1
Jay
It was just after dawn. Jay reluctantly opened his eyes and curled up, hugging his knees to his chest to try to get some warmth into his body. He had slept outside all night—or at least, since about three a.m. He hadn’t wanted to push his luck too far with the car he’d stolen, so after driving long enough to put a good bit of distance between himself and Tatchley he’d left the car at the side of the road. That’s when he set off on foot through the countryside, walking by the light of the moon, until his body was so tired he couldn’t take another step.
Angry tears trickled down his cheeks as he thought about the previous day. He’d lost Felicity. He couldn’t believe it. She’d been there in the woods with him. She’d been right there, sitting on the ground with her back against a tree, hand resting on her bump. But he’d been distracted with Mark, and when he finally turned round, she was gone. He’d tried to follow her, searching desperately for signs of her on the narrow path through the woods, but it had been useless. She’d melted away into the trees, and disappeared.
He wiped his tears away roughly, and looked up at the grey bricks of the bridge under which he’d sheltered. He couldn’t let thoughts of Felicity distract him and put him in danger. He had to assume she’d gone to the police by now, and if so, they would be trying to find him. He’d spent long enough in this place. The bridge spanned a small road, and traffic would pick up now that it was morning. He was fairly inconspicuous curled up in the undergrowth, but nevertheless it was time to go. He slowly sat up, and pulled his bag of belongings closer to him, uneasy as he remembered the bloodstained clothes he’d stuffed inside in a panic. He shuddered. Blood! Thick, sticky, repulsive blood, like dirt, but even worse. Not just any blood. Mark’s blood. An image of Mark’s broken body filled his mind, and he gagged, though his stomach was too empty to bring anything up.
He took his gloves off and stared at his hands, convinced they were still smeared with blood, and he rubbed them on his jeans to clean them. Stop! He blinked, and the illusion disappeared. Though they were still cut and bruised from attacking Mark, his hands were otherwise clean. He’d washed them, scrubbed them in fact, with washing-up liquid, before he left the house. If he’d cleaned them any more, he’d have lost the top layer of his skin.
He put his gloves back on, calmer now. He shouldn’t be feeling guilty! Mark got what was coming to him. The bastard had stolen his girlfriend from him. Not just once, but twice. He’d stolen his first love, Sammie, with his tricks and games, and he’d come between him and Felicity too. Mark was better off dead. He deserved to be dead.
And as for Felicity, running away like she had … No. Don’t think about her. Not now. Not yet.
He slipped the backpack straps over his shoulders and stood up shakily. Where to now? He didn’t have any idea where he was, so he couldn’t possibly make an informed decision of what to do next. All he could do was keep moving.
As he made his way down through some scrubby grass to a line of trees, Jay’s thoughts grew darker and more hopeless. What was the point? He’d lost everything he cared about, and there was nowhere he could go. He was hungry and thirsty, he needed to use a bathroom and he felt filthy. He couldn’t believe he’d been reduced to this again. He’d spent time sleeping rough before, and one of the worst things had been never feeling clean. That time he’d managed to get help and a place in a hostel, but there would be no help for him now. Now he was on his own.
He dug his nails into his palms until the pain cleared his head. Get a grip. You can’t give up now. If he gave up, Felicity won. Mark won. They all won, all the people who’d ever fucked with him. He wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.
In the absence of any better plan, he continued around the edge of the tree line. After a while, he ventured into the woods, surprised to find a small lake—or large pond—with a path weaving through the trees around it. There was a flock of geese on the still water, but otherwise the place was deserted and silent. He walked until he reached an information board showing pictures of birds and animals, and the name Dudford Wildfowl Reserve. Near the sign was a bench looking out over the water, so he sat down, grateful to be able to rest somewhere other than on the ground. Despite his gloves, his hands were like blocks of ice and he rubbed them together to try to get a bit of life into them. The sun was almost up now, and he was glad. Daylight would help him think clearly. It would help him form a plan.
The geese took off in a flurry of noise and he jumped as they disturbed the stillness of the quiet place. Then a noise behind him made him turn. There was a woman on the path. She was young—early twenties, he estimated, though her plain clothes and total lack of style made her appear even younger; childish, almost. Her limp, mousey-brown hair was tied back in a loose ponytail, and her eyes flicked to his face then immediately away again. She seemed as surprised to see him as he was to see her. He got the sense that she’d been planning to sit on the bench that he was occupying. She pulled her ugly beige coat closer around her, and made to walk off again, so he said, ‘Do you want to sit here?’
She stared at him. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I mean, it doesn’t matter. There’s another further along …’ She trailed off, looking as though she was about to cry. Well, this was curious.
‘Come and sit down,’ he said. He moved to one end of the bench to make room for her, and she did as he asked and sat down a careful distance from him. He didn’t speak to her straight away. She seemed timid and he didn’t want to frighten her. But she didn’t appear to be suspicious of him, so either his face wasn’t all over the news as he feared, or she hadn’t seen it.
When he glanced round at her again, she was crying silently.
‘Sorry,’ she said when she saw him looking. ‘I just, it’s …’ She shook her head.
‘I’m not having the best time right now either,’ he told her. ‘My girlfriend just left me.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry about that.’
He took a moment to look at her more closely. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, which were unpierced, and her skin was pale with an unpleasant waxy look to it, as if pressing a finger against her face would leave an indent for several seconds after. She wasn’t very pretty, that was for sure. Not to his taste, anyway. She was clutching her hands together in her lap; her short fingernails were painted pale pink, but the polish was chipped. Did she bite her nails? How disgusting.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what brings you here so early in the morning?’
Instead of answering she started fussing with a drawstring at the waist of her coat, winding the cord around her fingers, unwinding it, winding it again. ‘I was supposed to go home and rest,’ she said randomly. ‘The hospital told me …’ She stopped and took a breath. ‘My granddad is in hospital. I’ve been there the past few days. They said I should go home and rest, but I couldn’t face it. I’ve lived with him most of my life and I don’t want to go back to an empty house. That’s why I came here, because he likes it here.’
Inside Jay’s body, a fire came to life. This woman was lonely, in a house by herself, in a weakened and vulnerable state. He couldn’t believe his luck. It was as if God himself was on Jay’s side. Not that he believed in such things, but after the nightmare he’d been through, this woman was like the light at the end of the tunnel. He was almost giddy with hope and relief. ‘Is there somewhere round here we could get a coffee?’ he asked innocently.
She nodded. ‘Back outside the main entrance there’s a petrol station that does take-away coffees. There’s a café inside the nature reserve but it only opens weekends and in the summer holidays. And never this early.’
‘Would you let me buy you a coffee?’ he asked her.
She hesitated, but it was clear as day to him that she was craving some sort of company right now, and would take a chance on anyone who seemed able to provide it. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘thank you. That’s very kind.’
2
Stephanie
Stephanie tried not to make it too obvious that she kept stealing glances at the man from the bench. He was a bit dishevelled, but surely that was something to do with him just having split up with his girlfriend, as his clothes were stylish and didn’t look cheap, even if they were a little crumpled. His eyebrows and nails were well-groomed, and though there was maybe a day’s worth of stubble on his chin, she had a sense that he usually looked immaculately turned out. He paid for his coffee and her hot chocolate quickly with cash, and once they were back outside he cupped his take-away cup in both hands like he was trying to warm up.
‘Do you like birds then?’ she asked as they made their way back into the deserted wildfowl reserve.
He looked at her like he wasn’t sure what she was talking about.
‘It’s just … you’re out here ever so early—’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘No. I mean, I don’t dislike them. But I didn’t know this place was here, I just stumbled on it by accident.’ He paused. ‘After my girlfriend split up with me yesterday, I walked around for hours. I ended up walking half the night, and then I got lost. It’s just luck that I ended up here right when you were here.’ He smiled at her, which made her cheeks flush with warmth and she quickly looked away, trying to focus instead on what he’d said about how he’d spent the past few hours. He’d been walking all night? That sounded odd, but then, people did strange things when they were upset. Hadn’t she done something similar herself, driving here instead of going home, too insecure to go back to her empty house?
‘What’s your name?’ she asked him. ‘I’m Stephanie.’
He paused, then answered, ‘Jason.’
They sat down on the same bench where they’d met, and he stared out at the water. Although she was preoccupied with concern for her granddad, she still found herself appreciating the way he looked. He was several years older than her, and he had a serious, thoughtful look to him. She began to blush again, and it was as if Jason knew, because he turned to her. ‘How come your granddad is in hospital?’ he asked.
‘He had a fall,’ she said. ‘But he’s been very unwell for weeks. I … I don’t think he’s going to come back to the house again. I think he’ll need to stay somewhere with people around to look out for him.’
Jason nodded. ‘You said you’ve lived with him most of your life?’
‘Yes. He … well, he brought me up.’
‘Oh, were you … are your parents …’ He paused. ‘Sorry, I’m being nosy. You don’t have to answer.’
She sipped her hot chocolate and watched a couple of moorhens darting about through the reeds at the edge of the water. What could she tell him? She didn’t really know why her childhood had been the way it had. ‘I never really understood what happened with my parents,’ she said honestly. ‘I don’t know anything at all about my mum. As for my dad—I know a little about him. He was my granddad’s son, so he talked about him sometimes. He got in some trouble with the police, and he ended up in prison. After that, he went off to do his own thing. The idea was that granddad would take care of me initially and then my dad would take over once he’d got himself sorted. But I guess he never did.’
‘That must be difficult.’
She shrugged. ‘Not really. They say you don’t miss what you never had. I suppose I have this sense of something being missing, but—I don’t really know what it would be like to have known him. I guess I should be angry with him, but I’m not. I just … I don’t know.’ She did know really, though; she just felt silly saying it. The reality was that she longed for her dad to turn up one day, so much that she’d often daydream about it. Especially now her granddad was so unwell, the fantasy of her dad was something she could cling to. But she couldn’t talk about her desire for a fairy-tale ending in front of Jason. It was silly and naive, and she was already fretting that her choice of a hot chocolate rather than a coffee made her look childish.
‘My dad died when I was young,’ Jason told her. ‘I can remember him, though, so I know what I’m missing.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘Why did you and your girlfriend split up?’
‘It wasn’t just one thing. We hadn’t been getting on for a while, then yesterday we had a blazing row and she chucked me out.’
Stephanie nodded and they sat quietly, taking occasional sips of their drinks. The hot chocolate spread warmth through her sluggish body, and the sugar gave her a hit of energy, bringing back a bit of life. Perhaps she could face going home after all. It couldn’t hurt to have a shower and put on some clean clothes at least, even if she couldn’t get any actual rest at the house. She smiled at Jason. Normally she hated talking to anyone she didn’t know—and she didn’t know many people—but she felt comfortable with Jason. Liked him, even. She couldn’t say exactly why, she just did.