Chapter 13 #2
The words were out before she could stop them.
She feared if she looked up at him, he’d see right through the windows of her eyes and into her soul.
She barely knew him, yet he was so perceptive, and it made her open up to him.
His attention was strange: not mocking or negative, but .
. . piercing and sharp, like being exposed to a sudden rush of snowfall.
‘I’ve mastered the fine art of not giving a fuck. You should try it, too.’
He said it so casually, so smoothly, she burst out laughing, so hard and for so long that her belly ached.
She deeply wished she could learn not to care about other people’s opinions of her, but she didn’t think her brain was capable of it.
Wow, it felt good to laugh, alleviating some of her stress about Genie sitting on the other side of the tent. Lucas laughed along with her.
‘So, you’re offering to . . . what, be more of an idiot than me next time?’ she said, lips twitching. She looked up at him, and the smile he sent in her direction made her stomach swoop, swift as a bird in the sky.
‘I could do that,’ he said. ‘Why not? It’s a good strategy, right?’
‘It is.’
‘I’ll be sure to make enough of a fool of myself that they completely lose interest in you.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Maybe we can get them to focus on Sylvie and Dwayne instead? They seem to be getting along.’
Clem snorted. ‘Isn’t she too old for him?’
‘Hey, different strokes, different folks. You never know.’
As if they’d been called over by the conversation, Dwayne and Sylvie approached. ‘Are you going to say hello to your old friend when they’re done filming, Clem?’ Sylvie asked.
Clem couldn’t help it – she flinched at the suggestion, and the joy Lucas had stirred up in her fizzled out. ‘Oh . . . um . . . Maybe?’ Clem fumbled for an excuse. ‘Actually, I’ll be right back.’
She darted away before they could stop her, into the shaded area beyond the tent. She probably should have mentioned where she was going, but hopefully they’d guess she was simply going to the bathroom – her usual way of getting out of awkward or uncomfortable situations. It never failed her.
They were allowed access to the toilets inside Wray Castle.
Clem dashed across the lawn and up the winding path that snaked through the outer walls, up to the entrance.
The paved area up here was wider than it appeared, and a set of wooden picnic tables had been positioned either side of the castle.
To the right, another path weaved past a row of green hedges and flowers, heading deeper into the woodland surrounding the castle.
Clem hurried between the two chunky towers, through the massive arched doorway. The toilets were either side of the main doors. When she entered them, though, it was far more cramped than she’d been anticipating – there was barely enough room for two people to stand in front of the sinks.
She stood in front of them, gathering herself, and checked her phone. The battery was lower than she’d realised, since she’d forgotten to charge it up last night.
She couldn’t stay in here forever; if someone came in there wouldn’t be enough room for her to remain here, composing herself.
She would stay in here for a little bit, in case they made the contestants mingle with the miniature audience.
If someone came in, maybe she could wander around the grounds?
And when the coach came, she’d hurry on board before Genie could see her.
She wasn’t sure what she’d do if Genie came to any of the other rounds of the contest, but for now, she wanted to keep as far away from her as possible.
*
Lucas frowned as the contestants boarded the bus that would take them home.
The audience members had gone too. The rest of the Whisked Away staff were working on packing up their things and loading them onto a separate bus.
Sylvie was hovering by the bus’s open doors, her phone pressed to her ear.
Dwayne had already boarded and was peering down at them through the window, occasionally glancing across the lawn from his vantage point to see if Clem appeared.
The sun was no longer shining – a layer of grey tumbleweed clouds had moved in, and the bright emerald hues of the grass and shrubs had dimmed. A pinprick of quickly fading light hung over the castle’s towers like a halo.
‘She’s not answering,’ said Sylvie, jabbing her thumb on her phone screen to end the call. ‘Where is she? I have to get back to close up the café for the evening . . . And it’s forecast thunderstorms later.’
Her brows were drawn together in concern. And she looked completely worn down and exhausted; it had been a long day for them all.
‘It’s okay, I’ll go look for her,’ Lucas offered. ‘You get on the bus. We can always make our own way back on the ferry. I know the way to the pickup point. It’s not far to walk from here.’
‘Are you sure . . . ?’
‘It’s fine – I have your number.’
‘Thank you . . .’
Lucas turned, hurrying across the grass.
He checked the tent, even though she was unlikely to be there, and zig-zagged his way to the entrance of the castle.
It had been an increasingly muggy afternoon, close and cloying, so perhaps she’d gone inside to keep cool, although that didn’t account for why she wasn’t answering her phone.
His mind flashed with possibilities. Was she injured?
Collapsed? Surely one of the staff would have found her.
But there were a lot of woodland paths branching off in different directions around the castle.
What if she’d gone down to the lake, tripped and fallen in? Got lost?
It was dark and gloomy in the entrance hall of the castle.
He went into each of the rooms on the ground floor – the dark-wood room on the right, the other brighter rooms with fancy windows and children’s activity areas set up.
One room was acting as a miniature donation-based bookshop for the National Trust, with a children’s corner bursting with stuffed cats and fuzzy rabbits. But he didn’t find Clem there either.
He went to the main entrance again, called her name at the door to the women’s toilets. No one answered. A woman made to enter the toilets, and he asked if she could check if Clem was in there. She came out shaking her head.
He checked elsewhere. Outside, there was an eco-friendly café to the right of the castle, set back from the picnic benches, so he checked in there, too.
It was full of hikers and visitors to the castle.
There was already a queue and he had to stand in line to ask the staff if they’d seen Clem. But she hadn’t been here.
He left, the smell of roast coffee replaced by the fresh air and the twang of pollen tickling his nose. By now he’d been looking for nearly twenty minutes without any luck.
Lucas made his way to the front of Wray Castle, standing on the raised, paved area, and called her name again. When he headed to the far wall, craning his neck over it to see if he could spot her from this height, he did notice one thing.
The bus was gone.
A text message from Sylvie came shortly after:
Driver gave me five minutes and I got off to find you but couldn’t see you, so we had to go. Did you find her yet? Should I call Mountain Rescue, do you think??
Lucas honestly didn’t know the answer. Had she been gone long enough to call them? The air was getting chillier now and those clouds overhead were darker, fatter, like ink stains on paper.
He turned on the spot, in a circle. The dirt tracks and paths around the castle were set up with a children’s activity where you ‘hunted down’ different types of wildlife, with signposts displaying information about the animals.
Maybe Clem had gone on a walk around the grounds, following the trail?
But why hadn’t she come back? He followed one of the trails, the one marked with a hedgehog.