Even though I hadn’t thought about this place in years, I remember the way to the cottage like a muscle memory. Through the village, past the sign for Thimblenouth Force waterfall, and up a hill that seems to go on for so long you’re sure that, sooner or later, you’ll come face to face with the sky itself.
When I round the bend where I’m sure the cottage used to be, there’s a pile of stones that might once have been walls, and what looks like the remains of a roof beam poking out of a clump of nettles.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, not really. The cottage was lovingly described as ‘tumbledown’ when we came here. In the past twenty-something years, it’s not a stretch to believe that it did, indeed, tumble right down, but it’s still a shock as I stop the engine. A stark reminder that even if you think time stands still, it never does.
I stretch my legs and stand at the edge of the road, breathing in the fresh air and letting the silence fill my senses. There’s a peace here I haven’t known in years. A quiet so deep that it feels like the world is holding its breath.
I could stay here, but without the cottage to hide the van behind, it’s too exposed on the crest of the hill like this. Someone will notice a lime-green campervan and call the police because it’s so out of place.
Where else can I hide? I think of the sign I just passed, and the Kingfisher Arms – a pub halfway along the walk to Thimblenouth Force. It had a perfect rose garden with tables and chairs outside, and back steps that led down to a tiny little car park, concealed by trees, hidden away on the walking route between one waterfall and another. The kind of place you only knew was there if youknewit was there.
It would be perfect. No one would notice me. There’s nothing out of place about a vanparkedin a car park, is there?
I get back in the van and start the engine, but I’ve dillydallied for so long that darkness has consumed the world around me, and now the narrow roads are even more terrifying. Gladly there are only a few bats to witness my attempt at turning the van around, but now, every bend could hide an oncoming car and every dip could conceal a sheep with a death wish. I crawl along the winding roads, leaning forwards with a tight grip on the steering wheel again, trying to see further ahead than the campervan’s headlights allow.
At the signpost at the end of the village, I take the right-hand road towards the waterfall. I pass a wall with a banner attached to it, and it reads ‘Get out, Kingfisher House’ in angry red brush strokes, and someone’s added devil horns and a pointy tail to the G. I don’t know what Kingfisher House is or why anyone wants it out, but the van weaves because the sign has taken my attention off the road.
I indicate to turn left even though I haven’t seen another car for at least twenty minutes and turn down the even narrower lane that always felt like a secret passage leading to the waterfall walk and the hidden car park. There’s uncomfortable squeaking as the hedgerows on either side scrape against the van, and I drive over an old stone bridge across the river before the lane opens out into a small gravel car park. In front of me is the hill that leads up to the pub, a set of steps made of giant flat stones that are embedded into the grass so naturally that it looks like Mother Nature herself created them, but I can instantly tell that things have changed here too.
The pub looms on the hill in front of me, but there are no lights on and no welcoming glow from the windows. It looks closed. Abandoned, even. There’s scaffolding around one half of the building, and the car park is empty, apart from a skip with building materials spilling over its edges.
There’s a dark corner opposite me, a hedge along one side and a tree with branches that overhang so much that their leaves will brush the campervan’s roof. I couldn’t have dreamed of a more hidden place.
I inch forwards, trying to see in the dark, and make the van as inconspicuous as possible. If I park close enough to the hedge, I can pull some leaves over it to camouflage the lime-green paint.
And it’s all going really well, until the van lurches to a stop and jolts as something crunches under the front wheels.
‘Bollocks,’ I mutter to myself. It’ll be a log or a branch or something and I bet it will have caused damage to the underside. Trust me to get all this way with no damage, and then at the very last moment, to bump into something that will probably cost hundreds to fix when I get this thing back to Jared. I push myself up to see over the dashboard, but it’s an indistinguishable pile of rubbish in the dark.
It might be… camping gear? It looks like half a tent and a lantern and what might be a sleeping bag. Why dump it beside the hedge when there’s a skip just over there?
At least it probably won’t have caused much damage. It’ll be fine. No harm done, I tell myself.
And itisfine… until the pile of rubbish lets out an almighty scream.
5
I’ve killed someone.
Just when I thought my day couldn’t descend any further into criminality, I’ve accidentally murdered an innocent camper in a remote Yorkshire car park with a stolen campervan.
The screaming stops, which is somehow worse than when it was happening, and is replaced by a string of words that would make even the angriest sailor blush. Whoever’s under that tarpaulin is definitely alive, which is a relief, but they’re also clearly in a lot of pain, which is somewhat less of one.
I scramble out the door, but it’s even darker out here than it looked from inside the van. I’ll have to use the light from my pho— Oh, right. Don’t have that. Brilliant forward planning there, Dolly.
‘Oh God, oh God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you!’ I rush around the front of the van to see what I’ve done. ‘Are you hurt? Are you alive? Please tell me you’re alive.’
‘I’m alive.’ A male voice comes from underneath the tangle of tarpaulin.
Alive is good. Alive means I’m not a murderer, I’m just astoundingly bad at parking stolen vehicles in the dark.
‘Just give me a minute to work out which limbs are supposed to be attached to which other limbs.’ Despite the circumstances, the voice sounds remarkably cheerful. ‘I think you might have skewered me with my own tent pole.’
He’s joking, right? Although it seems an odd time for jokes. ‘You couldn’t put the headlights on, could you? Only you’ve crushed my lamp and I could do with a bit of light to pull thisoutof my leg.’
Headlights! Right! Why didn’t I think of that? I race back to the driver’s side and clamber in to put the headlights on again, and they illuminate half a makeshift tent stuck under my front bumper, and the scattered debris of squashed camping gear.
‘Much obliged,’ the voice says when I go back.
