Sarahsatbytheentrance to her tipi, listening. She checked the time on her phone. Almost an hour of waiting and her legs were losing feeling. She stretched and allowed herself a silent yawn. Ignoring the voice inside her head telling her she was becoming a stalker, she peeped out of her door.
As Felix emerged into the night, Sarah whipped her head back inside and waited. If she strained her ears, she could just make out the tread of his feet on the grass. As his footsteps faded, Sarah risked another look. He was wearing a head torch, its light bouncing up and down with each step.
Sarah climbed out onto the grass and ran to his tipi. She poked her head around and spotted the torch’s beam disappearing towards the forest. So he had lied to her. There was no pub in the direction he was heading.
A torch of her own would be too risky. There was no way Felix could find out he was being followed. He’d never speak to her again. Sarah scuttled along as fast as she could in the direction Felix had taken. Several times she stumbled on the roots of trees, but she pressed on.
Beneath a waning moon, the forest lay black as pitch. Now accustomed to its cacophony of nocturnal creatures, it didn’t scare Sarah as it once had. Instead, she worried about losing sight of Felix and becoming lost in the mass of trees around her. At least the night was warm, spring sliding in to summer with each passing day.
The torch light disappeared, and Sarah increased her pace. As she rounded a bend, the pool of orange light came into view and Sarah hung back, pressing in to a moss-covered bank for fear of being seen. Sarah watched as Felix paused and pulled out his phone. The light caught his face and exposed a smile playing on his lips as he tapped out a message.
With his phone back in his jacket pocket, Felix pressed on up the hill. Sarah’s foot caught a stone, which went spinning across the path. Felix stopped in the middle of the path. Sarah crouched beside a bush, cursing her mistake. The head torch’s beam spun around, illuminating all corners of the path. Sarah’s heart hammered as the light drew near.
In one swift movement, the light retreated, Felix satisfied he was alone in the woods. As the path reached the summit of the hill, Felix turned and disappeared into what looked to Sarah like dense undergrowth. She sped up, hugging the bank beside the path, aware that on the far side was a sheer drop to the valley floor. The torch light had vanished beneath the mass of ferns, trunks and dense undergrowth.
Sarah proceeded with caution, climbing the steep bank by clinging on to tree roots and using protruding stones as steps. As she stepped further into the leafy darkness, thorns tore at her clothes, nettles stroked and stung her bare hands. After walking a few more metres, Sarah felt the beginnings of fear surfacing. It would be very easy to get lost in a place like this. What the hell was she doing? Perhaps Felix just fancied a night walk?
Amidst the sounds of the forest, human voices reached Sarah. They were too far away to make out the words, but close enough to tell one was male, the other female. So Felix had come out here to meet his mystery woman, after all. Sarah took a few tentative steps towards the voices. She heard laughter, and from nowhere, a burst of orange pierced through the black night.
The light grew in intensity, its flicker and multitude of oranges, reds and yellows confirming Felix had lit a fire. A thin swirl of smoke danced above the forest floor. Sarah was closer to them than she’d thought. Too close. She took a step back and a storm-felled bare branch spiked her back. She let out a cry, then clapped a hand across her mouth. The voices paused. The sound of a snapping branch told Sarah they were coming to find the source of the cry.
With as much speed as the undergrowth would allow, Sarah retraced her steps, finding the steep bank and sliding down it. Stones battered against her skin, thorns tore at her clothes. She landed in a heap at the bottom, the sound of voices not far behind her. Sarah turned and ran. Gravity propelled her forward, and she flew down the wide path.
As she neared the bottom of the path, Sarah’s boot caught on a tree root. She flung forward, her palms skidding along the gravel floor, her forehead meeting with a jutting rock. Sarah looked behind her. In the distance, the light of a torch punctured the forest’s darkness. Felix and the mystery woman were only a few minutes behind her.
Sarah heaved herself off the ground, rubbed her hands against her jeans and sprinted back towards the tipi. With minutes to spare, Sarah rushed inside, closing the doors behind her. There was no time to remove her clothes, so she kicked off her boots and climbed beneath the duvet, fully clothed. She pulled the duvet up around her chin and arranged her hair to cover the gash on her head.
Sarah lay as still as she could as footsteps approached her tipi. A thin line of blood trickled down her face, but Sarah didn’t dare rub it away.
‘Is she in there?’ asked a woman’s voice.
‘I don’t know. I’ll check.’
Sarah swallowed down anger as she heard Felix open the door of her tipi. So much for privacy and personal space. She kept her breathing slow, adding in the occasional light snore.
‘She’s fast asleep,’ said Felix, closing the door to her tipi. ‘It couldn’t have been her out there.’
‘Then who was it? Felix, no one can know I’m here.’
‘I know. Don’t worry, it was just an animal.’
‘An animal? You heard the noise, it was human.’
‘It couldn’t have been. There’s no one around except us and Sarah, and she’s fast asleep in there.’
‘She could be faking.’
‘I know what her snoring sounds like. Trust me, she’s asleep.’
I don’t snore, thought Sarah, keeping her body still as a corpse.
‘Come on, I’ll walk you back, then I’d better get some rest.’
‘Thanks, you’re the best,’ said the woman. Sarah heard the unmistakable sound of a kiss being planted on Felix’s cheek.
Sarah waited till the voices had faded into the night before she dared to move. She slipped on her boots, creeping out of the tipi towards the compost toilet. Once inside, she checked herself in the rusty mirror hanging on the door. The gash on her forehead would be hard to explain. She cleaned it the best she could, then scrubbed her grazed hands until certain all gravel and dirt had washed away.
Back in her tipi, Sarah removed her clothes and folded them in a pile. Her jumper, torn in so many places, would need to go in the bin. Her jeans were grass-stained, a brown layer of dirt clinging to the knees after her tumble. She’d deal with them tomorrow.
