47
By noon on the third day, Elias is officially late.
I watch the forest trail through the window, while boiled eggs cool untouched on my plate. Later, I scatter the animals’ morning feed, manage two bites of reindeer meat for lunch and leave the rest.
Brute and Menace are more than happy to assist me with the leftovers.
When the clock passes three, every small sound in the cabin begins to carry too far.
I grab the truck keys.
Anders promised someone would call if the journey changed.
No one has.
Three days is too long for goats, paperwork or another incomplete explanation.
I am done waiting for the Nielsens and Halvorsens to decide what I am allowed to know.
Just as I burst out of the house, sending Menace and Brute scattering into a fervent sprint, I zero in on Anders’ truck approaching from the treeline.
I wait until he parks and jumps out of the vehicle.
‘Going somewhere?’ he asks, eyeing the keys in my hand.
‘I was actually going to see you.’
‘Oh?’ he says merrily and heads behind the truck, where I now realise a small livestock trailer is hitched behind.
The last living things Elias brought home were enough for my intuition to kick in and send me a step back towards the door.
The smell reaches me then, suggesting whatever is inside has already declared war on my senses. I imagine horns and teeth and fire coming out of a pair of nostrils.
‘So it was fate that I come here!’
He unlatches the trailer and lowers its ramp with a metallic scrape.
Goats.
They peer out, each wearing a halter with its lead secured to a rail.
They blink at me bleakly like criminals being escorted from court.
Anders clicks his tongue, guiding them down one at a time while Brute and Menace freeze and stare, their noses working.
‘Three were transported this morning,’ he says. ‘Jakob left instructions for the pen. Take this one.’ He places a single lead in my hand. ‘Keep her beside you. Don’t wrap the rope around your wrist.’
My qualifications remain limited to panic, but at least he has reduced the number of creatures attached to me to one.
I meet his smiling face and study it longer than politeness would allow, searching for a crack in the warmth. There is none. Just the same old softness around his eyes as he nods towards the newly fenced pen by the shed.
As we start walking, the goats clatter behind me nervously. Anders checks the posts, tests the mesh and tightens the wires. He moves about, showing me where the water trough should sit so they don’t turn it into a swimming pool, and mentions something about plants along the fence line.
Finally, he brings feed from the truck – a few hay bales, a sack of goat pellets, a tub of loose mineral and something he insists is only for treats, not bribery – though bribery works – and stacks it all neatly in the feed shed before giving me the gist.
‘Never trust a goat near anything you value,’ he says as he dusts his callused hands off with a smile at a job well done.
‘Thank you for your help, Anders. Truly. We rely on you so much.’
‘Ah, no worries.’ He waves it off.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ I ask.
His hand is already closing around the truck keys.
‘Oh, I should get back. These old bones need a bit of a rest before I deal with the elk.’
He says it too easily, already turning towards the vehicle. The goats are penned. The feed is stacked. He has spent the last hour teaching me ordinary things as though nothing else requires explanation.
‘When is Elias coming?’ I ask, all sense of composure abandoning me at once.
Anders’ hand pats the truck, but he doesn’t look at me. ‘He’ll come when he’s done,’ he says. ‘Sometimes getting from one place to another takes longer than people think.’
That’s all he gives me as he unlocks the door.
I can’t make out whether he really meant anything by it or whether months with Elias have trained me to recognise philosophy in every suspicious sentence.
But I don’t like the way those words land.
‘Aren’t there goats sold around here? Closer to home? Did he have to go all the way south to—’
‘—Almost forgot!’ he cuts in as he yanks the passenger door open and produces a basket of fruit. ‘The family did some picking yesterday and we put this together for you.’
He hands it to me.
The smile he gives me is warm enough to be convincing, and that is precisely why it pisses me off.
I look from the basket to his face. Fruit in place of an answer.
Every sentence is built around the one fact he refuses to give me. Until Elias’ absence occupies the entire yard and explodes around me.
‘Where has he gone, Anders?’ I ask, my voice dropping.
My breath remains lodged between my teeth.
The smile disappears. His attention falls to the basket. He gives himself two full seconds before he speaks next.
‘He has not abandoned you.’ Only then does he look at me.
My hand clamps harder around the basket handle. Ice slithers down my spine.
‘What does that mean?’ I press, stepping after him as he moves towards the driver’s seat. ‘Anders, where is he?’
But his eyes only give me that particular kindness that tries not to frighten an animal already chewing through its own leg. ‘I came here to bring the goats and the basket, Leah. That is all. Mind yourself, okay?’
Pain briefly pulls at his brows. He climbs into the truck.
The basket grows awkward in my arms after he leaves. I realise I’m gripping both handles hard enough to make the wicker complain.
Carrying it inside without thinking, I set it down on the dining table. The thud against the surface is what finally makes me register that I’m back inside.
For a while, I simply stare at it. Apples. Berries. Plums. Arranged by someone who knows more than I do.
When the ignorance coalesces with rage in my chest, I snap into motion – towards the bedroom.
Wardrobe – I yank it open.
His clothes are still there, folded and hanging, boots lined beneath; most of what makes his presence palpable is untouched.
Zeroing in on the blue folder beneath the clothes – one I’d sent him as a goodbye by mistake – I take in the photos spilling out of it.
I snatch it and start rearranging the contents.
Beneath the prison photographs, I find the pictures of Anna and me.
The second in the stack is one from the afternoon we’d spent at Burrator.
The one Anna took of me alone is missing.
He’s taken my picture with him.
He’s taken Mary Shelley.
I check the drawer beside the bed. My passport is tucked in a corner.
His?
Gone.
When I reach the darkroom, drawers are standing open behind me, and I no longer have the strength to close any of them.
I should have checked this sooner.
Cameras, lights, bed, equipment. Nothing missing. Nothing disturbed.
It looks more like he’s stepped out of life than travelled south.
Back at the kitchen table, the truth has started arranging itself with fully fledged cruelty.
His mouth against mine. The dogs. The truck. The lessons. Everything I kept avoiding and half-arsing through because I believed he would always be there to do the worst parts.
Every lesson, every argument was mistaken for another expression of his need to control the world around me.
I start moving the fruit from the basket as though imposing some order on the mess might do the same for my thoughts. Apples and plums roll beneath my palm like small, bruised hearts.
My hand stops over the fruit. The plum beneath it tumbles slowly across the table and stops at the very edge. Almost falling.
Everything he’s ever said to me comes back in a rush.
Cromwell is a dangerous man.
You don’t know what’s at stake.
You saw what you wanted to see.
You dug, you argued, you put a bloody lawyer on me! You cracked the bars after I told you to leave them the fuck alone!
And finally, the last one.
The loudest one.
Change, if you have to. Adapt. Make an effort. Become the version of yourself that survives.
I take the plum and place it in the bowl sitting in the middle of the table. Then I lift the final apple whose stem catches on the cloth lining the basket. My fingers strike the edge of a packet secured beneath.
Everything in me goes still. I reach beneath the lining. My fingers close around something and I pull it out.
A letter.
With my name.
In beautiful cursive.
The letter begins:
‘My beautiful demon,’
His handwriting cuts across the page in that wonderful script which always appeared as if drawn with a calm hand.
My fingers coil until the corner of the page creases.
If you are reading this, I am already in England.
Conall found altered company accounts, false debts and route records Cromwell believed had disappeared with Arthur. The papers mean very little without someone who can identify the names, properties and transactions behind them.
I have agreed to return for a voluntary interview under caution.
If I stay with you, they will say I am hiding. If I bring you with me, I deliver you to the same men I dragged you away from.
So I have tucked you out of reach.
You need to know, however, that once I arrive in London, I may not be free to leave again.
Do not be angry with Anders. He knows very little of the plan. He will keep you fed, warm and furious. Sindre knows more, because he has always been the one I could turn to in a time of need. The Nielsens and Halvorsens will take care of you. Let them.
There is no right way to say this.
I should have told you I was leaving while I stood in front of you. I did not because if you told me to stay, I would have.
When Conall revealed that men had followed and frightened you, I understood that you were no longer merely the woman visiting me. You were a witness who could be silenced and the one person Cromwell could use to reach me.
After the incident with Isak and Melody, he began removing whatever could connect him to the company.
I believed you were next.
Conall would tell me not to put any of this on paper. I am doing it anyway.
Because there are many truths I could give you, but the plainest is: I panicked, Leah.
Conall has been taking pieces off Cromwell’s board, and men like him do not grieve losses.