Light as beautiful as this was worth everything, she thought – or damn near everything. Outside the twisted bones and scarred flesh of one’s own body, life wasn’t shit at all.
Pennington’s pullover still felt a little odd against her skin, but she was getting used to wearing it. She liked the way the cuffs wrapped snugly round her wrists, the tarnished fibres luminescing in the sun. She liked the way she could glance down her breast, and, instead of seeing that repugnant cleavage of artificial fat, get an impression of furriness, an illusion of her natural self.
Not far up ahead, a hitcher stood beckoning at the roadside. He was young and thin, and held a battered cardboard sign saying nigg. Isserley drove past without even slowing down. The vodsel made a ‘fuck you’ sign in her rear-view mirror, and then turned to be ready for the next car in line.
It was easy to find the spot where she’d picked Pennington up. The carriageway was especially narrow on the stretch leading up to it – that’s why the cars had banked up behind her – and of course there was the P sign to look out for. When she’d found it, she parked her car exactly where she’d stopped the day before, give or take a few feet. She stepped out, locked the doors, and went in search of the nearest farm path into the fields.
Pennington’s van, too, was easier to find than she’d expected. It was tucked away where she herself would have parked a vehicle if she’d been wanting to hide on this bit of farmland. Shaded by a row of tall trees there stood a ruined mill, roofless and skeletal, against which bales of hay had been piled. The hay had been spoiled by unseasonal weather and left to rot. From the perspective of motorists driving on the A9, there was nothing to be seen except a glimpse of ruins and hay. From the perspective of the farmhouse, half a mile distant, there was only the cluster of trees, sparing the farmer a reminder of blighted resources which would cost money to remove. In the space between the trees and the mill, visible only by trespass, stood Pennington’s van.
It was a much more luxurious vehicle than Isserley had imagined. She’d pictured a rusty, battered, barely roadworthy thing, dark blue perhaps, with faded writing on the side. Instead it was a glossy cream, finished in polished chrome and unperished black rubber, like one of the brand-new ones on display in Donny’s Garage.
Inside its lustrous hull, Pennington’s captive dog was jumping from seat to seat, barking frenziedly. Isserley could see that the animal was whooping its lungs out, but through the closed windows the noise was low-pitched and muffled – an ugly racket at close quarters, but one which she doubted would carry very far, even in the dead of night.
‘Good boy,’ she said, stepping up to the vehicle.
It did not occur to Isserley to be afraid as she used Pennington’s keys to unlock the van’s side door. The dog would either run away or attack her; so, either she would watch it scampering into the distance, or she might be forced to kill it. Either way, her conscience would be at rest.
She swung the door open, and the dog sprang out with what seemed like the velocity of an exhaust backfire. It landed in the grass, almost rolling head-over-heels, then whirled to face Isserley, trembling and twitching. Pure black and white, like a miniature Amlis in animal form, it glowered at her, confused, a rubbery frown wrinkling the down of its dark forehead.
Isserley left the door of the van open, and walked away, back towards the A9. She was not really surprised when the dog followed her, sniffing at the waist of Pennington’s pullover, which hung down to Isserley’s thighs like a dress. The spaniel’s nose nudged her hip repeatedly, then she felt its wet tongue licking one of her hands. With a groan of distaste, she lifted both her arms into air, surrender-style, as she hurried to her car.
Pennington’s dog managed to lick her hand one more time while she was making sure she didn’t slam its snout in the car door. It stared up at her through the glass, uncomprehending, as she turned on the ignition.
‘You’re on your own now, doggy,’ Isserley said, conscious of course that the dog had no language in common with her.
Then she drove away, leaving the animal sitting at the side of the road.
On the homeward journey, Isserley found herself thinking all the same thoughts she’d thought endlessly during the night, about what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
Of course, there were any number of ways she could go, depending on how much courage she could muster, or how much physical misery she was game to endure. Each plan promised its own sweet rewards, and carried with it its own frightening consequences. But she was tired of weighing one future against another; she’d thought too much.
It was time to let instinct decide. She would let her fingers dangle within reach of the controls, and if they pressed the toggle down, well… that was how it would be.
Within minutes, she was approaching the road-sign that said B9175: Portmahomack and Seaboard Villages. She checked her rear-view mirror and the road up ahead: no-one coming in either direction, to push her forward or hold her back. Her fingers hovered over the indicator. Her foot seemed paralysed on the accelerator. The sign flashed past, the turn-off was swallowed up in the trees, and she was still driving north. The decision was made. She would never see Ablach Farm again.
A while later, still travelling northwards, Isserley turned her car onto the Dornoch Bridge, and immediately got a queasy feeling in her guts. It wasn’t hunger, though she was certainly feeling that by now. It was premonition. Something was waiting for her on the other side.
She pulled over, half-way across the bridge, in a parking area provided for tourists. There was a tourist there already, staring over the railings at the glittering firth, binoculars ready for seals or dolphins. Isserley brought her car to a standstill behind his luxury caravan, and cautiously opened her door. The tourist turned to acknowledge her arrival. He was obese and short, with spindly legs: a definite failure to make the grade.
‘Hi there.’ He waved, squinting into the sun.
‘Hi,’ echoed Isserley, keeping her car between them. Satisfied he would stay where he was, she turned away from him and looked down the length of the bridge to the mainland. Shielding her face with one cupped hand, she removed her glasses and peered into the distance, focusing her huge eyes on the traffic that seemed to be banked up at the roundabout, a little herd of vehicles hesitating to move, as if undecided between the Clashmore and Dornoch roads.
Then she spotted the headgear of police, ducking and weaving among the vehicles.
Isserley swung back into her car and revved it into motion. With more skill and boldness than she would have predicted herself capable of, she executed a U-turn in the middle of the bridge – a highly illegal act, no doubt, but one which those tiny far-off police were in no position to pursue. She glanced over her shoulder to check the tourist at the railing: he was staring at her in awe as she drove away, but he wasn’t using his binoculars, so he probably wasn’t trying to fix her appearance or her licence-plate number in his memory.
I want to go home, she thought, but her decision had been made: she had no home anymore.
Within a few minutes she was driving southwards past Tain, ignoring the temptation to reconsider. If she’d been willing to turn off the A9 and drive through the centre of the town, she could have come out the other end and followed an alternative route to Portmahomack – and Ablach Farm. But Ablach Farm was closed to her now. Vess Incorporated wouldn’t take care of her if she didn’t deliver the goods, she knew that; it wasn’t going to house and feed her out of the goodness of its heart.