She sits close to the door, with her forehead against the window, so she can see everything they pass over. The vehicle is like a flying carpet out of The Arabian Nights.
After escaping from Daniels’s daughter’s and since leaving the suburbs of North London, they have descended to just a hundred feet and the tops of trees and pylons rush towards them as they skim the landscape.
‘We’re less visible down here than higher up,’ he says. ‘They’ll try to follow for sure – maybe are already – but they won’t catch us now. This thing is too darned fast.’
Because of their speed, the snow freezes on the windscreen and is only kept clear by the rapid swipe of the wiper.
Other hovas criss-cross around them, some extremely close and some scooting straight in front, and collision for a moment seems all but certain. It takes a while for her to relax and trust the navigation and as they get further from the city, the traffic is more sedate.
They track for a while a road far broader than any she came across in London – up to a dozen lanes wide in places. Despite the driving snow, they are close enough to pick out a slow-moving caravan of hunched pedestrians, hand-, horse- and mule-drawn carts as well as wheeled cars and trucks of many varieties. But the traffic is thinly spaced and the road unnecessarily vast.
‘You’d think everyone would fly,’ she says, immersed in the joy of her vantage point.
‘The main reason they don’t is money. These things cost a fair bit to buy and run, plus all aerial vehicles require a licence and that boils down again to money. Some people have the wherewithal, but most haven’t and to be honest the majority don’t need to travel much or far.’
He pushes a button and a bright hologram map – the vivid green and brown contours of hills and valleys seemingly tangible – fills the air around them.
She recoils in her seat and Daniels, too, is taken by amused surprise at what he has activated. ‘The last time I drove was ten years ago and things have really come on. Back then it was a flip-up display.’
She reaches out, extending her finger towards a swathe of forest, and in response the area swells up like under a magnifying glass, until the trees become individually identifiable. As she strokes the tops of the tallest, the upper branches part under her fingers like pond weed. She trails the tip of her nail between the trunks, spreading ripples through the leaves. It is like dragging her hand through the cool water in the garden pond, scattering the fish. She withdraws her finger and the individual trees shrink back.
Daniels taps in the coordinates of the cottage onto a panel in the air and a virtual blue line threads its way across the landscape below them. ‘Like spilt ink,’ he says absent-mindedly, surprising her with a rare indulgence in fancifulness.
She smiles back. ‘Or a reel of silk,’ she says, in an effort to be inventive too. ‘How far is it?’
‘Another half an hour – we’re already in Cambridgeshire. In fact, twenty-three-and-a-half minutes if this thing is accurate, which it probably is.’
Evie watches the tops of the actual trees fly past. ‘I love it,’ she says, ‘I really do, I never imagined the world could be so beautiful. But right now, after everything that has happened, all I want to do is tuck myself away and hibernate somewhere safe.’ She sinks into her seat, as if this will help make her less exposed.
He glances over. ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’ His face grows slowly careworn and she has the intuition that he’s thinking about his daughter and what she has done. Evie does not know what to say.
They land in a field behind a group of buildings. She watches from the car as he crosses to a gate and, clambering over, enters the yard beyond. He returns a few minutes later, the door of the vehicle retracting as he approaches.
‘It’s all clear,’ he says. He reaches in behind and takes their backpack from the rear seat. ‘Let’s get inside.’
She follows him around the wall of a barn. As they pass, he peers between the slats. ‘That’s good, there’s room enough inside for the hova, we’ll hide her in there. Once I’ve disconnected the battery, she’ll be undetectable to even the most sophisticated divining technology.’
The door to the cottage is already open, the snow blowing onto the stone flags of a narrow hall.
‘How did you unlock it?’ she asks.
‘Oh, that was easy. The key was under the old milk churn, just where I last left it – this is the countryside, people trust one another.’
Just a humble key, she thinks, revelling in their return to a world of reassuringly simple technology.
They enter a small kitchen and he drags his finger along the worktop, holding it up to show her a curl of dust. ‘Looks like I’ll be needing to get the old marigolds out.’
‘Marigolds?’ Daniels grew them in the apartment’s greenhouse and she herself, quite the lady of the manor, would cut them for the vases in the library and music room.
‘You know, cleaning gloves – just something my old gran used to say.’
He turns on the light switch in the corner and after an initial flicker, the strips around the cabinet doors glow steadily. ‘How about that then,’ he says, ‘the cells work even when covered with snow!’
The only other rooms on the ground floor are a bathroom and a small sitting room with a set of partially enclosed stairs leading to the floor above. She follows him up. On the tiny landing is a single door. The frame is so low that Daniels has to bend to enter and even then his head only just scrapes through. ‘For small people,’ he grins. The bedroom has a single bed with a headboard covered in a flowered damask and a window overlooking the field. She goes over and looks out. The hovacar is already disappearing under a coating of snow, the scorch marks where the gunshots struck and scored the bodywork fading from view.
‘This is your room,’ he says. ‘What do you think?’
She looks around her at the pale green woodwork. ‘My room?’ she says, supressing a tremor in her voice. ‘Where will you sleep?’
‘On the sofa.’
‘But I don’t need a bed. You should take it.’
He shakes his head. ‘The room is for you. I insist.’
She looks at him. She can see he is not going to budge. ‘Thank you,’ she says, letting her happiness begin to bubble up. ‘I love it.’
She looks out of the window again at the field and the distant bare trees and the long grey hedge capped with snow, and then back at the snug interior.
She turns. Daniels is only just inside the room; his head is nearly touching the ceiling and he is standing at the highest part. Stepping around the bed, she presses against him and, reaching up, kisses him on the cheek.
‘Heh!’ he says, blushing innocently. Thirty years ago, if she had done that, he might have taken it in a completely different way. Now it just feels natural.
‘I love it, I love it, I love it!’ she says, pulling away.
‘I guess you do then,’ he says, wiping his cheek. He glances at the steeply sloped ceiling. ‘Anyway it wouldn’t have suited me much, I’d have banged my head ten times a day.’
You didn’t have to be so over the top, Simon mutters when they are alone, but Evie ignores him. She is wondering if any of her pleasure is because this place was chosen to please Evelyn’s tastes and it was just inevitable that it would please hers too. If only Matthew had wanted to bring her here. What would have been the risk in that?
She sits on the bed and, resting her elbows on the windowsill, gazes out.
Daniels emerges into the yard below. He has found the key for the barn and swings back the doors. He then tramps out into the field and slowly pilots the hova over the fence and, bringing it down to ankle-height, steers it through the opening into the barn, the downdraft throwing up a skirt of wet snow.