Chapter 45
My chair scrapes across the floor tiles as I launch myself to my feet.
‘Is everything okay?’ Dorrit asks, but I’m so busy scrambling to leave that I only answer her with a quick nod.
Rushing out of the house, I leap into the world outside. It’s as chilly as it was earlier, but after Dorrit’s revelation the air feels icier than ever. I leave her garden behind, cutting down the gravel path and heading back to Maple Crescent.
My shoes slap the pavement as I race down the road, passing the Clarkes’ house, the police and the nosey bystanders. They watch me with an even keener curiosity than before.
‘Running to Otis? You’ve just missed him,’ Sonya shouts after me, but I don’t care what she has to say. I’m too preoccupied by looking for the sign that points out the public footpath running down the side of Otis’s house.
I sprint down the dirt track, sending dead leaves scattering behind me in all directions, until the bare branches of trees overhead knot into an eerie canopy of winter woodland. The woods at the back of the Clarke house, otherworldly but most importantly, narrow.
As the road behind me disappears, Bramblethorpe is swallowed by nature. I keep my gaze fixed ahead, looking through the trees to the fields that I know are coming. Twigs break underfoot, the only sound that can be heard in this silent slice of countryside.
Breaking through the final wall of trees, I reach the first field.
The blessing of a clear day means I can see what Alexa meant when she described this view as fields that go on forever. Long grass stretches ahead of me as far as the eye can see. But it’s not what’s beyond the field that I want to find – it’s who I suspect is in it.
I push forward into the grass, my head turning this way and that, searching for a figure in the distance, but all I can see is the serenity of nature. I walk deeper into the field, straining to see far ahead, but no one comes into view.
‘Hello?’ I call out, waiting for a reply that never comes.
Dejection overcomes me as I realise the only thing keeping me company is the panting of my own breath. Folding at the waist, I rest my hands on my knees and fight to catch my breath as well as steady my wavering emotions.
I was so sure I was onto something. So sure this was it.
Straightening up and turning around, I stumble back towards the trees. Their trunks are dense, a barrier blocking me from the rest of the world. My gaze focuses on their hostility until a movement in the shadows makes my heart stop.
Slowing, I edge forward until the woodland draws closer. That’s when I see the shape that’s hidden in the trees.
The shape that’s moving closer to me.
A person.
When they finally emerge from the dense line of woodland, I lose the ability to breathe.
‘You,’ I whisper.