If I was to survive, and more importantly help my daughter survive, I needed to get a grip on myself and learn to do whatever it took to keep going.
It’s a horrible thing to discover how weak you really are, and I was very much a product of my time, a latte drinking, crossword solving warrior of the written word, not someone who could shoot a person as calmly as if I was picking flowers.
I knew that I was being unfair to Emily. If I was a product of my time, she was as much a product of her training. She’d seen combat, spent most of her adult life in a profession where life was dear but death was a constant, very real threat, and she had acted to save us from that threat.
Without her, I’d most likely be a corpse on the side of a road somewhere, not living, breathing and still moving towards my daughter, no matter how far away we might still be.
As we trudged along the lane, surrounded on both sides by woods and fields that the evening sun cast in brilliant gold, I caught up with Emily, ignoring the twinge in my ankle as I picked up the pace.
“Thank you,” I said, and she turned her head to look at me as we walked, her expression unreadable.
“For what?”
“For saving us back there. I may have come across as a little ungrateful in the heat of the moment.”
She shook her head. “Not ungrateful, just, I don’t know, naïve maybe?”
I bridled at being called naïve, but if I was being honest with myself I couldn’t argue. We were in her world now, not mine, a world of quick thinking and life or death decisions, and it was something I wasn’t used to. Until last week, my hardest decision had usually been whether or not to have vanilla in my latte.
“I’m trying,” I said, looking for the right words to explain how I was feeling, “but it’s not easy. The way you shot that woman, no fear, no remorse. That’s not something I’m used to.”
Emily snorted. “Shows what you know.”
“Sorry?”
She stopped and turned to face me, brows furrowed in anger.
“There you are making all these grandiose proclamations when you don’t have a fucking clue. No fear, no remorse, my arse! I was scared shitless, but I’ve been taught to ignore the fear, push it aside so I can do what I need to do. And of course I feel remorse. You think I can shoot someone and not worry about it afterwards? All I can see is her face. I keep playing the moment over and over in my head, wondering if I could have done something different, if I acted too soon or too late. Besides, every time the shit hits the fan you run away and throw your guts up, so don’t go judging me until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes.”
She turned and strode off down the darkening lane, her back stiff and pace crippling. Not wanting to be left alone, even smarting with the rebuke, I hurried after her, my ankle beginning to hurt again after the day’s forced march.
I felt like I should be angry with her. She’d just told me that I was arrogant, thoughtless and absolutely no use when she needed me. She was being a little unfair, I thought, especially after I’d set the fire that allowed her and Ralph to escape, but I knew in my heart that she was right. If we were to get through this and bring Melody back safe, she needed me to be strong, perhaps ruthless, but certainly she needed me to step up more than I’d been doing so far.
I finally caught up as she reached the brow of the next hill, falling into step with her wordlessly. We walked that way in silence until the sun was just a sliver of light on the western horizon. Finally, when it was almost too dark to see, Emily spotted a place she deemed safe for camping, a small copse of trees about fifty metres from the road. As we worked together to put up the small tent and stow our things inside, I dared to hope that the silence was a companionable one, and that it would last as we crawled into the tiny space and bedded down for the night.
Chapter 26
I woke to the unfamiliar sound of someone snoring next to me, and rolled over to come immediately face to face with Emily, just visible in the dim light that pierced the canvas.
She looked peaceful in sleep, and years younger with the habitual toughness leeched from her face by slumber.
I sat up quietly, trying not to wake her, and crawled from my sleeping bag to unzip the tent and slip outside.
The morning was surprisingly cool with grey clouds scattered overhead. I hoped that the oppressive heat had broken, it would be far easier to walk without the sun beating down on us from dawn until dusk.
Pulling the bags out behind me I set about making breakfast, putting the stove together and lighting it, then filling a pan with water from our dwindling supply and setting it to boil.
It heated surprisingly fast for such a small stove and within a few minutes I had two bowls of porridge ready, as well as two steaming cups of black coffee.
I leaned into the tent to wake Emily but instead saw her sitting up, smiling as I jumped.
“I was about to wake you, I’ve made breakfast,” I said, gesturing towards the bowls.
“I know,” she said with a tentative smile, “I woke up when you opened the tent but I figured you at least owe me breakfast so I thought I’d wait.”
Her harsh words of the night before still lay between us, but it seemed that we had both resolved not to mention it, and as we ate breakfast and sipped our coffee we began to talk with a little of our former closeness, still a fragile thing when it had been interrupted.
“How’s your ankle?” She pointed at my bare feet, one of them still wrapped in a now-dirty bandage.
I shrugged. “A lot better that I thought it would be but it still hurts like buggery.”
She looked over at my trainers, worn, scuffed and forlorn-looking.
“We need to get you some proper boots, trainers aren’t made for walking long distances. You’ll be lame before we’re halfway there otherwise.”
Without thinking about it my hand went towards my pocket, an ingrained response to any talk of shopping that had me scrambling for Google on my phone to look for the best deals. Emily caught the movement and laughed when I explained, then gestured at the field.
“Even if you still had a phone that worked, I think Amazon would struggle to deliver out here, drones or not. We’ll have to risk heading into the next town or village that we see. Either that, or we need to start looking at the houses we go past, see if there’s anything useful.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “That feels a lot like stealing.”
She nodded. “It does, because it is. But it’s about survival now Malc, everything we’ve seen over the last few days tells us that.”
She paused for a moment, then looked down at her feet when she spoke again.
“Look, about yesterday. I’m sorry I was so harsh with you. It’s easy to forget that most people haven’t been through what I have, and I kind of assume a certain level of competence and practicality in everyone, then I end up surprised when it doesn’t materialise. I think it’s a mix of serving in the army and having a dad as capable as mine is. You know we never bought any furniture when I was a kid? My dad made everything. Tables, chairs, even a sofa, although that leaned to one side and gave everyone back-ache.”
She stopped and took a breath. “What I’m trying to say is that I was too harsh on you, and I said some really nasty things, and I’m sorry. I know this is all new to you, and this is probably turning into the steepest learning curve you’ve ever experienced, but this trip is about your daughter, so I guess I just felt, well, underappreciated.”
I reached out and touched her arm, trying to ignore the electric thrill that ran through me when her fingers brushed mine in return.
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” I said, pulling my hand away slowly, unwilling to break the connection but knowing I had to, for my own sanity if nothing else. “I made a stupid assumption based on my own fears, and it wasn’t fair on you. How about we put yesterday down as an off-day and forget about it?”