They were very good questions, but I chose to ignore them.
‘We’ll be fine,’ I told my anxious back-seat companion. But somehow, I didn’t think even my dog believed the lie.
I drove on slowly for a further fifteen minutes, trying to remember how long the inward journey had taken. It was getting much harder to ignore the niggling feeling that I ought to have been back on the lane by now. Were there other tracks running through these woods? Had I taken the wrong one and got myself lost in the forest? As a child, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ had been my favourite fairy tale, but it was far less appealing to find myself living it out in real life.
My hands were white-knuckled and starting to cramp from gripping the steering wheel. I removed one to hurriedly wipe my eyes, which were watering from the effort of staring into the blizzard. I refused to accept those tears had anything to do with Joshand how he’d reacted to seeing me again. From now on, he was as dead to me as I clearly was to him.
It was an unfortunate last thought to have in my head before a bad situation got significantly worse.
Above the banshee screech of the wind came a noise that my town-dweller brain couldn’t identify. It sounded like a thundering locomotive. Beneath my tyres I felt the ground shudder. Stupidly, I was still thinking,Earthquake?when the view through my windscreen was suddenly filled with the terrifying sight of an enormous tree crashing down less than thirty feet ahead of me.
Instinctively I stamped on the brakes. From that moment everything seemed to slow down, all except for my heart rate which was currently cramming more beats into a minute than it had ever achieved before.
I seemed to have all the time in the world to realise that braking hard had been the worst thing I could have done, as my wheels locked and I lost control of the car. It skidded forward on the ice, the fallen tree growing larger and larger in my windscreen as we careened towards it. I braced myself for the inevitable impact, only to see a new danger up ahead. The car was no longer travelling in a straight line but was veering towards the edge of the track ... and the ditch.
It was a graceful accident, if such a thing existed. One minute we were on the track, and the next we were at a forty-five-degree angle in the ditch. However elegant it might have looked, the car had still jerked and bumped roughly when we’d come off the track. My right shoulder collided with the driver’s door and the side of my head connected painfully with the window.
But the ditch had achieved what the brakes could not: it had stopped the car. We weren’t a crumpled concertina of metal, pretzelled around the tree. Ignoring the pain in my head and shoulder, I scrambled around in my seat, desperate to check on Fletcher.Please, not Adam’s dog. Please, don’t let anything have happened to him.With one arm braced on the dashboard I swivelled around to check. Fletcher was huddled in one corner of the tilted seat, wide-eyed and trembling. I reached over and gently touched his face and was rewarded with a swift and tentative lick. Some of my fear subsided, as I quickly ran my hands over him and he didn’t flinch at my touch. I sent up a silent thank you that we’d bought the top-of-the-range dog safety harness, which I’d joked at the time looked more like a Kevlar vest.‘You never know,’Adam had said. And remembering his words was all that it took. The sobs that followed were gut-wrenching, like the ones I’d cried over a year ago in this same car, when I’d left the hospice knowing nothing would ever be the same again.
But you didn’t hit the tree, Lily. You’re shaken up, but neither of you are hurt. You’re alright.Even in the worst of times, I could always rely on Adam’s voice to reassure me. And he didn’t fail me now.
Gradually my sobs subsided, and that’s when the cold terror slid home. We were in the middle of a forest, in a raging blizzard, with no car and no phone signal.
Fletcher and I were in big, big trouble. And I had no idea how to get us out of it.
I saw the headlights first, dazzling me in the rear-view mirror as I struggled to release myself from the imprisoning seat belt. They grew brighter, slicing through the falling snow and lighting up the forest around us. The vehicle came to a stop, and even above the shrieking wind I heard the pounding of feet on compacted snow and a voice calling my name. The door on the passenger side, which was now curiously above me, was wrenched open, and a flashlightbeam, as bright as a search light, raked the interior of my car. I winced as it hit my eyes.
‘Lily.’ I’d heard Josh say my name a thousand times – in amusement, in disbelief, even in anger – but I’d never heard that particular thread of desperation running through it before. ‘Are you alright?’
I opened my mouth, but shock and relief had stolen my voice. I managed a shaky nod.
‘Thank God,’ he muttered. ‘When I saw the tree, and the tracks in the snow ...’ His voice trailed away and I glanced at the fallen oak, realising how easily my car could have been beneath it when it came crashing down.
‘Are you hurt?’ Josh asked, this time running the torch slowly down my body.
‘No, I’m just shaken up,’ I said in a quivering whisper.
‘That makes two of us,’ he said, not far enough beneath his breath for me not to have heard. ‘I never meant to let you get so far ahead, but I had to stop twice to haul fallen branches off the track.’
‘But I told you not to follow me,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well, luckily for you I’m crap at taking orders.’ He finished his visual assessment and seemed satisfied that all my limbs were intact and still functioning. ‘Next time you say something dumb I’m not even going topretendto listen to you.’
‘What makes you think there’ll be a next time?’
For the first time I caught a glimpse of the smile I remembered. ‘We’ve known each other for twenty years, Lily. Sooner or later one of usalwayssays something dumb. This time it was you.’
I was still struggling with how to respond when Josh leant further into the car and released the seat belt which my trembling fingers had been struggling to undo.
‘Let’s continue this discussion back at the cabin,’ he said, extending his hand towards me. A kaleidoscope of memories ofJosh reaching down through leaves and branches to haul me up time-travelled from the Bakers’ back garden to the present.
‘I thought I wasn’t welcome there.’
He sighed heavily. ‘You’re not. I still don’t want you under my roof, but you’ve left me with no choice.’
There were at least a dozen snarky retorts all jostling for pole position on the tip of my tongue, but I silenced them all. I might have been obstinate, but I wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t the time to bite the hand that was attempting to rescue me, albeit reluctantly.
‘Okay. But can we get Fletcher out first, please? He’s really scared.’
