The ground tended down suddenly, and Clare staggered into the snow-filled valley. The dirty white powder came up to her knees, and she began struggling through it to reach the next hill.
Then she stopped and looked to her left. The valley continued on for a hundred meters before gently bending out of sight. “Oh,” Clare whispered. The layer of snow hid the asphalt, but the even, straight edges were unmistakable. She’d found the road.
She managed a shaky smile. Her life was a mess, but at least she’d been able to do one thing correctly. She looked to the right then back to the left, trying to guess which direction her car might be. There were no visible signs. She chose left.
The snow was hard to wade through, so Clare climbed back into the forest. She clutched at low branches to help her navigate around the trees. It was surprisingly hard to recognise the road when it was full of snow, but she thought she might know the bend ahead. It was about halfway through the forest, if her memory served.
She tried to pick up her last memories of driving. She’d entered the forest. It had been snowing furiously, and she’d breathed a sigh of relief as the ancient growths gave her protection. After that…
Clare blinked and shook her head. She thought she remembered hearing some kind of noise. She reached for the sound, but it was gone before she could grasp it. She visualised the scene. Her phone had been in the cup holder. Her bag had been in the passenger’s seat. Had she packed anything else? If she was visiting Marnie, she usually tried to bring some supplies that her aunt couldn’t get easily at the tiny nearby village. That usually meant paints and watercolour pencils. Marnie loved art, but the general store didn’t sell anything better than crayons.
Clare was almost certain she hadn’t brought any art supplies that day, though. She remembered glancing into the rearview mirror. There had been something in the back seat, something large. A box, maybe? What kind of box was I bringing?
Like the rest of her memories, it faded almost as soon as she clutched at it. Frustration took its place. Those were the last few normal hours of her life. To be denied them felt painfully unfair.
She reached the corner and followed the bend in the road. Something large and red lay up ahead, curled in between two trees. Clare took a quick breath and began jogging. She’d found her car.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Clare had bought the little red hatchback secondhand a year before moving to her cottage. The car had been good to her. Beth had always worried when Clare drove the car on ice or snowy roads, but all it needed was good-quality snow tyres, and it handled the winter conditions well. It had been a reliable beast that had taken on a bit of a personality and started to feel like part of Clare’s tiny family.
Seeing it broken hurt her deep inside. Its bonnet had crumpled. Lumps of bright-red metal, softened by layers of snow, twisted up towards the sky. As she neared it, Clare could see the tree she’d hit was one of the forest’s originals. The giant had been tilted back from the impact. The damage to the roots was most likely bad enough to kill it.
Clare pressed one hand to her throat. It was hard to see her car like that. Harder still was knowing she’d been the one to cause the damage. The Banksy Forest route was one of the safest in the area. The road was wide and gentle with no sharp turns and good visibility all around. She was practiced at driving in snowy conditions. Clare couldn’t understand how she’d gone off the path so drastically.
She ran her hand along the car’s body as she circled it. Fuel had leaked out of the engine, though it had long mixed in with the snow. The driver’s door hung wide open. The bend in it told Clare that the impact had popped it out. The windshield had a massive crack across it, though the safety glass had stayed in one solid lump.
Clare looked down at her stomach, where the bandages hid nearly healed cuts. She’d come to believe the glass from the windshield had sliced into her. But seeing it still in one piece, she had to assume maybe metal had poked through into the driver’s seat and done the damage instead.
She reached the back door and pulled it open. Like she’d thought, there was a shape inside. It wasn’t a box, though. Two travel cases rested on the seat. She unzipped the closest one. Inside were clothes—enough to account for half of her wardrobe. A sewing kit had been nestled into the back, along with two novels.
Confused, Clare rounded the car and climbed back in amongst the trees to open the other back door. The second travel case was full of food.
She carefully, wonderingly, sifted through the tins and boxes inside. She recognised her nonperishable food collection that she kept locked in a spare cupboard in case she was ever snowed into her home. She’d designed it to give herself enough food to last for nearly three weeks in a worst-case scenario. She’d managed to cram it all into the oversized case.
Her emergency pantry also contained water. Clare, suspecting where she might find it, retreated to the boot and pressed on the latch. The car was unlocked, and the hatch popped open. Sure enough, six massive jugs weighed her car down. The water inside had frozen, and the plastic bulged but hadn’t split.
Clare dragged her hand through her hair. She’d packed up for the trip to Marnie’s, but not any normal kind of packing—emergency packing. Wait… no… it wasn’t a trip to Marnie’s.
Clare had been driving towards Marnie’s, but she hadn’t been planning to stop there. She was picking up her aunt on the way to Beth’s.
“Why was I doing that?”
Because Beth called you. She was worried about… about…
The memory danced away again. Clare closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose.
Beth had a bunker. She wanted Clare and Marnie to stay with her. And Clare had brought her emergency supplies because once they reached Bethany’s, they wouldn’t be leaving for a while.
Clare suddenly felt chilled to her core, more so than the weather allowed for. She swallowed thickly as she returned to the boot. The two-way radio was there, as she’d known it would be. The small black box had travelled with her for more than a year. She hadn’t ever needed to use it before.
She lifted it out and checked it. The batteries were still all right. She turned it on, adjusted the frequency, and pressed the button to transmit her voice.
“Beth?” She held her breath, waiting, terror pounding through her veins. Static answered. Every passing second ramped up her fear. She pressed the button again. “Bethany, it’s me, Clare. I’m all right. Please answer.”
The box replied with ceaseless static. Tears burned even though she’d thought she didn’t have enough moisture left in her to cry. She began pacing, her breaths ragged. “Please, please, Beth, if you’re there, if you can hear me, answer me. I need to know you’re okay.”
As the box continued to play white noise, Clare sank down with her back against one of the trees. She dropped her head to rest it on top of the box and scrunched her face up as short, gasping breaths cut through her. She knew Beth kept the box in her kitchen so she could hear it from every part of the house. And Beth wasn’t likely to leave it, not if Clare was missing.
What happened? Why was I running? She turned the questions over in her head a dozen times, fear making her nauseous.
If Beth had retreated to her bunker, like Clare’s supplies seemed to suggest, she would have taken the radio with her. It was considered a necessity, not just for communicating with Clare, but for talking with anyone else in the outside world.