Sola mutters to the dog. She tells it not to be concerned because they are on nothing more than a stroll. But her own face reveals her fear from the precipitous curdling of events.
After a half hour, the child’s legs, despite her best efforts, are dragging. The sheer ground has taken its toll and the weather is turning.
Above them, clouds roll in from the east, grey and wet. They pause on a stony ridge and stare at the sky as it drains of colour. A wave of cold air presses Evie’s jacket against her chest. Sola’s fine-spun hair lifts from her neck and flicks around her cheeks. ‘How far is it?’ she asks. Her half-hidden face makes her seem even smaller and more vulnerable. Evie reminds herself that they are not after the child, have no reason to harm her.
‘Nearly there.’ The lie that she has a plan has got her to this point but is now close on her heels.
Sola looks behind herself longingly, as if there is an option to go back. Maybe there is for her. ‘Je tired,’ she says.
If the child figures out that she is better off on her own, what is there to detain her?
‘Let’s continue,’ Evie says. ’We’ll be there soon.’
Thunder rumbles in the valley behind.
Evie walks faster still and Sola, motivated anew by the sense of a destination, trots beside her.
The rain overtakes them, dense as from a showerhead, the drops larger than normal and somehow, as they burst on their heads and shoulders, more wet. To escape, they climb a few yards to where the trees grow close to one another. Here, with their heels propped against the roots of a spruce, their backs flush to the grizzled trunk, they watch the downpour. A mist rises from the valley below and a wet tongue of air licks their faces. Sola has the dog under her coat. At least she is sharing its warmth.
The torrent lets up and Evie hears voices on the other side of the hill. Voices on the wind. Her own name called out. Promises being made to her that they think she is naive enough to believe; promises they have no intention of keeping. Although, encumbered with the child, what chance does she have? Does Sola hear the voices too? She shows no sign of having done so. Are the voices only in her head?
‘We need to keep going,’ Evie says, and drags the girl back into the open, into the rain – now losing strength but still as cold as sleet. It is a danger to her but Sola’s safety is all.
They descend again, making their way over moss-covered boulders to the bank of a river. Here they pause beside the swiftly flowing water, Sola trembling in her wet things. The river is some thirty yards wide. The grey reeds on the far side poke through the grit and silt. Beyond that the hillside is clouded by mist.
There is movement along the skyline and figures with guns emerge between the trees.
Evie takes the child by the hand and leads her away quickly along the bank.
Four men in grey camouflaged jackets and military caps, carrying hunting rifles with telescopic sights, crest the hill, together with another – taller, familiar in outline. No, she thinks, it is an impossibility. She saw what she saw four days ago in Paris. It cannot be him.
From here the ground rises and they hurry up an overgrown path, batting the branches from their faces with their elbows. As they run, the dog, sensing the child’s fear, fights its way out from under her coat, leaping to the ground, and valuable time is lost in retrieving it from between the rocks.
While the voices behind grow louder.
Hiding behind a fallen tree they watch the men descend. One carries on his back a steel cage, nine or ten inches deep and three feet high, struggling under the encumbrance to find his footing on the mossy stone. If that is for her, how would they fit her in, how would he carry her weight if they did? Maybe they’d leave the parts they don’t need behind.
She glimpses him again, moving ahead of the others, and breathes in sharply.
‘What ees it Maman? What can you see?’ Does Sola not see him too?
Evie grabs her by the hand again and pulls her along.
The path leads treacherously to a blind pocket of ground beside a cliff, the only way forward via a dilapidated bridge. Hazard tape has been stretched across to form a barrier, but it is ancient and ragged.
‘Where do we go?’ Sola asks, regarding the structure apprehensively.
Boots thud on the stony path. How far are they behind – fifty yards? Forty?
Evie leads the reluctant child forward. The bridge is suspended from ropes over the river at its narrow point. Slats are fixed at intervals, each nine or ten inches wide. Two further ropes are strung at waist height. A number of slats are missing: two here, three there; their absence no recommendation for the ones that remain.
They peer down. The water, in being confined, spouts and spits, raging between the rock walls.
‘Je not like eet at all,’ Sola says, shivering. The spray from below mists their faces. ‘It ees too dangereux.’
Evie glances behind her again. Uncertainty will cost them their lives. Before the child can protest further, she lifts her over the tape, placing her feet on the wood. If the structure can take either of them, it is her.
‘Go,’ she says over the noise of the water. ‘Now.’
Sola clings to her arm. ‘You come too.’
Evie steps over the barrier and stands beside her, to encourage her. The bridge creaks under their combined weight. ‘I want you to go ahead. I will follow as soon as you are across.’
David enters the clearing and comes to a halt.
Evie lets go of Sola and turns. She and David stare at one another.
Are her visual circuits malfunctioning – generating false imagery? How can it be him? She saw him die. Saw him strike the water.
‘You. How?’ Evie murmurs, wanting to believe while filled with doubt. Is this a trick? One of her pursuers in disguise perhaps, acting as a lure. His head is dented and the skin scraped from his cheek revealing the fibre beneath.
‘Evie,’ he says, his voice stiff as if its use is new to him. ‘You must come with me.’
‘He does not sound right,’ Sola whispers, and tugs on her hand.
It is also as if he does not see her, his gaze peering through.
‘Evie,’ he repeats, ponderously. ‘You must come with me.’
‘Why?’ she asks, probing his eyes. Even now, she wants to believe that his appearance is a source of hope rather than fear. That he is not aiding her pursuers but is himself pursued.
He advances towards her. His expression is not so much aloof or even uncaring but merely a void.
‘David?’ she pleads. A tear runs down her cheek. ‘What have they done to you?’
He is only three or four yards away. ‘Evie, come with me.’
Sola is right, there is a mechanical resonance to his voice. But what of it? He has been damaged. Has she not been changed too?
Thrusting aside her remaining doubts, Evie moves towards him, arms outstretched, looking into his face, seeking the person she knew.
She reaches him and touches his injured cheek.
‘I,’ he says, ‘I… I…’
‘Grab her,’ one of the men shouts. Her pursuers are at the turn of the path.
David shudders and takes hold of her wrist.
‘Maman!’ Sola screams. ‘It ees not heem any more, cannot you see?’
Evie struggles to free herself but he is too strong – his grip like a vice. Their eyes meet again and with their faces just a few inches apart, she catches a glimpse of the real David, the one she grew to know, deep inside, struggling to surface. ‘Run,’ he murmurs, almost too faintly to hear, and his fingers unclench with a machine-like shudder, releasing her.
Rubbing her wrist, she backs away. Sola clutches hold of her, and pulls, dragging her through the tape and out onto the bridge, which sways frighteningly. The dog bounds from Sola’s arms and she lunges for it, losing her balance on the slippery wood, causing the bridge to tilt dramatically. The frightened animal runs back and Sola twists to grab it, snapping one of the slats.