‘You all right on the water?’
She nods.
‘You can swim?’
Nods again.
‘It’s over the other side.’ He points to the opposite side of the loch. It looks miles away. Remote, though. The setting becomes more and more logical. No one would come looking for a child-killer here.
The boat chugs across the smooth surface of the loch. It should be soothing, it should remind Anna of being on holiday, of lazy days spent messing about on the water, but she’s wiped happiness like that from her mind.
She looks out at the water. It’s clear, inviting. She wouldn’t want to fall in, though. The sun is shining, but the air is biting cold and the temperature of the water must be fridge-like. Even a strong swimmer wouldn’t be able to survive in it for long. No one could have swum across. No way out.
53
By the time they reach the middle of the loch, Anna is experiencing a kind of sensory overload. She’s finally hit her limit, the contrast between inside prison and outside overwhelming. The loch is unbearably beautiful, mountains reflected in its depths, the water mirror-like, the space around them almost endless.
They are growing closer to the far side of the loch – and maybe closer now to some answers, though Anna doubts it. Maybe she’ll be on this quest forever, dodging death by a whisker day after day, just as she has since Friday, when she woke up to find the woman in the bunk below her dead.
She should have thought more of Kelly. As soon as she gets back home – but no, there is no home – as soon as she’s back in Oxford, she’ll find out what’s happening to Kelly’s remains, pay her last respects. Maybe, after all this, Anna will have to accept that she was just not meant to find out the answer to what happened to the woman. But at least she can say goodbye.
She needs to say goodbye to Tom, too.
Death’s stalking her. She’s the Jonah. She shivers at the thought, floating over deep water. She’s escaped death by car, by fire, by car again – at some point, her luck will run out.
Before her ruminations can get too bleak, though, the boat bumps its way into a jetty on the other side, considerably less polished than the one from which they departed: no neat steps leading away, just a rough slope up to a path that Anna can see snaking into the distance.
‘This is where I leave the box of supplies,’ Robert says. ‘Every Monday morning. They’d leave the empty box here too, with a note in it each time giving their requests. Last week, though, no one had collected the box from the previous week. That’s never happened before.’
Anna sits in the boat a moment longer, not sure what she’s meant to do, before getting up suddenly, rocking the vessel from side to side as she jumps out on to the jetty. She’s glad to have solid land back under her feet, though it feels like she’s still moving. There’s an unsteadiness to her.
Robert sits still in the boat.
‘Where do we go?’ she says.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’ve never come further than this jetty. That’s not in my job description. Not my business. If I’m not being paid to do it, I don’t want to know. But if you follow the path, you might find them. I’ll wait here for you.’
Jobsworth, thinks Anna. She suppresses the thought. No point seeing him as the enemy. It’s harsh terrain – maybe it breeds harshness in those who live here. Or the ability to get on with the business of survival, no questions asked about anything not directly concerning them.
She starts up the path, hands deep in the pockets of her coat. It’s a rough path, but clear enough in the ground, the earth beaten hard beneath her feet. It must be difficult in winter, ice and snow likely to make any ascent treacherous. But for now, she follows steadily where it leads, up and round the undulating slopes. It’s not long before the jetty is out of sight, only a view of a stretch of blue water beyond to show where they’ve come from.
She’s in trouble if Robert doesn’t wait for her. She’ll never get round the loch. He wouldn’t leave, though. She hopes.
Now she’s out of breath. Prison-cell workouts are fine as far as they go, but they haven’t prepared her for this slow, inexorable climb, the air cold and clear as she draws it into her burning lungs. She stops for a moment, looks around from the top of the hillock she’s reached.
Then she spots it: a building in the distance, the angles clearly manmade rather than naturally formed, standing out from the rest of the landscape. Truly isolated. Privation or just private – she can’t decide. Some people are so notorious, though, it could be the only way to have anything approaching a normal life. It would be a long way for a mob with pitchforks to trek.
She could see herself living here. It’s so beautiful. So clean. Fighting with the elements, but not other people. If her family reject her final attempt at reconciliation, then perhaps—
But it’s too late for that. Edgar’s experiment is over.
She keeps walking, energy growing the closer she gets to the house, curiosity driving her now, adrenaline too. The uncertainty of what she’ll find.
It’s close now, close enough that Anna can see the roof, the chimney. There’s daylight shining in places through the holes in the roof and—
She comes to a halt.
A grim replay. She’s been here before. Bile rises in the back of her throat.
