Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
ISABELLE
“Aren’t I seeing you in what, eight hours?” Sophie laughed down the line.
“Hey, Soph.” I chewed my lip.
Sophie, knowing me better than anyone, hesitated.
“What’s up, Iz?” Her tone had quietened, worry infused her words.
“Soph. What would you say if I told you I needed to cancel the weekend? Say I was sick?” My words came slowly. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, imply the wrong thing.
“Say you were sick?” Sophie tried to comprehend. “Iz, are you sick?”
“I, well, what if I also, maybe, needed a car?” I forced the words out, haltingly.
“You’re sick and you need a car?” She was confused, and no wonder.
“Yeah, Soph, I am telling you that I’m sick, and I need a vehicle.” I spoke clearer now, my confidence rising, it was a bit too late to get cold feet after all.
“And thank you for your leaving card.”
A pregnant pause followed.
“Right, yep. Well, I’d say, sorry you’re sick, and that you may need to cancel the weekend?”
She was understanding.
“Mm-hmm.”
“And of course you can borrow my car when you’re better, but right now it’s actually in town, at my brother-in-law’s garage, it’s nowhere fancy, he’s got a place under the railway arches near the new university campus, you know? It’ll be there for a while so, as I say, when you’re better…”
“Okay. Thanks, Soph.” My heart gave a little kick.
“See you next weekend, for the big day?” She enunciated each word as though the line was bugged, causing me to smile. “Call me, yeah?”
Convincing Mother and Ester I was unwell was considerably easier than I thought. Mother hardly wanted to go, and Ester was still furious I even had the opportunity to have a weekend away, given all the unearned freedom she felt I’d had to date.
Arguing I wasn’t well enough to come downstairs, or even have anyone check up on me, well, all that took was a few graphic stories including vomit and Mother immediately offered the housekeeper to deliver a few care packages to see me through the weekend. All extremely convenient really.
I snuck across the backstreets towards the arches. I knew them well.
The arches in question were about a fifteen-minute walk from my family home, but rushing as I was, even laden with the care packages and a large duffel of clothes, plus the cash I had stored up, a few personal items I wouldn’t be without and all the identity documents available to me including my authority of movement, it still only took ten minutes to get there.
Sophie’s car was exactly where she’d said, squirrelled away under the arches, near the car service centres that occupied the area, and well away from prying eyes.
Testing the door, my heart hammered in my chest, fearing an alarm, but it opened on the first attempt, already unlocked.
Unable to calm myself, my hands were becoming clammy, fear and adrenaline warring, I dragged my palms over the black joggers. Keeping my hood up and glasses on I arranged my belongings over the back seat, there was enough to sell a girls’ weekend, but not so much it screamed running away.
I tucked myself into the car, the air inside still warm, the keys fell from the visor. It had not been here long and I knew Sophie fully understood what I was up to.
The pressure in my chest ratcheted up at the thought. Sophie knowing could risk an accusation of involvement. And that concern aside, I needed to make it past inspection points and movement checks.
The nerves caused me to pause and draw in a jagged breath.
The panic plateaued, I counted breaths in, hold, out, over and over, until I was able to drive.
London was quiet, it was dark, early evening in mid-winter and the journey began quickly.
The first real interruption would be the initial checkpoint on the outskirts of London.
For the men, they acted as toll stations, fobs sufficient to guarantee a quick passage, but for women, the booths acted as a method to ensure right of movement, approved by husband or guardian, in this case my father.
I arrived at the checkpoint, my hands clammy with nerves and resting on the envelope holding the physical authority forms. A young man looked me over and I hoped he couldn’t sense my dread.
“ID and papers?” he requested my documentation casually.
Pulling the identity app up on my phone so he could scan the code, I watched the photograph and my personal details pop up on the screen behind him.
He held a scanner out and I presented the papers my father had provided, another beep of the system logged the dates I was due to travel and return. The man checked the screen once more before waving me on.
Kent was close, that was why Father had chosen it, but I worried as the drive continued, mile after mile, no matter how close I came to the cottage I remained concerned that any local communities might wonder why a woman was driving alone, at night, into the remote countryside.
Sure enough, as I passed a small village pushing towards the end of my journey, the alert of a police siren told me I was being pulled over.
Blinking red and blue lights neared, flashing in the rear-view mirror.
I slowed the car, the wheels crunching over the crisp verge to pull as ‘off-road’ as I could.
The door of the police car opened and closed behind me as I maintained my posture, staring straight ahead.
Smile, Izzy.
The rap of knuckles on glass had me rolling down the manual window.
“Good evening.” My smile was purposefully mild.
“Miss.”
“What can I help you with, officer?”
The officer leaned towards the car, looking inside. “Late for you to be travelling. Alone?”
A laugh tittered; it was me but I felt detached from it.
“Yes, sir. I’m late actually.”
“To what, may I ask?” His head tilted with the question.
“My hen party. If you could call it that. Everyone is already at the cottage, and I got caught up with wedding planning and before I knew it, I was late!”
His features softened at my story.
“I have my papers.” My hand tapped the paperwork on the passenger seat. “Should you want to see them?”
He nodded, smiling, so I passed them over.
“The forge, eh? You’re not far now. There’s a sign on the left about ten minutes down this road.” He pointed ahead, then scanned the authority of movement. “Don’t dither now, miss. It’s safe around these parts.” He looked over the car. “But you’d be best to hurry to your friends.”
I nodded gratefully. “Yes, sir.”
Winding the window before he’d even left to return to his car.
The cottage was lovely, remote, open-plan luxury, and I’d benefit from none of it.
The sun was barely a sliver along the horizon by the time I was up, allowing myself the brief joy of the jet-powered shower, I boiled my skin.
The weather had dropped, if that was possible, and reports on the weather channel showed it was forecast to deteriorate.
I looked to the most expensive paperweight that was my phone.
It had been off since the first checkpoint, the little information I’d received from these Removers told me I had to dispose of it, but something told me I would rather be found in the event of an emergency than have an emergency and no back-up plan.
I checked the printed maps laid out on the bed. It was almost a straight line of hikes and paths towards Saint Margaret’s on the coast, and although I couldn’t digitally trace the routes, I was confident. Enough.
The food I had brought was now meticulously packed away into my duffel, which was pushing its limits, and decidedly too heavy, but I’d be drinking some of the water over the day. And it was only one day.
Dithering slightly as I locked up the property. Soph’s keys.
Do I leave them inside the cottage? Or inside the car? Thanking the Lord that she despised technology enough to have an old car which didn’t auto lock, I replaced them where I found them – in the visor.
Discomfort rolled over me at the thought of the questions Soph would be asked. I had her car, at a cottage I wasn’t meant to be at, and I was going to be in the wind, with any luck.
She’d look complicit.
But this was her suggestion.
I steeled myself. Soph was the most resilient person I knew. She knew what was happening.
Emerging from the porch, the wind hammered me and I immediately gasped, breath lost in the onslaught.
Christ, it was cold!
The hikes, while direct, still travelled over ten miles of relatively rugged terrain, and while I was fit, I worried that I wasn’t ten-miles-in-sub-zero-over-unknown-Kent-terrain fit.
Before tugging on my gloves, I slid my fingers into my inner jacket pocket, gripping the documents and some of the cash I had hidden there, and the tiny scrap of card on which I wrote the only contact number I would ever need.
I had until tomorrow morning to arrive at the hotel in Saint Margaret’s, where a parcel was waiting for me, under my new ‘husband’s’ name, ideally I would arrive there today, stay overnight, and meet Christian at midday.
But if worst came to worst, I had until tomorrow morning to cover the ten miles.
It was doable.
The wind howled, then died down as I pushed through into a thicket of woodland, the weaving hiker trails still mostly visible in the shade of the tree branches, even if they were bare.
Before long I felt the sun coming up, cutting through the sparse canopy, and warming the bitter cold of my cheeks and nose.
With no real space for endless amounts of disposable daily contacts, I had opted for my transitions, and I praised that decision as the winter sun blazed, shifting the lenses to a mid-grey, while keeping my eyes more sheltered from the bitter wind.
Gradually the first mile ticked by, then the second, the sun slowly cresting in the sky, still radiating a shallow warmth, and a sheen of sweat covered my skin under the heavy jacket I wore, interrupting the slicing wind as it desperately battered against my body.
Slowly, however, the bright sun dimmed. Until I looked up and it had disappeared entirely, hidden behind thickening grey clouds.
The absence of the heat was immediately palpable, the warmth built up under my layers of clothing absorbed into my skin until it was all but gone, the clothes beginning to feel cool. I tucked my scarf tighter to my neck where the wind attempted to rip it from my body.
The feel of dampness on my cheek followed a whitening of the sky around me and I emerged from the more sheltered part of the hike, now several miles in, and pushing into early afternoon, I checked my surroundings.
The ground was a blanket of white, not frosted white, deepening, fluffy white snow.
Snowflakes twisted and spun, whirled by the endless winds, not thick enough to obstruct my view, I thanked my lucky stars, but becoming a mist between where I stood and the field beyond.
The storm was worsening.
Digging under the jacket sleeve to find my old, tattered watch strap. The one Ester had bought me when we were young. Young enough that my existence didn’t, for some unknown reason, stir her to rage.
My hope sank; it was nearly two. Using my gloved fingers, I began to dig out the printed maps, the hike had passed the thickets, the woods, into the open fields.
This was definitely past mile four, maybe. I should have been well past that by now.
I replayed the hikes. Woods, fields, one main road to cross, follow a small stream on the right, one more stretch of woodlands, then emerge towards the village and the bay would be below me.
The maps clearly showed, first fields, mile four. I needed to pick up the pace.
Trudging forwards, I found I had begun to sink into the snow and the grass underneath, the winter waterlogging the land. Fortunately, I remained dry. The hiking waterproofs over my clothes, and the boots, standing up well in the elements.
The snow was thickening, I was sure it was, the clouds a grey white, or perhaps still grey, the white now the snowfall, which was quickly turning into a blizzard.
Drawing a bitter jagged breath, I launched myself over the stile at the end of the furthest field, slipping on the bottom step and stumbling into the snow on the other side, deep enough now to cover my boots, where I found they were not waterproof.
A narrow strip of land before the next stile told me I’d found the main road, covered in a thick layer of snow, although there were no tyre tracks, I checked left and right.
Oh, no. Through the storming snowflakes, a pair of headlights appeared, rounding a corner and steadily approaching. There was no way they wouldn’t stop if they saw me, on my own, in a storm.
Willing my feet to pick up pace, the feeling in them ebbing away, I realised my face was now pricking with pain, fingertips lost to numbness, wetness absorbing into my clothing as the snow worked its way through the waterproof layers and around the edges of my clothes.
Reaching the far side of the road, I ran my tortured hands over the white-covered hedges.
Where is the stile?
Finally, I found it, lurching up and over, just as the car drew level with me. The vehicle’s window was already down, a face barely visible through the sleet, calling out to me.
“Miss?”
I slid down the far side, the steps hidden in a snowdrift.
“Miss!”
I looked behind me, stomach lurching as a man clambered onto the stile where I’d been.
“Miss! Come back!”
“I’m fine!” I yelled.
What am I doing!
“Miss!”
Turning, I ran, the figure was now into the field and I knew I could not afford to be caught up to. People would ask questions. Who was I? Why was I out? Where was my guardian?
They’d realise and send me back in a heartbeat.
I couldn’t trust anyone.
Pounding my feet into the sinking snow I surged onwards, the calls dying away into the distance. I had planned for poor weather, but it was almost a guarantee that whoever they were they were not dressed for, nor willing to undertake, a pursuit into an unknown field in a storm.
The ground suddenly gave way below me and I stumbled, panicking, lurching forwards, my feet slipping out from under me entirely. My knees dropped and ground down against sharp rocks, my hands following, I had sunk almost elbow-deep in a large stream.
This wasn’t on my map.