Chapter 53
By the time they reach the middle of the loch, Anna is experiencing a kind of sensory overload.
She’s finally hit her limit, the contrast between inside prison and outside overwhelming.
The loch is unbearably beautiful, mountains reflected in its depths, the water mirror-like, the space around them almost endless.
They are growing closer to the far side of the loch – and maybe closer now to some answers, though Anna doubts it. Maybe she’ll be on this quest forever, dodging death by a whisker day after day, just as she has since Friday, when she woke up to find the woman in the bunk below her dead.
She should have thought more of Kelly. As soon as she gets back home – but no, there is no home – as soon as she’s back in Oxford, she’ll find out what’s happening to Kelly’s remains, pay her last respects.
Maybe, after all this, Anna will have to accept that she was just not meant to find out the answer to what happened to the woman. But at least she can say goodbye.
She needs to say goodbye to Tom, too.
Death’s stalking her. She’s the Jonah. She shivers at the thought, floating over deep water. She’s escaped death by car, by fire, by car again – at some point, her luck will run out.
Before her ruminations can get too bleak, though, the boat bumps its way into a jetty on the other side, considerably less polished than the one from which they departed: no neat steps leading away, just a rough slope up to a path that Anna can see snaking into the distance.
‘This is where I leave the box of supplies,’ Robert says. ‘Every Monday morning. They’d leave the empty box here too, with a note in it each time giving their requests. Last week, though, no one had collected the box from the previous week. That’s never happened before.’
Anna sits in the boat a moment longer, not sure what she’s meant to do, before getting up suddenly, rocking the vessel from side to side as she jumps out on to the jetty. She’s glad to have solid land back under her feet, though it feels like she’s still moving. There’s an unsteadiness to her.
Robert sits still in the boat.
‘Where do we go?’ she says.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’ve never come further than this jetty. That’s not in my job description. Not my business. If I’m not being paid to do it, I don’t want to know. But if you follow the path, you might find them. I’ll wait here for you.’
Jobsworth, thinks Anna. She suppresses the thought. No point seeing him as the enemy. It’s harsh terrain – maybe it breeds harshness in those who live here. Or the ability to get on with the business of survival, no questions asked about anything not directly concerning them.
She starts up the path, hands deep in the pockets of her coat.
It’s a rough path, but clear enough in the ground, the earth beaten hard beneath her feet.
It must be difficult in winter, ice and snow likely to make any ascent treacherous.
But for now, she follows steadily where it leads, up and round the undulating slopes.
It’s not long before the jetty is out of sight, only a view of a stretch of blue water beyond to show where they’ve come from.
She’s in trouble if Robert doesn’t wait for her. She’ll never get round the loch. He wouldn’t leave, though. She hopes.
Now she’s out of breath. Prison-cell workouts are fine as far as they go, but they haven’t prepared her for this slow, inexorable climb, the air cold and clear as she draws it into her burning lungs. She stops for a moment, looks around from the top of the hillock she’s reached.
Then she spots it: a building in the distance, the angles clearly manmade rather than naturally formed, standing out from the rest of the landscape.
Truly isolated. Privation or just private – she can’t decide.
Some people are so notorious, though, it could be the only way to have anything approaching a normal life.
It would be a long way for a mob with pitchforks to trek.
She could see herself living here. It’s so beautiful. So clean. Fighting with the elements, but not other people. If her family reject her final attempt at reconciliation, then perhaps—
But it’s too late for that. Edgar’s experiment is over.
She keeps walking, energy growing the closer she gets to the house, curiosity driving her now, adrenaline too. The uncertainty of what she’ll find.
It’s close now, close enough that Anna can see the roof, the chimney. There’s daylight shining in places through the holes in the roof and—
She comes to a halt.
A grim replay. She’s been here before. Bile rises in the back of her throat.
It’s not a house anymore. Blackened bones, tumbled rubble. All burned down.
No one alive to be seen.
She wants to turn and run, but she can’t. She needs to keep going. Incomprehensible as it seems, this must be the place. Perhaps she’s too late.
She’s nearly upon it, and over the tang of heather, the whiff of sheep droppings, Anna is picking up another scent. Like that of Tom’s house, though fainter, less biting. It’s there, though, traces of an earlier fire, only recently extinguished.
Another fire; Tom’s house, now this. Her nerves are tingling, a pricking in her thumbs. Something wicked . . .
She’s at the house now. The ruin. The first floor and roof are extensively damaged, the ground floor less so, the door still in one piece.
She’d better check the rooms to see what else she can discover, but every instinct is telling her to keep out, to stay away.
But she’s faced worse things than this. She takes a deep breath and puts her hand up to the blue painted door, the paint cracked and blistered, pushing it open.
For a moment, she hangs in that liminal place, before taking one step, then another, moving forward into the remains of the house.
Much of the inside has been destroyed. No one could be living here.
Only the external walls are still standing, their solid stone sturdy enough to withstand what must have been intense heat, the insides scorched.
She looks overhead to see skeleton beams, all that remains of the first floor.
What’s left of them are stumps, flamed to uneven points.
There are great gaps in the devastated roof through which she can see straight up to the sky.
The stairs are partly intact. It’s too dangerous – she should get straight out of there.
But she needs to see. Staying close to the wall she creeps up one step at a time, high enough that she can see the total devastation in the floor above.
If anyone were up here, there’s no way they could have survived.
The smell of smoke is overwhelming in here.
And another smell, though maybe it’s her imagination.
Barbecue. As from the wreck of Tom’s house.
Whether it’s real or not, she needs to get away from it.
She retreats down the stairs as fast as possible, running out of the ruins, gulping in deep breaths of the fresh air.
There’s no sign of anyone in the vicinity.
Once she’s recovered her breath, Anna walks around the building, alert to any signs of habitation. But there’s nothing.
She’s too late.