone, I duck under the police tape and track the now well-worn path towards the caravan.
My torch shines through the windows to where the walls have been stripped and the surfaces have been cleared of cans and clutter. The mattress is uncovered revealing a topography of stains, but
everything else is gone, the caravan an empty shell. Seamus has been erased. One of the tiny skeletons he collected is outside on the ground. Broken. Small fragments of bone are pressed into the
mud by the imprint of a shoe. I reach down and collect the pieces, trying to put them back together, but they’re too damaged. I slip the bones in my pocket. Around the caravan the ground has
been scuffed, and in places dug to below the mud where there is tarmac. I work at the patch with my boot and see that the grit extends underneath and around the caravan; the vehicle is parked on
hard standing. This could have been part of the original construction, and the track probably extends all the way down to Blackthorn Lane. How else would Seamus have driven a caravan here? Nature
has worked fast over the years to make good and reclaim its territory.
As I walk to the other side of the vehicle, I look past the fence to the empty field and the distant hills where a wall of heavy cloud moves closer, dragging underneath it a streak of rain that
smears the gap between land and sky. The landscape is more beautiful now than when the sun shines; the undisguised brute force of bad weather is the true face of nature, not the coffee-table books
of butterflies and flowers we admire from inside our centrally heated houses. A rush of wind from across the open ground catches my coat. I undo the buttons and the material shafts up and open.
This is how Seamus lived. I sense him here. Putting my bag on the ground for a few moments, I hold my arms out on each side to let in the weather.
The elements bluster through me as an ecstasy of feeling. I am alive.
The barbed-wire fence is rusty and the cutters slice through the layers of metal with ease. I tug back the fence with my thick gloves and stamp down the spikes, clambering
over the wedge of weeds that’s grown between the fence posts. The soggy earth of the field is like deep glue. Tufts of hardy grass shiver. Then the rain hits, as if the clouds have dropped
their skirts.