“The farmer’s utterly perplexed. He said they’ve not had a fox problem here for years. He’s out of his head with worry. Says it’s not good for business.”
“Us, he means. Paying guests.”
“I suppose so. At least it shows he’s concerned.”
“Will he do anything about it though?”
Kit sat down and started unclipping Lucy, her fingers spooling with drool. “What can he do? It’s nature. We don’t get free eggs in the morning, that’s all.”
“But it just gives carte blanche to any meat-eating animal out there to come and attack our holiday site. Bears. Tigers. Velociraptors.”
“Oh, you’re making light of the situation. That’s good, I suppose. Is Daddy being silly? Is he?”
I had to turn away because I didn’t want her to see the sweat building up on my face. I had done it with my own hands and I had smiled while doing it. Fourteen then, just. Old enough to know better, I suppose. And now, over forty, I couldn’t think about it without feeling horribly nauseous. The child is father to the man. Well, yeah, maybe. The child is also a hideous, bastard stranger.
I concentrated on the fire while Kit changed Lucy and Megan showed us the picture she’d drawn of the chicken coop, which was little more than a mass of red felt tip. We had breakfast and while Megan cleaned up the dishes, I eyed the edge of the field, wondering what we were supposed to do now. The planned cycle ride looked unlikely; I doubted these secluded roads had ever encountered anything as exotic as a council gritter. Similarly, the fields, which had appeared so inviting on the day of our arrival, were now forlorn and desolate. I knew from bitter experience that there was nothing so dispiriting as a forced march across wintry countryside. It was to the blanket box that I turned; inside, on top of the extra bedclothes, were a number of stacked, worn cardboard boxes. Board games and jigsaw puzzles. The puzzles were serious affairs; I couldn’t see Megan sustaining her interest in completing a picture of the Swiss Alps from ten thousand pieces. The board games were hardly better. Players’ tokens and dice were missing; the lack of instruction manuals meant some games were impenetrable. But we bumbled through it all until lunch. Megan seemed happy enough just playing with some of the plastic tokens.
I put together a table of salad and cold meats and we ate the food without the same fervour as we might if it had been warm outside. Soup or something hot on toast seemed the more suitable meal. Bolstered by fuel, however ill-fitting, I felt freshly determined to make something of the day, especially as the leaden sky was breaking up and patches of blue were appearing. I chased the girls into their boots and wrapped Lucy warm before getting her into the sling that I’d positioned around my shoulders. Every time I secured her there, and then stood up, I was shocked by how heavy she was getting. It would be hard work — my back would be damp, my shoulders sore by the time we finished our walk — but I would be rewarded by being able to nuzzle her head and feel the strong grip of her tiny fingers upon my own.
I loaded the stove with a couple more logs in the hope that the fire would keep going until we got back and then we were out in the fresh air, shocked by the cutting attack of it. It was like jumping into icy water. Lucy giggled as she snatched at gasps the wind was trying to steal back from her mouth. Megan went on ahead as we made our way down to where the narrow path that ran alongside a stark, weather-blackened fence (now concealed by a good foot of snow) led to a pond and a play area. You could just make out the shapes through the trees, maybe half a mile away. I’d brought along a few plastic bags and a towel to clear away the snow and dry off the seating areas, knowing that Megan would want to have a go on the swings and the slide. Kit fell into step by my side and clutched at me. Already the deep cold had stiffened her hands. She suffers from Raynaud’s phenomenon, which causes her fingers and toes to become discoloured and inflexible in cold weather. In serious cases it can bring about gangrene, but luckily, Kit’s symptoms ran only to a paling of the skin and a little numbness.
She lifted her head to smile at Lucy and a fan of her brown hair fell from the hem of her woollen hat, sweeping across her sight to isolate her eye so that it seemed strangely dislocated from her. There was a lack of colour to her eye, shaded as she was both from the growing light, and that small, protective curtain of hair. It was more like a black hole, unresponsive, lifeless. For a brief second, I was looking into the face of a person I did not know at all, despite ten years of marriage. The jolt that I got from that was disguised by our unsure tramping over uneven ground, and when she shifted her gaze and her smile to favour me, she was Kit again — filled with vim and the combative teasing I found so alluring — and the moment was gone.
The smell of woodsmoke drifted down from the tent.
“How are your fingers?” I asked.
“Like a bundle of sticks,” she said. “If we get low on kindling later, just ask me and I’ll snap a couple off for you.”
I winced, but she was smiling. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s not as if we’re on our way to have a crack at the north face of the Eiger, is it?”
We watched Megan enter the circular paddock that contained all the playground rides. Emptiness was developing a theme with me; with her hood up, and for as long as she didn’t turn around (her legs and feet, in white stockings and Wellington boots were lost to the background), you might almost believe her coat was being animated by the wind and nothing else. It was an observation I’d normally have shared with Kit, but coming so soon after the illusion of her eye, I wasn’t confident I could keep the edge from my voice. Anyway, Lucy had spotted the rides too by now and she was reaching out to them, making little cooing noises in her throat.
I called out to Megan to wait while I dusted off the snow with the towels — Lucy jiggling around and yelling in the carrier as I did so — and then suggested using the bin bags as makeshift sacks to sit in once she’d climbed to the top of the slide. Holding on to Lucy as I pushed her on the swing, I could see Kit huddled into her coat as she watched Megan repeat the journey from the bottom to the top to the bottom again, each trip accompanied by her laughter, which was distorted within the rustling of the bin bag.
And then, as Lucy was beginning to get upset by the cold her motion was creating, Megan’s clockwork descent failed to occur. I could just see the tips of her boots sticking out from the metal guard flanking the slide’s top deck. “What’s up, Meg?” I called, as I lifted Lucy from the swing and began the arduous task of strapping her back into her pouch. “Have you frozen up there?”
Kit strode to the slide and reached out her arms. “What is it, chick?”
Megan was crying. Now that we’d spotted something wrong, the tears came harder, her upset suddenly more audible. “Thuh-thuh-puh, poor chu-chicken,” she was saying, over and over. I went up the ladder and coaxed her down the slide to her mum. Kit held her while she stuttered and hitched. She was worried the fox, or whatever it had been, would come back for the rest of them, once the farmer had rounded them up.
I stood up and banged my head on the slide roof. Biting down hard on the stream of swear words queuing to be aired, I turned around and saw a red stain in the snow, about six feet shy of the water’s edge. Jesus, I thought. What now?
“Wait here,” I called to Kit, jumping to the ground. Entwined with Megan, she gave me a look as if to say, Where do you think I’m going to go? I tramped out of the paddock and south, my eyes fixed on that patch of red. I found myself thinking: please let it just be blood.