As I drew nearer, Odell caught up with me and took my arm. ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘Keep going.’
This time I didn’t shake her off. Something in her voice told me she wasn’t acting. She led me down the road, past grim, grey houses, their windows either too low or too high, and oddly asymmetrical, as if only dwarves and giants lived inside. Before long, the village was behind us, and the children’s cries had faded into the distance.
‘It was nothing you need know about,’ she said.
The smell of melted snow on the grass verges, the sky above the fields grey and pale-yellow.
After a while two men in work clothes appeared on the road ahead of us. I pushed my hands into my pockets, feeling the rips in the lining. Each new encounter was a test of our authenticity, our nerve, and I couldn’t help but believe that, sooner or later, we would be found out.
The men slowed as they reached us.
‘Seen the heads?’ said the shorter of the two.
‘We just came from there.’ Odell pointed back along the road. ‘There’s three of them. All bitches.’
The short man laughed lasciviously. He looked at his companion, eyes like bits of wet glass, then the two of them moved on, quickening their pace.
I waited until they were hidden by a bend in the road, then I went and leaned on a farm gate. I had received an image of a woman. Ears and nose cut off. An apple wedged into her mouth as if she were a suckling pig. Seen the heads? I retched once or twice, but nothing came up. Cold sweat all over me.
Odell laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry you had to hear that. It was the only way.’
I know, I said inside my head. I understand.
Do you want to get out of here or don’t you?
It was dark by the time we entered the next village, but Odell made no attempt to find a room. It might have been the gingerhaired twins sitting on a bench outside the post office, one gnawing avidly at his thumbnail, the other aiming a kick at a dog as it loped by, or perhaps it was the fat woman in her front garden who took one look at us, spat sideways and withdrew into her house. This was a sour embittered place, a place that had turned its fury against itself, and it would have no patience with the likes of us.
We had reached the edge of the village and were beginning to prepare ourselves for a night in the open when we saw a caravan parked in the corner of an orchard, a white shape seemingly afloat among dock leaves and thistles. Odell forced the door — a sharp dry snap, like the cracking of a nut — and we climbed inside. The curtains were already drawn, but a faint glow eased through the frosted-plastic sky-light, just enough to see by. There were cushioned bench-seats, ideal for sleeping on. There was even a sink, with running water. We fastened the door, using a metal catch. If anyone came, Odell said, we would escape through the window at the back.
Though she had promised me nothing but tantrums that day, she had broken her own rules within the first few hours. She had been aware of my fragile state, I think, and whenever we found ourselves alone she would link her arm through mine and tell me how well I was doing. Once, as we stood beneath a tree, sheltering from the downpour that had been threatening all morning, I turned to look at her. I had no memory of ever meeting her before, or even seeing her, but that now seemed irrelevant. In the tarnished half-light of the storm her eyes had taken on the strangest colour, a new commingling of green and black, ambiguous but vivid, and the breath stalled in my throat. All of a sudden I wanted to touch her. Did she guess what I was thinking? Possibly. Because she chose that moment to announce that the rain was letting up and it was time to push on.
By late afternoon we had left the Wanings behind. In a sense, though, we had merely swapped one set of dangers for another. The Wanings may have lapsed into anarchy, but we had just as much to fear from the so-called forces of law and order, whose reputation for corruption and brutality was common knowledge. As the sun was setting, we saw our first roadblock. Fortunately the two officers were facing the other way, questioning a man on a bicycle, and we were able to slip behind a hedgerow and flatten ourselves against the ground. As their jeep finally roared past, a cigarette butt landed in the grass no more than a hand’s width from my right elbow. Though it had been discarded, it continued to smoulder, all the virulence of the Yellow Quarter concentrated into that stubborn quarter-inch of ash.
Following a meagre supper in the caravan, Odell began to talk. Before too long, she said, we would be passing through built-up areas. Things would move faster, and I would have to be ready to act decisively. If we got into any kind of confrontation, for instance, I should leave immediately. Just leave. If we already had a place to stay, I should go back there. Lock myself in. If not, I should wait near by. She would extricate herself. That was her speciality. If for some reason she failed to reappear, I was to carry on towards the border. I would have to cross it on my own. In the darkness I reached out and squeezed her hand to let her know that I had understood.
At dawn I was woken by a vicious scratching, and I sat up quickly, thinking someone was trying to get in. Then I realised it was coming from above me. Through the skylight’s blurry plastic I saw arrowheads, delicate as pencil drawings. It was just birds’ feet. Birds walking on the roof.
We left the caravan soon after, fells rising in blue-black curves above the mist. Later, the sun burned through. We drank from a stream that tasted metallic, as if we were sipping the water from a spoon. We walked south and then west, clouds tumbling in the sky, huge sweeps of land on every side. We saw no people, not even one. There was only the sound of our boots in the grass and, sometimes, the clatter of a pheasant’s wings as, startled by our approach, it heaved itself into the air.
That night we curled up in a hut that smelled of sheep, the ground outside littered with shotgun cartridges and brittle clumps of fleece. The wind kept me awake, levering its way into every crack and crevice in the walls. In the morning we climbed down to flat land. Houses now, and villages, with youths standing around. They would be smoking or kicking a football about or trying to put each other in headlocks. Their eyes would flick in our direction as we passed, and I sensed the shape of their thoughts, dark and splintery. I had to work hard not to show any fear. The memory of those strangers stretched across the road still lingered. I noticed a boy leaning against a wall next to a newsagent’s. He watched us go by, then slid a few words out of one side of his mouth, and the boys who were with him laughed, the noise so abrupt and harsh that two crows lifted from a nearby tree. No one actually confronted us, but that wasn’t the point. It was the constant, unremitting threat of violence that I found wearing. It was the sense of apprehension, the dread.
In the early afternoon we stopped to rest. The road shadowed a railway cut, and we climbed over the wall and installed ourselves on the embankment, so as to be hidden from any passers-by. Odell unwrapped the cold meat and bread, leftovers from the day before. A passenger train rushed past below us as we ate. Odell eyed it thoughtfully. The sky had clouded over. A chill wind bent the blades of grass beside me, and I huddled deeper into my creaky leather coat.
We were about to move on when a goods train rattled down the line towards us. Instead of the usual trucks, it was hauling several transporters, each of which had a tarpaulin lashed over its main frame. Odell began to slither down the embankment, signalling for me to follow her. When she reached the track she ran alongside one of the transporters. Catching hold of a stanchion, she swung herself up on to a metal footplate. I tossed her my bag, then hoisted myself on to the same section of the train. She was already loosening the ties on one corner of a tarpaulin. We ducked under the heavy plastic and found ourselves pressed up against a yellow sports car, one of three, all identical in make and colour. I tried the door on the driver’s side, fully expecting it to be locked, but it opened with an expensive click. I hesitated for a second, then climbed inside. The smell of leather upholstery enfolded me — the smell of newness itself. Odell climbed in after me. Settling behind the steering-wheel, she pulled the door shut. The smooth swaying motion of the car, the darkness beyond the windows, the presence of a girl beside me — for a moment I was able to fool myself into thinking that it was my first night at the Bathysphere and nothing else had happened yet.