No Longer Safe(21)

Jodie didn’t know what to do with it, so I took it into the kitchen and cut it into sections with the carving knife. We put pieces on forks and held them over the blaze. After about five seconds, Jodie dropped hers and the bannock went up in flames.

‘I’ve burnt my bloody fingers!’ she cried, blowing on them.

‘We need longer prongs,’ I said, but I knew there weren’t any.

‘You’re both namby-pambies,’ said Mark, easing his evenly toasted slice away from the heat. He looked pleased with himself, but something about his body language told me it was nothing to do with his fireside success. When I happened to go to the larder to check how many eggs were left, I knew for certain. The packet of bannock that had been there the day before had gone. Wherever Mark had been, it wasn’t to the village shop.

Before long, Jodie and Mark were bickering about something. They went upstairs and, following a prolonged shouting match, it went quiet. Shortly after, the sounds carrying all the way down from the top of the house indicated they were getting along nicely, again, thank you very much.

I couldn’t work the pair of them out. At Uni I hadn’t questioned their relationship – they were just ‘a couple’ – but now, I wondered what was going on. It was clear Jodie wasn’t happy and Mark was on edge all the time. Best to stay out of it.

Karen still wasn’t back, so I saw my chance and left the cottage with my camera.

I was glad I did. It was incredibly fresh outside; a much needed escape from the cramped cottage with its low beams and musty atmosphere. I was wearing the wellington boots that belonged to the cottage, as they were easy to slip on at the door and I wasn’t intending to go far.

The front garden was buried under the snow – a sheer coating like someone had tipped out skip-loads of sugar granules. The sun gave it a sheen of glitter. I watched the flakes as they speckled the grey sky, weaving in and out of each other, gliding and floating, before getting trapped in the elbows of trees. I tipped up my face and felt the sting as they fell on my skin. It was like a scene stolen from an old silent movie. It was invigorating and made me feel alive.

I gazed along the tyre marks that led from Karen’s parking space, into the distance. She must have been out early as clusters of brown grit were scattered as far as the main gate. I tried not to think about Melanie; I didn’t want to imagine how devastating it would be if Karen came back alone.

Instead, I thought about Karen and how life-changing meeting her had been for me. I’d had a handful of superficial friends growing up, but mostly they were underdogs and misfits, like me.

Every day at primary, then secondary school, I’d had to put up with kids sniggering that my skirt was too long, my socks never stayed up, my face was too sunken. There was always something to poke fun at. They crept up behind me and stuck chewing gum in my hair, dropped apples cores, used toilet paper and, once, a dead mouse in my satchel. They regularly stole my lunch box. Mum didn’t understand. ‘Just ignore them,’ she said. ‘You need to learn to stand up for yourself.’ She was more upset about the missing lunch boxes than my welfare.

It was amazing, at Uni, to discover someone who was not only decent to me for a change, but who actually showed an interest in me. I’d never experienced it before. To everyone else – kids at school, teachers, my parents, aunts and uncles – I was ‘simple, plain old Alice’. I was to be ignored, a good for nothing. Karen was the first person to give me something, instead of taking it away.

I followed the parallel lines past the byre, until they curved at the end of the track towards the lane. Here, I took a path towards the woods with a view of the mountains to my right. It led to a small brook that gurgled beneath broken patches of ice and snow under a humpback bridge. I took a string of photos; it felt magical, like I was in Narnia.

I was too intrepid for my own good. Before long, I’d lost the trail as it disappeared under low branches and holly bushes. I stepped around thickets and over tussocks of coarse grass, regularly stumbling and losing my footing. It was heavy going and flakes began to drift down from the sky again.

After ten minutes of trudging, I brushed away a patch of snow on a wall and sat down. I listened. There were two layers of sound; the small birds skipping around nearby in the branches, sending short chirpy messages to each other and, in the distance, the caws and heartfelt cries from larger birds of prey. I closed my eyes and let the sounds wash over me.

When I opened them, I immediately spotted movement in the gorse bushes ahead. There was a rustling sound and then all was still. All the birds had gone – something had disturbed them. My heart fluttered – it was probably best to go back. I stood and took a look around. Movement again. Definitely. A solid figure in the trees to my left? The flash of binoculars?