‘They didn’t. He just turned up. Maybe he knew one of the camp leaders. I don’t know … I remembered him because it was odd and sort of unexplained. Then he left.’
And the way Lucy says it, it is as though the topic is closed now, once again.
‘I think because it’s near Big Bend there will be tourists,’ Lucy says. ‘It might not be populated, but it might attract tourists. The stargazing points and all that. So there will be people to hide among.’
It’s enough to momentarily quell Simone’s panic. Yes, they are tourists. Two hikers here to walk and to camp. It isn’t so far from the truth.
‘We’ll stay a night,’ she says. They need rest and sleep and proper food. ‘Then we’ll – I don’t know,’ she says, ‘but –’
‘We’ll instruct Moody.’
‘Yes. Yes, I said yes. We’ll meet him and see what he’s like.’
They set off along the high street and Simone could not feel more conspicuous. It’s the middle of the afternoon, notraffic, no more horses, either, but as they walk they begin to see people here and there, each one carrying with them a percentage chance that they will recognize Simone and Lucy. Dust kicks up around them as they go, a world in some sort of old-fashioned sepia. The windows tinted, the plants and shrubs brown, too.
The buildings have creaking wooden signs –COFFEE HERE– and frames. There are several ranches in the distance. A second bar, down the street there, with a red flag with a skull and crossbones on it, and what looks like a paddock outside it; maybe the horse has escaped from there. Simone blinks. They could be in 1950. They could be in1850. In the distance, a man with a cowboy hat on wanders slowly.
Simone glances upwards. Lucy looks, too, at a little office they pass. It has in the window a handwritten sign that reads simply:BOUNTY HUNTER.
Their eyes meet. ‘God,’ Lucy says.
‘At least we do look a little different to the photos, even now,’ she says. Lucy’s lost water weight in her face. But she also looks suspiciously rough around the edges: the grooves of her fingernails are slightly dirtied, her hair tangled at the ends. But nobody observes as closely as mothers.
‘How doIlook?’ Simone says, and she stops, Lucy scrutinizing her. They’re standing by the side of the road, now in the shade of a motel. It casts rectangular shadows over their eyes, and Simone is glad of them. Funny the luxuries you miss: sunglasses, shadows, clouds, water, salt, hairbrushes. The list goes on.
‘Normal,’ Lucy says. Simone’s hair is raked back into a bobble. Her clothes aren’t really dirty. She trusts her daughter, that she doesn’t look like somebody on the run, whatever that is. ‘Well, haggard, but normal haggard.’
‘Ha, thanks.’
‘Ageing hides a lot of your sins.’
‘This is it, then,’ Simone says. ‘Let’s walk. Take me to the house.’
They step out from the shade and into the blazing sunlight. Simone looks up, checking for CCTV, and she wonders if there will be a time in the future when she doesn’t do this.
Lucy directs them along the high street and then they make their way into the suburbs. Caravans, abandoned vehicles, more horses. The roads are still wide and sandy, houses dotted up right to the dry hills, skies huge and open.
In the distance there are a handful of white domes. ‘Stargazing,’ Lucy says, catching Simone looking. ‘See? Tourists.’
‘Hmm. I don’t have a good feeling about this place.’
‘We always have the tent,’ Lucy says, but they can’t live in the tent forever. And although she thinks this, Simone still hesitates, protective of Lucy but also of their tentative two-day survival, so far. It seems crazy to change something.
‘It’s that one,’ Lucy says after half an hour, as they turn on to yet another wide, dusty street that is poorly defined, sandy at the edges, the sort of road you might find near a beach, where path and coast merge.
Lucy indicates a pink house, a bungalow, sides stained with water damage, roof cracked, though the rest of it looks in good order. A sturdy front door with no window, shutters on the windows … Simone looks at this place differently; she is looking for a bunker, a safe house.
Moody’s house. A lawyer’s house. A good place to hide, and an even better place to work out if its owner is trustworthy.
It has a wraparound porch: Simone’s always wanted to cook on one, but she won’t here. Her eyes linger on it. Oh, there’s a proper gas barbecue …
She hesitates for a moment, wondering if it’s better toleave Lucy out here alone or take her in with her, into the unknown. ‘Stay there,’ she says eventually. ‘We don’t know if someone might be in there. Better for just me to go.’
‘We said it was just you on the booking,’ Lucy agrees.
‘Do I need a code or anything?’
Lucy shakes her head. ‘Key under the mat,’ she says, and Simone winces, wondering if anything will ever feel secure enough again.
