Chapter Thirteen
I woke up confused, the way you do on the first morning of a holiday, when you can’t work out why the door and the window are in the wrong place, or who moved all the furniture overnight. Something that certainly wasn’t where it ought to be was my dog. There was no familiar reassuring weight across my feet, and I couldn’t hear the snuffling grunt of canine snoring. I wasn’t used to waking up to silence and it jolted me alert.
‘Fletcher,’ I called, scanning the room for my travelling companion. I hadn’t been able to properly assess Josh’s bedroom by lantern light, but in the dappled grey of early morning my suspicions that this was a room built for function rather than style were confirmed. There was a dresser and a wardrobe, both of which I recognised from the Wildwood website, and a solitary bedside cabinet. The absence of a matching one on the other side of the divan struck me as sad, as though it was already decided that another would never be needed. The room held nothing that didn’t have a purpose or belong there. Except me, of course, I thought with a wry twist of my lips as I swung my legs out of bed.
Fletcher’s absence was explained when I noticed the bedroom door was ajar. I’d fumbled with the unfamiliar latch on my return from a middle-of-the-night bathroom visit, so I guessed I hadn’t fastened it properly.
Unwilling for another pyjama-clad encounter with Josh, I pulled on jeans and a jumper before padding into the hallway. I threw a cautious glance towards the lounge, where he’d slept. The room was still in darkness, and even though I was shoeless I still tiptoed past the doorway. I wasn’t ready to face my reluctant host without a cup of coffee inside me first.
I was sure I’d find Fletcher in the kitchen, curled up beside the wood burner, but to my surprise the room was empty. My nose twitched as it picked up the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, and I followed the scent to the stove, where an old-fashioned enamel pot – the kind cowboys use out on the prairie – was sitting.
It was hard to imagine Josh as an early riser when I so clearly remembered the teenage version who would have happily slept until noon each day. It was another reminder of the differences between the boy I’d known and the man he’d become. And yet memories from decades ago persisted on pinging into my head, as though someone had blown the doors off the vault where they’d been kept.
I turned towards the table where a clean mug had been placed. Propped against it was a note in handwriting that was still so familiar.
I have your dog.
I stared at the four-word missive, wondering if Josh had intentionally phrased it to sound like a ransom note (which was funny), or whether its brevity was an indication of just how little he had to say to me.
Fletcher’s lead was missing from where I’d left it hanging over the back of a chair, and I toyed with the idea of following their tracks in the snow and reclaiming my dog (because wasn’t that what Adam would want me to do?), but a quick glance out the window forced me to abandon that plan. The snow was still falling steadily, and the few tracks that were visible among the drifts were disappearing fast. It was probably more sensible to stay in the cabin and wait.
I tried to swallow the feeling of irritation, but I could taste it through the minty tang of toothpaste as I cleaned my teeth, and it was there in my reflection as I splashed ice-cold water – which was all the taps were prepared to yield – on my face. Everything was spinning out of my control, and the composure I needed to deal with Josh seemed to be forever beyond my reach.
Even though I knew it was pointless, I still tried every light switch in the cabin as I went from room to room attempting to capture a glimmer of phone signal. Although, even if by some miracle I found any, my battery was almost on the point of giving up. I blinked back tears of pure frustration. I hated this stupid forest for being so remote, and I hated the man who’d chosen to live here, but most of all I hated myself for ever thinking he’d be willing to help me. The only person I didn’t hate in all of this was Adam. Him, I could never hate.
It was a full forty minutes later before a bark I recognised cut through the silence of the clearing. I crossed to the window and saw something that took me by surprise. Josh was laughing, his face split by an enormous carefree grin. The best I’d glimpsed on it so far was a glimmer of a smile, but out there, for only my dog to see, was the same face my foolish teenage heart had fallen in love with. I hurriedly stepped back from the window, shocked to see it again. It felt unnatural, like coming across your own ghost.
Man and dog burst through the door seconds after I had repositioned myself at the kitchen table beside my second cup of coffee.
Fletcher was looking up at Josh with an expression of total devotion. Screw Josh and the way he kept trying to claim things that were rightfully Adam’s, I thought angrily.
‘Fletcher, come here,’ I said, my tone a little sharper than he was used to hearing. Obediently, he padded across the quarry-tiled floor, leaving a trail of wet footprints in his wake.
‘I would have taken him out,’ I led with. ‘You didn’t have to go to the trouble of walking him.’
Josh’s eyebrows rose at my tone. ‘It was no trouble.’
He was looking at me steadily, and even though I knew I was being churlish it was hard to rein in my anger.
‘Good morning, by the way,’ Josh said, crossing the room to lift the coffee pot from the hot plate. ‘Interesting to note that you’re still not an a.m. person.’ He felt the weight of the pot and gave a knowing nod. ‘Well, not until you’ve had at least three coffees, that is.’
How was it that he remembered so many intimate details about a person he claimed he never wanted to see again? I would have thought he’d have done a better job of erasing every last memory of me.
But he was right about one thing: I could have started with a polite greeting before laying into him. ‘Good morning,’ I added. It sounded exactly like the afterthought that it was.
He finished pouring his own coffee, adding neither milk nor sugar. Strong, bitter and hot. Josh took his morning beverage the way most people would describe him. I almost made myself smile with that thought.
‘Did you manage to get any sleep?’
I was surprised he cared, or perhaps he thought it was something you were supposed to ask a guest – even an unwelcome one. I’d actually slept well, which was unusual in a strange bed, but for some reason I was reluctant to admit it. I hadn’t come here with the intention of scoring points, but I could feel normal, Reasonable Lily disappearing behind a prickly armour. He really was bringing out the worst in me, which was odd, because Adam had always had the exact opposite effect.
Even so, I hadn’t tracked Josh down to fight with him. We’d done enough of that the last time. But when someone you’d once loved and trusted was also the person who’d betrayed you, deeply buried resentments couldn’t help but resurface.
‘Can we talk, Josh?’
He looked at me for a long moment before replying. ‘Can we at least have breakfast first? No one should embark on a row before they’ve had their Weetabix.’
‘I never said I wanted to row.’
Josh’s lips twisted into an almost smile. ‘You didn’t have to. You’re doing that thing with your eyebrows,’ he said, his finger pointing at the furrows on my forehead. ‘And your left eye is twitching, which was always a red flag.’
I wanted to ask if my eye had been doing that during our argument six years ago, and if it had, why the hell hadn’t he walked away before we both ended up saying things that were impossible to take back?
‘So, what’s the plan for today?’ I asked, reluctantly backing down as he reached for cereal bowls and milk.
‘ My plan is to work. What you do today is entirely up to you.’
‘Surely you need power for that?’ I asked. It felt like our conversation was a game of chess, and I’d just taken his knight.
‘No, because much of my work is hand-carved.’ The glint in his eye said, Checkmate .
My presence in Josh’s home might have been an unwelcome intrusion, but it didn’t seem to have affected his appetite. While I pushed a solitary Weetabix around a bowl until it resembled something you might use to stick wallpaper up, Josh silently munched his way through two bowls of cereal as though I wasn’t even in the room. And yet there wasn’t a spare inch of flesh on his taut, muscular frame, which this morning was all too visible in a pale blue t-shirt that bore the tour dates of a band he’d introduced me to years before. It had been the first concert I’d ever attended, and my parents had only let me go if I promised to stay right beside Josh, an instruction I’d happily followed to the letter. Lyrics from the band’s songs that we’d sung together were filling my head, and I clamped my lips shut, afraid I’d start singing them right here in his kitchen.
It was scary how easily I could remember the heavy beat of the bass thrumming through our bodies, and the reassuring security of having his arm around my shoulders in the heaving crowd. I really thought I’d forgotten the minutiae of us, but over the last twenty-four hours things had been floating back into my head that had no business being there.
I waited until the dirty bowls had been rinsed in cold water before picking up the threads of the conversation I knew he didn’t want to unravel.
‘I never wanted to come here, Josh.’
A casual observer might have thought him indifferent to my words. But I’d lost the ability to be casual around Josh, so I noticed the way his jaw tightened beneath its camouflage of stubble. The hair on his face was thicker and darker than it had been in his twenties, and a whole world away from the first fluff-like appearance of facial hair that I’d laughingly teased him about until he’d rolled me on to my back on the grass beneath the sycamore tree and tickled me until I cried out for mercy. I shook my head. Where the hell had that one come from?
‘And I never wanted you here. So, there you go, we can agree on something after all. Who knew?’
I wasn’t about to let him turn this into a joke, not when it had meant so much to my husband that I made this journey.
‘I came because you have answers to questions that no one else can give me.’
Josh sighed heavily.
‘I don’t know how many other ways I can phrase this, Lily. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know why Adam sent you here. Maybe he just wanted to torture me some more.’
His words jerked my attention. A vague blush was now lurking among the stubble as Josh realised he’d given away more than he’d intended with his words.
‘Why would Adam do anything to torture you? You scarcely knew each other. You met like, what, twice? And Adam wasn’t mean or cruel. He was the kindest, gentlest, sweetest person I’ve ever known.’
If my words were painful for Josh to hear, he hid it well. Although I noticed he was drying a bowl with such intensity he was in danger of removing its pattern.
‘I’m sorry, Lily. I’m sure Adam was a great guy and a good husband.’
I couldn’t be certain, but it sounded very much like there might have been an invisible question mark attached to that sentence. But he had at least apologised.
‘He was. We had a wonderful life together until . . . until he got sick.’
A strange resolve seemed to settle over Josh’s features. ‘I really am sorry that you lost him, Lily. I know you probably don’t believe me, but all I ever wanted was for you to be happy.’
I could have asked him if that was why he’d angrily told me, ‘You’re not meant to be with him, you’re meant to be with me.’ But those were words another Josh had said to another Lily. They’d jarred then, and six years later, as they echoed in my memory, they still did. It had been a mistake to come here, and it was one I wanted to rectify as soon as possible.
‘Is there really no way out of this forest? No footpath that could take us back to the road?’
Josh rubbed the back of his neck as though to ease away an ache before shaking his head and reaching for his jacket. ‘You want to leave as quickly as possible – I get it, Lily. Believe me, we’re on the same page here, one hundred per cent. But there’s no way anyone’s getting out of this forest until a tractor drags that fallen tree out of the way. Even if we managed to walk through thigh-high drifts and somehow made it to the road, there’d be no passing traffic to flag down. Even in the height of summer, it’s rare that anyone comes this way.’
I shook my head in disbelief – not at what he was telling me, but at why anyone would choose to live somewhere this remote.
‘What if there was an emergency? What if you had an accident and the power and the phone were both out?’
Josh shrugged as though the prospect either hadn’t occurred to him or was of little consequence.
‘I’m sure I’d survive,’ he said decisively, zipping up his jacket.
I scoped the room, looking for my own coat. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Why?’
‘So we can talk some more.’
Josh didn’t bother disguising his sigh. ‘I guess you haven’t worked out yet that my whole reason for going out is precisely so that we don’t have to do that.’
‘Were you always this rude?’
‘You’re the one who said, “ You’re the rudest, most annoying boy I’ve ever met ”,’ he replied, parroting the words I’d said to him at the top of the sycamore tree twenty years ago. It shocked me momentarily into silence. He was almost at the door before I recovered the ability to speak.
‘I thought you said you didn’t remember anything about the past.’
‘I lied,’ he said. It was a great exit line, and he looked pleased with it as he opened the back door of the cabin and let himself out into the softly falling snow.
‘You did,’ I said quietly to no one except Fletcher, as I watched Josh trudging through the drifts to reach his workshop. ‘And you’re still doing it. You know exactly why Adam sent me here, and by the time the snow melts and we get out of this forest, you’re going to tell me the truth.’