“Petrol’s been siphoned out.” He nodded to his shoes, which were sole-deep in a rainbow-sheened puddle. “The spare tank has been knocked over too,” he added, gesturing into the shadows of the shed.
“They really don’t want us getting away.” Something banged, from the house. Not a gunshot. More like the slam of an exterior door. “Is there some other way we can get out? Or raise the alarm? How about that farm I saw on the map—Wildwood?” She slipped out of the car and landed in the petrol with a slight splash.
“The Pritchard place. I was just thinking about that. It’s a bit of a hike through the wood to the south, but we can at least call the police from there, assuming their phone is working.”
“Are these the same neighbors who were shooting up your forest yesterday?”
“They’re a little shady, but mostly just with business dealings. And we don’t have a lot of options. Stay close. We can follow the riverbank around to the wood.”
As they ran, he picked a path that kept trees and various decrepit outbuildings between them and the abbey: sheds, a broken greenhouse, an empty chicken coop. She was glad she could just follow along, and that he was holding the weapon like he knew how, even if it was an antique. The fewer life-or-death decisions she had to make, the better. When they made it under the canopy in the wood, she bent double, panting.
“Amelia?”
She waved an apology. “I haven’t really kept up my fitness in the last year.”
“We can take a minute,” he said, scanning the trees like he could see things she couldn’t.
“Puss in Boots,” she panted.
“Sorry, what?”
“The oldest son gets the mill, the youngest gets the cat. Which turns out pretty well for him.”
“O-kay.”
“You said no one ever wrote a fairytale about a younger son.”
“Ah, right. Do ghost cats count?” Tom drew his phone out of his pocket. The screen was cracked and black. He tried switching it on, looking grim. “Dead,” he proclaimed. “It slipped from my pocket when I climbed over the ledge. Not that it was much use to us.” He put it away. “I feel awful for dragging you into this.”
“You didn’t drag me in—they dragged us both in. The blame isn’t on you.”
“Still, I’m buying you that therapy.”
There it was again, that assumption there’d be an afterward, and not just in terms of survival. She didn’t want him to be one of those people you met once, clicked with, and never saw again. But what was the alternative? Most likely, it would be a slowdeath by social media. For a while he’d like her posts and she’d like his, until the algorithms phased them out of each other’s lives.
Note to self: do not connect with him on social media.
Her earlier strategy was still the best: Thank him for the good times, get therapy for the bad, and consign it all to memory—the parts shecouldremember. She had to fix the life she had, not fool herself that she could become a different person in a different country and leave her crap behind. You could never leave your crap behind—not the crap in your head.
“Let’s keep moving,” she said.
“Tell me if you need to stop. I’m aware we haven’t eaten for ages, and we don’t have any water.”
“I’m totally one-starring this trip review.”
The trees through the forest were different from those in the glade on the other side of the house—older, oakier, gnarled into fantastical shapes. And the terrain was hillier and muddier, which made for slower progress.
“So, what happens to Rapunzel?” Tom said, after a long silence, as they jogged down a slope strewn with rotting leaves. He was navigating with the confidence of someone following a path, though she couldn’t discern one.
“Huh?”
“You told me what happens to her prince. What happens to her?”
“She gets lost in the wilderness and gives birth to twins—his, before you ask. Sometime later he finds her, and she cries on his eyes and it restores his sight.”
“So they do live happily ever after!”
“Forever traumatized, but sure. I mean, she spent much of her childhood locked up in a tower by a witch. And imagine his PTSD!”
