The Way Through the Woods Read online

  They stood on the step staring at each other, warm yellow lamplight spilling onto them through the windows of the pub. Yes, he had a nice face this one, not what you’d call striking, not exactly, and with a few worry lines, but, well – nice. Suddenly Emily felt quite breathless, like she was doing something she oughtn’t, but didn’t care. She felt quite free.

  ‘Er,’ her companion said, after a moment or two standing like this. He lifted his finger as if wanting to attract her attention, while not actually causing any bother, ‘I don’t know, you know, where you live…’

  ‘Oh, of course, silly me!’ Emily pointed past the grey silhouette of the old mill towards Long Lane, winding its way across the darkened fields. ‘Out that way. Not quite four miles.’ She bit her lip. ‘Not too far for you, is it?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ He offered her his arm; she linked her own through it, and they walked companionably down the road and turned onto Long Lane. Williams had turned shy; he would catch her eye, open his mouth to start up a conversation and then close his mouth again and smile at her instead. With his free hand, he was still fiddling with the white feather. Maybe that was what was making him bashful.

  ‘I hope you’re not too upset about that,’ Emily said, nodding towards the feather. ‘Nobody with any sense hands them out. Disgusting thing to do, if you ask me.’

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘Your white feather. You weren’t too upset by all that business, were you?’

  He looked at the feather, as if he hardly remembered he still had it. He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Upset? Why would I be upset?’

  ‘Well, you know…’ Emily tried to think of a delicate way of putting it, because you couldn’t outright say to a young man, particularly such a nice young man, They think you’re a coward because you’re not in uniform. ‘They give them to those who haven’t been out there… You know. As an insult.’

  The penny dropped. ‘Oh! Yeah, I see. Probably should have thought of that.’

  ‘Maybe next time keep your silver badge on or something. Well, I’m glad you weren’t offended, Mr Williams, but where’ve you been that you don’t know what handing out a white feather means?’

  ‘Here and there.’ He waved the feather around vaguely. ‘You know how it is.’

  ‘You’d better not turn out to be a spy,’ Emily said. ‘I’d never live that one down.’ She gave him a long sideways look. ‘Here, you’re not a spy, are you?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not a spy.’

  ‘Well, I doubt you’d tell me if you was, so I’ll just have to take your word for it, won’t I?’

  ‘’Fraid so!’

  ‘Well, spy or not, you’re not to mind.’

  ‘Mind? What am I supposed to be minding?’

  ‘The feather, you daft thing!’ Emily slapped his arm, gently – and left her hand resting there. ‘No, you’re not to mind. What do that lot in there know about the War? Not a thing. Not one thing. None of them are going to get their call-up, are they? All too old. You’d be better sticking Jack Jones’s old pig in a uniform and sending that out. Oh, it’s easy to be brave sitting with your pals in the Fox all warm and with plenty of beer to hand, isn’t it? Not so easy when you’re stuck out there in the mud with the fleas and the rats for company.’ Emily felt her eyes prickling. She was probably saying too much, but she didn’t care. She was past minding her words on account of others. ‘Besides, they’ve got no idea why you’re at home, have they? You could have been wounded, couldn’t you?’ A sudden, dreadful thought crossed her mind. ‘Here, you’re not a conchie, are you? Because I’d never live that one down neither.’

  ‘A conchie?’ he said. ‘What’s that?’

  She stopped in her tracks. ‘A conscientious objector, of course – here, how do you not know that? Where have you been?’

  ‘Nowhere, Emily, honestly. I’ve just… had a lot on my mind recently. But, no – I’m not a conscientious objector.’

  ‘Have you been in the army?’

  He hesitated before answering. The moon disappeared behind a cloud and all of a sudden she couldn’t make out his features any more, only dark shapes and shadows. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Well, sort of. It’s difficult to explain and I can’t say any more, Emily… Um. Careless talk costs lives, you know, that kind of thing…’

  ‘You shouldn’t say if you don’t want to. Don’t tell me a lie, though.’

  ‘I’m not a spy, and I’m not a conchie.’ The moon came back and again she saw that lop-sided smile, enough to turn a girl soft. ‘I don’t think I’m a coward either. But you’ll have to take my word for that, too.’

  ‘Well,’ Emily said gently, ‘what sort of world would it be if you couldn’t take a young gentleman at his word?’ She patted his arm. ‘You’re a nice lad, aren’t you, Mr Williams? You listen. Most lads soon stop listening or never start in the first place. You can tell a good lad by the way he listens. Not much for a girl to ask, is it?’ Reaching out, she took the white feather from him and stuck it into her hat, next to the little jet butterfly. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Because we’re all in this together, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right about that.’

  The stars twinkled brightly in the unpolluted sky. Emily looked round at the dark fields. She felt all shy herself, now. They weren’t so far from the village and she wondered if anyone could see them. ‘Oh, I can’t stand how long this bloomin’ walk takes. Every bloomin’ night. Let’s take the shortcut.’

  Her companion looked doubtfully across the dark field. ‘I can’t see a path—’

  ‘There is one,’ Emily said, ‘if you know your way. Don’t worry, Mr Williams, I won’t drag you into the woods!’ She crossed the lane, clambered onto the fence and hopped down the other side. ‘I can give you a hand if you need it,’ she said, cheekily.

  ‘I think I’ll manage…’ Carefully he climbed onto the fence, and sat on top, legs straddling it. He looked ever so uncomfortable, like a hen perched on top of an unexpectedly large egg. Emily laughed. ‘You have to be a city boy – it’s like you’ve never seen a fence before tonight!’

  ‘Actually, I’m from a village, it’s just I’m not usually the one doing the climbing.’

  ‘Got a pal to do it for you?’

  ‘Something like that.’ He swung his legs over and jumped down.

  ‘Everyone needs a pal, Mr Williams. I’ll be yours if you’ll be mine.’ She held out her hand, and he took it – and suddenly the laughter bubbled up from inside her like a little brook, the way it used to with her Sam, and Emily broke into a run, pulling her companion after her across the dark field and down into the hollow.

  The trees came from nowhere. Mr Williams yanked Emily’s arm so hard she came to a sudden halt.

  ‘Ow!’ Emily dropped his hand to rub her shoulder. ‘Oi! That hurt!’

  ‘Sorry! Sorry! We were getting very close to the trees.’

  ‘The trees? Don’t tell me you believe all that nonsense about the woods?’

  ‘The nonsense?’

  ‘Swallow Woods,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you heard – they swallow you up!’ She wiggled her fingers spookily. ‘Nonsense.’

  Williams peered through the branches, as if trying to catch a glimpse of something. ‘Don’t underestimate old stories,’ he said. ‘Stories are powerful. And nonsense is sometimes a word for something we don’t quite understand, yet.’ He looked back towards the lane. ‘Perhaps we should keep to the path,’ he said, more to himself, it seemed, than to Emily. ‘Perhaps we should find out where that takes us. If there’s a path, there has to be a reason for the path…’

  ‘It’s a shortcut. It doesn’t go near the woods.’ Emily felt put out that he was no longer paying her any attention. All this was spoiling the mood. ‘You’re not afraid of some bloomin’ old trees, are you—?’

  ‘Ssh!’ He held his finger up to his lips.

  ‘Don’t shush me, Lord Muck!’

  ‘Listen!’ he whispered. ‘Can you hear it?’
r />   ‘I can’t hear a thing…’ He was starting to frighten her. She was painfully aware now that she was alone in a dark field with a complete stranger. But the man didn’t make any move to hurt her. He kept on listening for a while, and then shook his head.

  ‘Funny,’ he said, to himself again, like she wasn’t there. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a motorway…’

  ‘A which-way?’

  He turned to her and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, Emily,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. I… Oh, don’t worry about it. Shall we go back to the path?’

  ‘I don’t want to go back to the path,’ Emily said. She felt scared now, tricked, as if she had been brought here under false pretences. ‘I’m not sure I want to go anywhere with you.’

  ‘OK… Er… Well, we can stand here for a bit… If you’d rather.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to stand anywhere with you, neither!’

  ‘Then what do you want to do? We’ll do whatever you want.’ Williams held his hands up, a peace offering. ‘I don’t want to scare you. I’m not scary, you know. I’m very ordinary.’ He looked it too, an ordinary young man completely bewildered as to what he’d done to upset a young lady. Emily suddenly felt very foolish, and very sad. ‘What do you want to do, Emily?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Emily cried. Why had she come out here with this young man? What had she been thinking? Everyone had heard her say he could walk her home. She’d be a laughing stock in the morning. But why shouldn’t she come here with him? She was twenty years old, and her heart was broken, perhaps beyond repair – and what she wanted most of all was to feel alive again, young again, as young as she’d felt that night two years earlier when Sammy finally plucked up his courage and slipped the ring on her finger. Turning her back on Mr Williams, Emily walked slowly and deliberately towards the trees.

  ‘Emily… Er, what are you doing?’

  Emily looked up at the sky. It was cloudy; the moon and the stars were gone. When she looked back over her shoulder, she could no longer see Williams through the dark. Something of her old spirit flared up within her.

  ‘Catch me if you can,’ she said and, with a laugh as young as spring water, she ran into Swallow Woods. Behind her, she heard Williams yell, ‘Emily! Wait!’ An owl, startled by the commotion, flapped up from its branch and hooted out its grievance across the empty silent fields before swooping off, high over the hollow. The two young people passed beneath the trees. Their leaves shuddered, and then turned unnaturally still. And that was the last Amy or the Doctor heard of Rory for quite some time.

  Chapter

  3

  England, now, four days later

  The clock on the wall was a perfectly ordinary clock, the kind of clock that could be found in any institutional setting on practically every planet. The planet in question being Earth, this clock displayed (in perfectly ordinary circular fashion) a clear set of numbers ranging from ‘one’ to ‘twelve’. It also had an hour hand, a minute hand, and a second hand which ticked resolutely and didn’t lose time in such a way as to make life inconvenient for anyone. All told, this was a perfectly ordinary clock.

  The wall upon which the clock hung was also ordinary, and the room of which the wall formed one side wasn’t particularly distinguished either. It had four stackable office chairs, a decent-sized table on which sat some recording equipment, a door with a lock, and a window with a view onto a car park. There was a blind on the window, but that was broken, and had been for several weeks. People kept forgetting to write the memo. The blind slumped diagonally down across the window, and was likely to remain in this position for some time yet. People had other things on their mind.

  About the only thing that wasn’t exactly ordinary about the room was the man sitting behind the table. This man was on the youngish side of indeterminately aged, relatively tall, and he had unkempt hair and two pairs of loose limbs that looked as if they would fit more properly onto an entirely different body. The man wore a nice bow tie and an exasperated expression. He had spent the last forty minutes alternating between drumming his fingers on the table top and swinging back on his chair. About four minutes earlier he had started to get seriously bored.

  The door swung open and two detectives walked in (for this ordinary room was one of many that, when put together, comprised a decent-sized if ordinary small-town police station). The man in the bow tie looked up.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘is this going to take much longer? Because the fact is I’m actually on quite a tight schedule and if that clock of yours up there is accurate – and I imagine it’s accurate, you all seem like very sober and responsible people, and it seems like a very sober and responsible kind of clock – then I need to go and chase down a couple of young women.’

  The two detectives – an older red-haired man, and a younger blonde woman – looked at each other.

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir,’ said the older one, as he took his seat.

  The younger detective sat down next to him and reached across to switch on the recording equipment. ‘Interview recommenced at,’ she glanced up at the clock, ‘ten thirty-seven.’

  ‘You seem to spend a lot of time on the road,’ said the older detective. ‘Do you travel around with many young women?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the unordinary young man. ‘Now. I see where you’re heading with that question, and I want to make it perfectly clear right away that none of them have ever come along unwillingly. Besides, it’s strictly invitation only.’ He considered these last statements. ‘Well, I suppose there was the history teacher. And the air stewardess. But they both had opportunities to leave and they both decided to stay… I’m not helping myself, am I?’

  There was a slight and very strained silence.

  ‘I do need to get going, though,’ the young man said. ‘Things have turned out not to be as perfectly straightforward as I’d anticipated.’

  ‘Have you ever met a young woman called Laura Brown?’

  ‘No. And I haven’t met Vicky Caine either… Oh, you hadn’t mentioned her yet, had you? I’m really not helping myself, am I?’

  ‘If there is anything at all that you would like to tell us,’ said the older detective, ‘now is the time to do it.’

  ‘How about – if you want to find your two missing girls, then you should let me go immediately because you are dealing with a situation way beyond your comprehension? No? No, somehow I didn’t think you’d be persuaded. Oh dear, this is going to cause us some difficulties… What can I tell you…? Ah! There is something! Something that’s been bothering me.’

  The young man put his elbow on the table and leaned forwards, beckoning to the two detectives to come closer. His eyes were very dark, shadowed, and they didn’t give anything away. Half-unconsciously, half-unwillingly, both detectives leaned in to listen.

  ‘Somebody,’ the young man whispered, ‘really ought to fix that blind.’

  Two hours later, the police press conference about the two missing girls was getting ready to start. The TV journalists and news reporters had been gathering in the town square for the last hour like crows from a Hitchcock movie. The area directly in front of the police station was packed out; some of the cameramen had resorted to standing on the steps leading up to the war memorial in order to get any pictures at all.

  Jess Ashcroft made her way through the crowd, ignoring the complaints of those she passed as she pushed doggedly through. Three or four feet from the front, she stopped, peered over the last few heads and nodded, satisfied that she was close enough to see. Just about. She dumped her bag on the ground, rummaged around, and pulled out a pen and notepad.

  ‘Nice moves,’ said a voice in her ear.

  Jess looked round. The speaker was a bone-thin young man, expensively clad, holding a mobile phone like it was part of him. She recognised him at once from one of the news channels.

  ‘Big story,’ said Jess. ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’

  ‘Quite right!’ He g
rinned at her. White teeth. Cute as a button. ‘I like your style, though.’

  ‘You know what the old song says. Dedication’s all you need.’

  He laughed. ‘Good for you! So, what do you make of the whole thing?’

  ‘Well…’ Jess didn’t want to play all her cards, not all at once. ‘Must be awful for the families, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, rather impatiently, ‘but the police kept the first one quiet, didn’t they? There’s something weird going on there.’

  ‘Laura Brown is eighteen years old,’ Jess said cagily. ‘An adult. Well within her rights to get up and go wherever she likes.’

  ‘Nah…’ The TV journalist shook his head. ‘Doesn’t make sense. She was studying for A levels. Fundraising for a trip to Africa. Not the type to disappear into the blue. Yet the police don’t seem to have been bothered until the second one went missing. You have to wonder whether it would have helped poor Vicky Caine if she’d known there was kidnapper on the loose. I think someone’s head will roll over this.’

  Jess chewed her pen. In fact, it had been no surprise to her that a second girl had gone missing. She’d been dreading the news ever since her younger sister, Lily, had texted two weeks earlier that her school friend Laura Brown wasn’t answering calls and her Facebook page hadn’t been updated. Jess had been waiting almost unconsciously to hear who was next.

  ‘Exam pressure?’ she said, not believing that for a second. ‘It can hit some people hard.’

  ‘Not likely to hit both of them, though, is it? I’m Charlie, by the way.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen you on the telly. I’m Jess, from The Herald.’

  His expression changed from friendly interest to friendly pity. ‘Local paper? Bless.’