No one was talking to her and she couldn’t entirely blame them. She knew everyone had had to shoulder more work when she’d been on maternity leave with Sam, despite the promise of extra cover. She remembered what it had been like when Paula had been off for six weeks when her mother died – how they’d all had to divvy up her workload between them. Even though there’d been quiet rumblings about how so and so had managed to do a specific task in half the time Paula normally took, or how someone else had restructured the way Paula normally did something to make it twice as efficient, still they’d all been overworked and couldn’t wait for her to come back. So she could understand their ambivalence about her news, but people were allowed to have children, weren’t they? Surely it was a fundamental right?
Most hurtful of all was Charlie’s reaction. He’d hardly said two words to her since that scene at the rope bridge. Every time she tried to catch his eye he’d pretended to be engrossed in something on his phone. She felt so wretchedly lonely, but when she’d phoned Oliver just to hear his voice, he’d been distracted and irritable. Joe had just spilled a jar of red lentils all over the kitchen floor. ‘Why’d you put the lentils in such a low cupboard anyway?’ Oliver asked her crossly, as if the kitchen design was entirely her doing. And though he apologized later on for being snappy, the moment had passed then where she could whisper, ‘I’m having such a horrible time,’ and be comforted.
Sarah was relieved to notice that the canopy of leaves and branches overhead seemed to be thinning out. Up ahead, the light was still grey but less oppressively so. Emerging from the final ring of trees, she found they were in a clearing. There was a carpet of dead brown leaves on the ground, made mulchy by the fine rain that was falling in a light mist. A stream ran diagonally across the clearing, flanked on either side by steep banks covered with weeds and shrubs, and flowing rapidly over flat, grey rocks. They all stopped walking while Will pointed to a particularly large rock in the middle of it.
‘Around there is where the stream crosses over with a ley line, or so local legend has it. That point is called Devil’s Cross. Apparently these woods used to be full of devil worshippers and that’s where the locals used to drown women they accused of being witches.’
Swaddled inside her suffocating coat, Sarah nevertheless felt a chill pass through her.
‘Cheery thought, isn’t it?’ Will grinned, noticing her shudder. ‘Anyway, this is where I say my goodbyes. But not before I’ve collected up all your phones so no one is tempted to download a Compass App. It has been known!’ Will held open his backpack and they all dropped their phones inside. Sarah was amazed how naked she felt without it.
‘Adios amigos,’ called Will, already heading back the way they’d come. ‘See you on the Other Side.’
Although Sarah had begun to find Will’s relentless chirpiness grating, still a heavy weight settled inside her as she watched him walk away. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so alone, and now she was feeling dizzy too, the trees in her peripheral vision blurring and swaying.
Amira held the Ordnance Survey map.
‘Anyone have a clue how to read one of these things? What do the dotted green lines mean? Charlie, I’m guessing you must have been a Cub Scout in a previous life. You seem like the type.’
Sarah knew that Charlie actually had been made to go to Scouts when he was younger, and had loathed every minute of it. It had been part of his father’s strategic campaign to make a man of him. Charlie claimed he’d got only two badges the entire time he’d been there – drawing and cooking – but he was prone to exaggeration and not above milking his unhappy childhood for a few laughs. It wasn’t that his parents hadn’t loved him, he’d once explained; more that he’d felt a monumental disconnect from them. Still, it was something she’d told him off about on more than one occasion, this tendency to offer up his private sadnesses as a form of mass entertainment.
‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ Charlie said, peering over Amira’s shoulder. ‘Are you even holding that the right way up?’
‘I’m sure Chloe did Geography A level,’ said Paula. ‘Chloe, come and take a look.’
To Sarah’s surprise, the younger woman didn’t come bounding over as she’d normally have expected her to.
‘I’d just be useless,’ she said instead, speaking into her jacket in a low, muffled voice.
‘Come on. Just take a look, see if any memories are jogged.’