I throw the broken knife down and look around for something else. There’s a dead branch nearby. It’s out of reach but I use a smaller one to drag it closer, then wedge its thickest end between the jaws. The metal gouges at the wood but the trap slowly begins to open. I apply more pressure, gritting my own teeth as the iron ones start to pull out of my flesh.
‘Yes! Come on!’
The stick breaks. The jaws spring together again.
I scream.
When the pain subsides I’m lying flat on my back. I push myself up and fling the stick impotently at the trap. ‘Bastard!’
I can’t pretend any longer that this isn’t serious. Even if I could free my foot I doubt I could walk very far on it. But I’d willingly settle for that problem, because not being able to free myself is far more frightening.
Happy now? You’ve brought this on yourself. Blanking out those thoughts, I try to focus on the more immediate problem. Using the knife’s corkscrew, I start digging around the spike that holds the trap in place. It’s a futile attempt but allows me to vent some emotion by stabbing the ground and tree roots. Eventually, I let the knife fall and slump back against the trunk.
The sun has sunk noticeably lower. It won’t be dark for hours yet, but the thought of having to lie there all night is terrifying. I rack my brain for ideas, but there’s only one thing left I can do.
I take a deep breath and yell.
My shout dies away without an echo. I doubt it will have carried to the farm I went to earlier. I yell louder, in English and French, shouting until my voice grows hoarse and my throat hurts.
‘Somebody!’ I half-sob and then, more quietly, ‘Please.’ The words seem absorbed by the afternoon heat, lost amongst the trees. In their aftermath, the silence descends again.
I know then that I’m not going anywhere.
By next morning I’m feverish. I’ve taken my sleeping bag from the rucksack and draped it over me during the night, but I still shivered fitfully through most of it. My foot throbs with a dull agony, pulsing to the beat of my blood. It’s swollen to above the ankle. Although I’ve unlaced the boot as best I can, the leather, which is now black and sticky, is stretched drum tight. It feels like a vast boil, waiting to burst.
At first light I try to shout again, but the dryness of my throat reduces it to a hoarse croak. Soon even that is too much effort. I try to think of other ways to attract attention, and for a while become excited at the idea of setting fire to the tree I’m under. I go as far as pawing in my pockets for the cigarette lighter before I come to my senses.
The fact that I was seriously considering it scares me.
But the lucidity doesn’t last long. As the sun rises, stoking itself towards a mid-morning heat, I push off the sleeping bag. I’m burning up, and have accomplished the neat fever-trick of being soaked with sweat while I’m shaking uncontrollably. I look at my foot with hate, wishing I could gnaw it off like a trapped animal. For a while I think I am, can taste my own skin and blood and bone as I bite at my leg. Then I’m sitting propped against the tree again, and the only thing biting into my foot is the half-moon of iron.
I come and go from myself, submerged in garbled, overheated fantasies. At some point I open my eyes and see a face peering at me. It’s a girl’s, beautiful and Madonna-like. It seems to merge with the one in the photograph, racking me with guilt and grief.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, or think I say. ‘I’m sorry.’
I stare at the face, hoping for a sign of forgiveness. But as I look the shape of the skull behind it begins to shine through, peeling away the surface beauty to show the rot and dissolution underneath.
A new pain bursts in me, a fresh agony that bears me away on its crest. From far away there’s the sound of someone screaming. As it grows fainter I hear voices speaking a language I recognize but can’t decode. Before it fades altogether, a few words present themselves with the clarity of a church bell.
‘Doucement. Essayez d’être calme.’
Gently, I can understand. But I’m puzzled by why they need to be quiet.
Then the pain sweeps me up and I cease to exist.
The skylight is fogged with condensation. Rain sweeps against it with a noise like a drum roll. Our smudged reflections hang above us as we lie on the bed, misted doppelgangers trapped in the glass.
Chloe has gone distant again. I know her moods well enough not to push, to leave her to herself until she returns of her own accord. She stares up through the skylight, blonde hair catching the glow from the seashell-lamp she bought from a flea market. Her eyes are blue and unblinking. I feel, as I always do, that I could pass my hand over them without any reaction from her. I want to ask what she’s thinking, but I don’t. I’m frightened she might tell me.
The air is cold and damp on my bare chest. At the other side of the room a blank canvas stands untouched on Chloe’s easel. It’s been blank for weeks now. The reek of oil and turpentine, for so long the smell I’ve associated with the small flat, has faded until it’s barely noticeable.
I feel her stir beside me.
‘Do you ever think about dying?’ she asks.
2
There’s an eye staring down at me. It’s black but clouded at the centre by a cataract, a grey fog hung with dark shapes. A series of lines spread out from it like ripples. At some point they resolve into the graining on a piece of wood. The eye becomes a knot, the fog a spider’s web stretched over it like a dusty blanket. It’s littered with the husks of long-dead insects. No sign of the spider, though.
I don’t know how long I stare up at it before I recognize it as a wooden beam, rough and dark with age. Sometime after that I realize I’m awake. I don’t feel any compulsion to move; I’m warm and comfortable, and for the moment that’s enough. My mind is empty, content to stare up at the spider’s web above me. But as soon as I think that it’s no longer true. With consciousness come questions and a flurry of panic: who, what, when?
Where?
I raise my head and look around.
I’m lying in bed, in a place I don’t recognize. It isn’t a hospital or a police cell. Sunlight angles in through a single small window. The beam I’ve been staring at is a rafter, part of a triangular wooden ribcage that extends to the floor at either side. Slivers of daylight glint through gaps in the overlapping shingles of the roof. A loft, then. Some kind of barn, by the look of it. It’s long, with bare floorboards and gables at either end, one of which my bed is pushed against. Junk and furniture, most of it broken, is stacked against the unplastered stone walls. There’s a musty smell that speaks of age, old wood and stone. It’s hot, though not uncomfortably so.
The light coming through the dusty glass has a fresh, early quality. I’m still wearing my watch, which tells me that it’s seven o’clock. As if to confirm that it’s morning the hoarse crowing of a cockerel sounds from somewhere outside.
I’ve no idea where I am or what I’m doing here. Then I move and the sudden pain at the end of my leg gives an effective jolt to my short-term memory. I throw back the sheet that covers me and see with relief that my foot is still there. It’s bound in a white bandage, from which the tips of my toes poke like radishes. I give them a tentative wiggle. It hurts, but not nearly so much as before.