They know about it, Simon responds, his voice unexpected. Evie has been getting more and more used to being alone and his return at this moment startles her, almost bringing her to a physical stop. His tone, however, does not hold any surprises. They’d probably trace it and shoot it out of the sky – I thought even you’d be able to work that one out.
Wondering why she ever expected more understanding from him, she releases the gate, letting it swing closed with a bang, and follows Daniels into the road. It reminds her of their leave-taking of the apartment all over again, just three nights ago, and the cottage had so quickly made itself home. It is the first major new life experience she’s been given in years, making the loss so much harder. She senses Simon working up to something, his desire to apportion blame and rub the misery in, and she shakes her head vigorously, ‘Don’t you dare!’ she mutters, loudly enough for Daniels, on the other side of the lane, to glance around.
They walk along the compacted snow coating the raised centre of the road so as not to leave fresh prints. The warmth of the day has melted the surface and where the grit has not pressed through, a skin of dark ice has formed, on which her feet slip and slide.
Daniels takes long, steady, dependable strides, placing his boots carefully. His back is bowed, weighted by the pack. But not only by the pack, she thinks, but by this defeat and retreat coming so soon on the heels of the last. And it is her rash actions which brought this down upon them.
They reach a gap in the hedge and force their way through, the brambles pulling at her shoulders and sleeves. They keep to the perimeter of the field, avoiding the undisturbed snow. They reach the boundary, beyond which a wood extends towards the crest a hundred yards further on. Between the trunks, the snow lies in thick hummocks from which protrude the ends of broken branches and the limbs of trees shattered as if by artillery – although even she knows enough of recent history to know that the so called ‘Peasants’ Revolt’ didn’t reach this far east.
Daniels pauses to gather his breath and they stand together looking back.
Evie’s bedroom faced the field on the opposite hill but she can see the glow cast on the tiles by the light left shining in her window – an attempt to make the place appear occupied. She gazes longingly, wondering just how she has managed to carelessly throw away this second chance.
The night is still and silent. An early moon casts a tranquil sheen on the snow shrouding the paddock below. She is close to Daniels’s elbow and speaks quietly: ‘But we can come back if we are wrong and it turns out that they don’t know we were here?’ She is trying to feel hope. The evening is so untroubled and still. The immediate panic has left her, and this exodus is perhaps something they’ve embarked on too hastily. This is the version of events she wants to have faith in.
‘Sure, if that’s the case, if we’re absolutely positive, we can come back.’ But it doesn’t sound like he believes it will happen. ‘Ready?’ he asks, hoisting his pack higher up his back and tightening the strap across his chest.
She nods silently, but as she does so, spots movement in the lane. ‘There’s someone down there.’
‘Where?’ He peers along her arm, but his eyesight in the darkness is nowhere near as capable as hers. ‘What can you see?’
A figure picks its way silently through the shadows cast by the cottage wall.
‘I’m not sure,’ she murmurs.
‘What’re they doing?’
‘They’re trying to see in through the windows.’ They would, however, observe little other than a soft radiance through the curtains from where Daniels left the bulb of a table lamp on in the sitting room.
A dog yelps. She can’t see it, nor its owner, but is now certain that the snooper is the old woman from the church.
‘It’s nothing,’ she says, relaxing a little. Not quite true, but she doesn’t want to create worry where none needs to exist.
They continue through the trees, reaching the bare crest of the hill. From its round top the view opens up. Daniels is out of breath, his chest heaving, and Evie is conscious of her own energy levels. She was fully charged before she set out for Cambridge but she has been through a lot since. In the rush to leave the cottage it was expedient to ignore the faint inner voice expressing concern – not Simon this time but a new, friendlier presence of which she is only just becoming aware: a mirror, perhaps, of her own self.
‘How far is it?’ she asks.
‘See the lights?’ Daniels says. ‘That’s an all-night garage. Attached to it is a car dealership.’ He points out a straight strip of road cutting through the snow. Perhaps something left by the Romans, as featured in one of her Ladybird books, of which Matthew had a collection ready for when she arrived covering subjects from hovercraft to the Holy Land.
‘We’re going to buy a car?’ she asks.
‘Not exactly buy, I was thinking more like borrow.’
Evie gazes at the light pooling around the garage buildings. It appears to be about a mile distant. She can do a mile – if they take it slowly – although possibly not much more. Tight but doable and now that she has seen what is required of her, she relaxes a little and thinks about what lies beyond. ‘How far is Scotland?’ She still grapples with distances, used to only measuring her world in feet and inches.
‘A long, long way and the roads get more and more mangled the further north you get. We’ll reach the wall by tomorrow evening with a bit of luck, if not the day after, and cross via one of the smuggling tunnels.’
The wall he is referring to is Hadrian’s Wall which was also in the books provided to her. In addition to the Ladybirds, she was given a near-full set (missing only E – F) of an illustrated young people’s encyclopaedia with coloured plates. Did Matthew imagine he was acquiring an adult or a child? How would Evelyn have reacted? She probably would have thrown them at him.
‘Scotland,’ Evie says. ‘Robert the Brave, Bonny Prince Charlie’s Gal, The Gallant Fastlane Mutineer, The Bloody Siege of Inverness…’ reciting the titles of ballads from a piano songbook back in the apartment, which apart from the Waverley novels and the children’s books, provide nearly the only facts about the country she knows. ‘What’s Scotland like?’ she asks wistfully, imagining mists drifting through mountain glens, fierce but handsome brigands in kilts and funny long-necked monsters swimming in lochs.
‘Unfortunately, not as romantic as you fondly imagine. It’s grown pretty lawless since the schism and there’s understandably no love lost with the English after what was done, but it’ll count in our favour that we’re fugitives. Oh, and the weather’s f’ing terrible!’
She gazes down the hill towards the cottage, and draws breath sharply.
‘Cheer up, girl,’ he says, squeezing her arm, misunderstanding her reaction, ‘we’re only going to be staying long enough to sort our passage to Canada.’
‘There’re people in the yard outside the barn,’ she says.
He looks around. ‘You sure?’
She hears the tinkle of breaking glass. Shortly after, electric torch beams move about inside the cottage. ‘Oh,’ he says: even he can see this.
‘They’ve found us,’ she says. The lights move upstairs and enter the room that she so loved. It feels like a violation. The trembling she is experiencing is just a wobble in her central control system but it serves to magnify her fear and the resulting tension is an additional power drain.
The barn doors swing back, pushed open from the inside, and a handler emerges with a pair of dogs.
The dogs cross the yard and, picking up a scent from the cottage steps, squeeze under the lowest bar of the gate and dash into the lane where they mill excitedly.