Black Wood (16 page)

I worked out a way to pull my sleeves down under my hands to cushion myself from the handles of the plastic bags, which had become tight and sharp like cheesewire. Only five more minutes and I’d be there. I could already make out the outline of the cottage through the trees as I approached the edge of the field, lush green with an abundance of barley, the evening sun glistening across the tops of the plants.

Across the road, the woods were dimmed, trees casting long shadows across the dirt-track lane at the side. In the clearing, the cottage loomed ahead. Grey brick walls, blackened from damp in the corners. Windows curtainless, unlit, like black holes reflecting back the branches of the swaying oaks outside.

Light and dark.

I crossed over the road towards the cottage, feeling a smile play on my lips.

I was looking forward to this.

I’d always loved spending time in Gran’s kitchen. It had a warm, homely feel, in contrast to some of the rooms upstairs, which always felt a bit dark and cold, like there was never enough going on in them to bring them to life. Around the edges of the kitchen were a series of high cupboards, the doors once painted a sunny yellow, now cracked and discoloured. I took out plates, cream with a brown floral edge. Plates that were about the same age as me but that had fared significantly better.

I arranged the crackers on the plates, unwrapped the cheese. I hesitated for only a brief moment before pulling open the drawer under the sink and taking out a knife. Not just any knife. My gran’s favourite, and also the one I used when I helped her skin the rabbits. Ingrained in the small wooden handle were years of trapped blood.

I sliced the cheese and laid it on the plates. Then I wiped the knife on my jeans and dropped it back into the drawer. As I pushed the drawer back in, a piece of paper slid down the back, falling out on the floor beneath the sink. I bent to pick it up. It was a newspaper cutting, yellowing and fading like the cupboards that surrounded me. I unfolded it carefully, curious as to why it was in there. At first I thought it was a segment ripped from a sheet she had used to line the drawer, but it was too neatly cut to be that. My head swam as I read the words printed on there:

MISSING
LOCAL
MAN:

FAMILY
FEAR
FOR
HIS
SAFETY

My hands shook as I folded it back up, placed it neatly back in the drawer.

Not now, Jo.

Shoving the drawer closed again, I tried to shake the memory away.

I thought about Claire then, and I knew I had to talk to her soon. There was so much I had to say, but I had to be careful …

Pushing the dark thoughts from my mind, I laid a tray with the plates, cutlery, napkins. Added the wine and two glasses.

I was just about to carry it upstairs to the bedroom when I heard a sharp rap on the door. I paused, waiting. Another single rap, then a break, then two in quick succession.

Morse code. Something that he had taught me.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check the time. 6.58.

He was early.

Gray headed back to the Track for the second time in as many days. Rumours were starting to spread around the town now. The would-be attacker had turned into a flasher … Next he would be seven feet tall. He needed to sort this out before it went any further. At this point, he still wasn’t ruling out an idiot and some sick prank.

He parked near the kids’ playground and was glad to see a few mums out with buggies, toddlers climbing like monkeys up the complicated-looking frames. They weren’t like that when he was young. They had a single metal-poled cube-shaped thing with concrete at the bottom. None of this ‘safety flooring’, the dull-red spongy stuff that seemed to be everywhere now. Funnily enough, though, he’d never known anyone to fall off one of the old-style ones and do themselves any damage. Maybe they were just more wimpish now.

Or maybe the opposite: one of the toddlers had already leapt off from the top of the slide and landed in a heap. It was no wonder the mothers were so neurotic.

He cut down the narrow alley, past Brotherstone’s house. Thought about popping in.

The son, Pete – he definitely knew more than he was letting on. It was obvious to think that he might be the one scaring the girls. His build was right, and the way his dad was trying his hardest to shield him from any sort of questioning … The boy’s innocence was a difficult thing to work out. Clearly he was desperate to talk to Gray. Clearly Brotherstone was desperate for him not to.

He could understand, to an extent. Brotherstone had a reputation to protect. Pillar of the community and all that. Plus, it wasn’t the first time that Pete had been accused of something like this.

But he wasn’t guilty then, and Gray’s gut said he wasn’t guilty now.

Gray’s gut was usually pretty accurate.

It told him to not even bother to drink strong coffee, because it would reject it instantly with sharp muscle spasms. It told him there was no point thinking about the past, because there was nothing he could do to change it, and it was telling him now that Pete knew something, but he wasn’t behind it.

If Pete had frightened those girls – even for some warped kind of fun – he’d never be able to keep quiet about it. His speech was strictly one speed. He wondered what his dad had said or done to him in the station to shut him up.

He passed through the stile that separated the alley from the Track: something that he had never quite understood, assuming that stiles were only supposed to stop animals from straying out of their safety zones – and he was pretty sure there were no animals on the Track. Well, not of the four-legged variety anyway.

When he reached the other side, he turned round and faced Brotherstone’s house, just in time to see a figure retreat from the top window. Martin? Or Pete? Either way, what Martin had said earlier was right – the room had a clear view of the Track and, it seemed, the alleyway.

He walked along to the bridge that Lydia had mentioned. It was a five-minute brisk stroll, and he was slippery with sweat by the time he got there. He could’ve parked on the bridge, walked down the embankment – but he wanted to see it from this angle first.

At the section where Lydia said she was waiting for her boyfriend, there was no sign of any disturbance. It was hard to tell with the bark-mulch path covering. If anyone had walked over it since, it’d be disturbed anyway.

Nothing looked out of place.

He turned back on himself, walked back out into the sunshine. It was oddly quiet, for the time of day – nearly seven on a warm summer’s evening. There should’ve been plenty of people around. Dog walkers, joggers. Old men. Teens heading to their hangout places.

Even the birds seemed subdued. Upset at someone tainting their habitat.

A rustling behind him made Gray almost leap out of his skin. He whirled round to see a small grey and white rabbit sitting on the path behind him. The colour surprised him. He’d never seen a wild rabbit with white patches.

‘Hello, boy,’ he said, bending down towards it. The rabbit didn’t move. Odd, as they normally ran a mile when you tried to get close to them. He took a step closer, saw a dark-red stain on one of its feet.

‘Are you hurt, boy? Let me see … I can try to help you?’ He felt a bit mad talking to the rabbit, but he could see that it was injured. He wondered what he was supposed to do in these situations. Call the RSPCA? Try to catch it and take it to a vet?

In the end it didn’t give him a choice.

A sudden breeze whipped up the bushes that lined the Track and the rabbit’s ears cocked.

Then it bolted up the embankment.

Gray whipped round, followed the rabbit’s path. Watched as something seemed to fall off behind it as it ran. For a horrible fleeting moment, Gray thought it was its tail.

The rabbit was gone, but clearly it was OK.

The thing it had dropped, though – that was something else. Gray picked up a stick and poked at the white, bloodstained blob and realised he was looking at a tissue.

Lydia said she’d kicked him hard, that he might have a bruised knee.

Maybe not bruised. Definitely bleeding.

Gray pulled a small plastic bag from his pocket – something he always carried, just in case – picked up the tissue on the end of the stick and dropped it in.

Might be nothing.

Might be everything.

He was about to turn back in the direction of Brotherstone’s house when he saw the footprint.

He had to stop himself from laughing. Two potential bits of evidence right at his feet, thanks to that daft wee rabbit.

Pity he didn’t have a suspect to check them against.

If he sent the tissue to the lab for analysis, he’d have to inform the CID boys about what was going on, and in they’d come, stamping their size 9s over the whole thing. This was his town. He wanted to find this prick himself.

He took his phone out of his pocket and bent down to take photographs of the footprint. It was clean. An exact shape of a foot, with distinctive ridges across the ball. He made sure to take one with his own foot next to it, so that it could be sized against his own size 11s. It looked like a 10 to him. A size 10 trainer.

Not exactly unique.

It’d be something, though.

Once he found the bastard.

I let him wait. Not for long. Long enough for him to consider whether he should knock again. I could sense him standing there on the other side of the door. Wondered if he felt that same frisson of excitement I did. It felt like my heart was doing somersaults inside my chest. I counted slowly to sixty before walking down the stairs and unlocking the door.

He smiled at me. His eyes shone, and I wondered how much he’d had to drink already. Then he held out a plastic bag, bottles chinking together inside. I took it.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d be here,’ he said. He stepped in. I moved back and he pulled the door closed behind him.

I didn’t answer straight away. We just looked at each other. Stared into each other’s eyes. Sometimes we never said a word to each other the whole night, but he’d gone and spoiled it now.

Broken the spell.

‘Where else would I be?’ was all I said. I frowned. But before I could say or do anything else, he pushed me onto the table.

I slid backwards across the surface, pushing packets of crisps and crackers and tubs of olives and hearing them drop on the floor. He took the bag with the wine in it back out of my hand and set it on the worktop next to the sink. I started to unbutton my jeans, but he’d already grabbed them by the ankles and then slid them off over the top of my boots in one easy move, like one of those sleight-of-hand magicians yanking out a tablecloth from under a table full of crockery. Then he was on top of me. The only sounds were the clanging of his belt buckle as he freed himself, the rasps of my breath mixing with his. Hard. Heavy.

He crushed my mouth under his. His lips dry, chapped. He tasted of beer and fags and something else deeper inside. Coffee, maybe. Slightly stale. Underneath it all, that familiar scent of him that I craved.

It was quick, anxious. My thighs burned from the friction of his jeans against my skin.

He grabbed hold of my hair as he came. Tugging it slightly too hard. I had to bite his shoulder to stop myself from crying out.
No
, I wanted to shout.
Not yet
. He left me lying there as he zipped and buckled himself back up. Both of us still panting.

He stared down at me.

Then he pulled me forwards by my ankles and pushed my knees far apart and his face disappeared into the space between my legs. I thought I might dissolve into the wood of the table. Felt like there would be nothing left of me except a faint, unidentifiable stain.

Afterwards, we sat in the lounge. The wine hadn’t lasted long. My picnic lay mostly untouched.

He passed me a squashed packet of Marlboro Red, one cigarette poking out from the top. He did this with an effortless shake of the pack that I could never replicate. I only ever smoked with him.

‘Why tonight?’ I said eventually.

He lit another cigarette from the butt of the last. Sucked hard, releasing perfect smoke rings towards the ceiling.

‘You know why,’ he said.

I sighed. It was always like this. The passion was like nothing I’d ever felt before, but afterwards it was always the same. Cold. Empty. I was scared to ask him how he felt, because I was terrified of hearing the truth from him. About how he felt. About why he came to me, like this. Our secret thing that definitely wasn’t love.

‘He’s back, you know.’

He nodded as if he already knew this.

‘He’s staying at Rose Cottage.’ I stared at him, waiting for a reaction. He took another long drag on his cigarette and pushed a slow stream of smoke out from the corner of his mouth. ‘I’ve got a key,’ I continued. ‘You could go round there?’

He turned to face me, his mouth bent into a sneer. ‘What would I want to do that for?’

I felt panic rising in my chest, my heart speeding up, fluttering. ‘To help … to help me. And to help—’

‘You should drop this shit, you know.’ He ground his cigarette into the ashtray with such force I almost expected it to burn through the glass. He leant back in the armchair and closed his eyes.

End of discussion.

I left him there, sitting on the sofa in the fading light.

I slept in Gran’s old bedroom, the soft sheets still carrying a hint of his scent from the last time we’d been there together, when he’d wanted me more.

*

I woke up early, to birdsong and the morning sunlight streaming through dirty windows. I turned over towards him, flung my arm over his body, to the space where it should’ve been. I needed him close. But he wasn’t there. He’d never been there. I’d woken up briefly during the night at the sound of the front door closing.

I sat up, pulling the duvet up over my naked body, hugging it around myself, trying to generate some warmth. Even in the height of summer, the cottage was cold. Stone floors, old-fashioned windows. There was no central heating or anything luxurious like that. The hot water came from a coal-fired boiler connected to the fire in the kitchen, so if I wanted a hot wash I was going to have to put the fire on. I wasn’t sure there was any coal and I wasn’t about to start chopping wood at the crack of dawn. I’d left my phone on the floor at the side of the bed, and as I leant over to check the time, all the blood rushed to my head. It wasn’t even six o’clock. I felt sick.