When she checked her phone in the store, she noticed an email message was waiting for her from InPost to alert her to a delivery, with a code to access her locker. The collection terminal was here at the service station, right next to the air pump.
She used the lockers because they were accessible twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Much more convenient for her than having to find a helpful neighbour to take in parcel deliveries if she’d made purchases from Amazon or eBay sellers. She wasn’t even sure that she had any helpful neighbours in Wilford. Not during the day at least.
A security camera pointed down at her from its position over the locker terminal as she scanned the QR code on her email to open the locker and retrieve her item. She drew out a yellow box, tucked it under her arm and returned to her car.
When she got into her flat, she shrugged off her jacket, kicked off her shoes and relaxed with a deep sigh. It was only later that she realised that the wine was finished. The empty bottle stood like a tragic reminder on the kitchen counter, along with its useless cork. She should have remembered to buy some more when she was at the service station, but her mind had been on other things. She couldn’t be bothered to go out of the flat again now.
Then she remembered there was half a bottle of gin left in the kitchen cupboard. These days, she tried to keep it for emergencies. But tonight? Tonight definitely felt like an emergency.
Sophie Pullen and Nick Haslam had stopped off for a drink at the Sportsman Inn outside Hayfield.
‘It’s a bad business,’ said Nick over her pint of Thwaites Wainwright and her glass of malt whisky. ‘About Faith, I mean.’
‘What do you think we should do?’ said Sophie.
‘Do? Why should we do anything?’
‘The police...’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t tell them anything. Whatever you think you saw, the chances are you imagined it. It’s much better to say nothing.’
He peered at her suspiciously, as if reading disagreement in her silence.
‘You know that’s for the best, Soph. Don’t get too involved.’
‘Aren’t we already involved?’
He scowled. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘And I’d like to keep it that way. It’s Darius’s pigeon. His group, his idea. His responsibility for the consequences.’
Sophie had thought she would never tell anybody about what she’d seen, but the detective inspector she spoke to seemed as though he might listen to her without being too quick to leap to a judgement.
‘I think I might...’ she said.
‘Soph, really?’ he said. ‘Your imagination...’
‘Why would I have imagined what I saw?’
‘Think about it. We were all tired. Cold and exhausted — you said that yourself. We were lost and confused. And the weather — the cloud suddenly coming down the way it did. You could barely see your hand in front of your face. None of us could be sure what we saw in that fog. There might have been anyone out there.’
‘Or no one.’
‘You can’t be sure of anything, Soph. Why would you take a story like that to the police? Your account would fall apart as soon as they started asking questions. You’d look like an idiot.’
Sophie said nothing. She thought he’d trotted out far too many excuses. Cold, exhausted, lost, confused. And of course the weather...
But that last one was right. She had seen something out there in the fog.
Matt Cooper switched off the TV news and threw the remote down on the coffee table. He slumped back in his armchair in the sitting room of Bridge End Farm.
‘Idiots,’ he said sourly.
Ben looked at his brother. Matt was a farmer, so he complained about pretty much everything. There had been several items on the news he might have objected to. Brexit, the Budget, a disappointing football result or even the weather forecast.
‘Who are?’ asked Ben.
‘All of them,’ said Matt, with a wave of a large hand in the direction of the farmyard. ‘All the fools who go up into the hills without being properly prepared and equipped. Why do they think it’s OK to put other people’s lives at risk rescuing them? Idiots, the lot of them. That’s my opinion.’
‘You’re not alone.’
Matt sighed as he stretched his legs out in the tattered denim jeans he always wore. The armchair creaked under his weight. Ben’s sister-in-law, Kate, and his niece Josie were somewhere in the house, but they often left him and Matt alone for a while when he visited the farm. He suspected it was because they heard enough of Matt’s grumbling and thought it only right that his younger brother should put up with his share.
Now Matt looked nervous and began to fidget, as if there was something on his mind, something that he needed to say but couldn’t find the words for. Ben waited patiently. He knew it would come out in the end.
‘You know it’s our twentieth wedding anniversary coming up?’ said Matt eventually.
‘Oh, of course. Twenty years, is it?’
Ben had forgotten, but he shouldn’t have. The day of Matt’s wedding was still a very clear memory for him. It was the last time all the family had been together, including the father and mother of the groom. Joe Cooper had been there in his new suit, with a recent haircut and a flower in his buttonhole. And there had been Isabel in her bright blue dress and enormous hat, posing with Matt and Kate and the bride’s parents in the grounds of St John the Baptist Church in Tideswell.
He knew it had been October. He could remember the drifts of leaves swirling down from the trees in the churchyard and mingling with confetti strewn on the path as they stirred in the breeze that forced Isabel Cooper to hold on to her hat for the photographs. But twenty years? That was almost a lifetime ago.
Of course, Ben had been too young to act as best man, though he was sure Matt would have asked him otherwise. Instead, the role had gone to one of Matt’s friends in the Young Farmers’ Club, resulting in an innuendo-laden best man’s speech at the reception and a stag night that had proved almost fatal for Matt. On the wedding day close-ups, you could still his pallor and the fresh bruise on his temple.
‘China, isn’t it?’ said Ben.
‘What?’
‘A china anniversary. Fifteen years is crystal, twenty-five is silver, and twenty years is china.’
‘China? What’s the point of that?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t make them up.’
Matt scowled in bafflement. ‘Anyway. It’s our twentieth. And we’re thinking about going away.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, more than thinking about it.’
Ben’s eyebrows shot up. Now, that was unusual. Matt was notoriously difficult to prise away from the farm, even for a weekend. He was always terrified that he’d come back and find all the livestock dead, his crops rotting in the field, the barn burned down, his tractor stolen. Kate must have been working really hard on this one.
‘Just for a break,’ said Matt, almost defensively.
‘You deserve it,’ said Ben. ‘Both of you.’
‘Eric Locke and George Whittaker are going to look after what needs doing on the farm. They’re good blokes. And we’re past harvest, so it’s as good a time as any to get away for a bit.’
Ben knew Matt got on well with his neighbours, and they always helped each other out, though this was a whole different level of trust, allowing them to care for Bridge End in his absence.
‘What about the girls?’