Chapter Thirty-Two
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Well before dawn, I give up on the hope of snatching even one more minute of sleep. My body aches from trying to squeeze my five-foot-nine-inch frame into my tiny car, and it was cold in the night too – I had to unpack half my suitcase in the boot to try to find my hoodie and tracksuit bottoms. The extra layers still weren’t enough, so I dragged on a few more.
My car battery is running low so I didn’t dare risk a drive back into town last night. Depending on what I can see when it’s light enough, I’m thinking that the best way to find Ash might be to try to follow his footsteps from here. But first I check Instagram to see if Beca has replied. She hasn’t. Hardly surprising, considering the hour I tried to contact her and the hour it is now. Chances are it’ll go into her hidden requests and she won’t even see it.
I’m not expecting to find literal footsteps, so when dawn breaks to show several sets of large boot prints trodden into the soft earth right by the barbed-wire fence, hope surges in my stomach.
I quickly take off most of my extra layers so I look less like someone wearing a novelty sumo-wrestler costume and more like the Ellie that Ash might remember, and then I pull on the only pair of trainers I was expecting to use for my now-abandoned holiday in Suffolk.
Ash’s footprints – if they are Ash’s footprints – are quickly swallowed up in the long grass, but the grass has been flattened into a long, straight line that points at the woods in the distance. It’s possible that an animal created the track, but it’s also possible that Ash did and it’s my best hope of finding him, so I set off at a brisk pace, trying to ignore the fact that my trainers are soaked through after only a few metres.
It’s downhill all the way, with the occasional very slippery slope. I sincerely hope that I won’t have to climb back up here wet and weary and still none the wiser as to Ash’s whereabouts.
I reach the woods after about twenty minutes, and apart from scaring some sheep who ran from me bleating in terror, the journey has been uneventful. Birdsong rings out from above and I look up and see birds – hundreds of them – in the treetops. They’re so noisy I barely hear a regular, low thudding over their rattles, squawks and trills.
Pausing for a moment, I try to work out what the noise is – and where it’s coming from. I detect the sound of running water, too, and wonder if there’s a stream or a river nearby.
In the lightening sky, I can make out the faintest of tracks at my feet, so I continue onwards on high alert, scanning the trees in every direction.
The deeper into the woods I go, the thicker the vegetation becomes. If it weren’t for the uplifting birdsong and the sound of tumbling water, I might feel as though the forest was closing in on me.
The cabin I eventually come across is so hidden behind dense foliage that I almost don’t see it, but the regular, low thudding has led me here, and now, suddenly, it’s stopped.
I want to call out, but what if it’s not Ash out here? What if it’s another man? A stranger in the woods?
There’s a gap in the foliage so I step carefully through it, wincing at a burgeoning blister on my left heel. When I reach the back of the cabin, I tentatively creep around the perimeter, my heart in my throat at what I might find.
Please, please, please …
There’s a crunch of footsteps, the sound of rustling followed by another thud, louder this time, and then a knock. As I peek around the edge of the cabin, my stomach cartwheels at the sight of a half-naked, very broad man standing with his back to me, an axe in his hand.
It takes me a second to realise it’s Ash.
My heart hangs motionless in my chest for a beat as he brings his muscled arms up and over his head and swings the axe down, slicing it clean through a log that’s sitting grain up on a thick tree stump – and then it begins to thump .
He throws both pieces of firewood onto a nearby pile – they land with a knock – and then he grabs another log and repeats the process, his back muscles rippling with the motion.
I’m struck frozen, speechless. I always loved his leanly muscled frame, but I can’t tear my eyes away from his lumberjack impression. And then I realise that it’s not an impression, it’s real. I’m very likely standing next to a cabin he built with his bare hands, judging by the clearing dotted with tree stumps up ahead.
He lays his axe down on the stump and stretches his bent arms over his head, flexing his neck. I hear a crack and then another crack as he releases the tension in his joints. A pair of weathered khaki shorts sit low on his hips and his skin is golden brown.
He rakes his hand through his shaggy hair – longer than it was the last time I saw him and closer in length to when we met interrailing – and reaches for a water bottle. As he tilts his head back and drinks, I notice another detail about his changed appearance: he has a thick, dark gold beard. He finishes drinking and puts the bottle down before picking up his axe and reaching for another log from the pile.
‘Ash.’
His name has come out of my mouth of its own volition.
He freezes, still bent at the waist.
I force myself to step out from behind the cabin, my pulse sprinting.
‘Ash,’ I say again.
And then he slowly straightens up, still with his back to me. He’s like a statue carved from marble by an old master.
‘It’s me. Ellie.’
My heart keeps stuttering. I’m so on edge, so full of hope and longing. I’ve found him. He’s here. It’s Ash.
I watch as his chest visibly expands and contracts, listen as his lungs release a long, heavy breath, and just as I’m wondering if he might have lost his ability to hear, he turns around.
The man staring back at me is not the man I remember. His expression is hard, cold. There is not an ounce of love in his eyes, not a smidgeon of gentleness.
He’s regarding me with hatred.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he asks.