When I open my eyes I’m in the room again. It was just a dream. A horrible dream. My back hurts and as I slowly come to I see that I am still slumped against the door. Panic engulfs me then and I jump to my feet.

I can hear a faint noise outside, a clumping sound that could be footsteps but could just be a tree creaking in the wind.

‘Please,’ I cry, pounding my fists against the door. ‘Can you hear me? Mark, please just let me see him, let me know that he’s okay.’

41

I stop pounding the door and listen. It’s silent now. Outside I hear the muffled sound of birdsong. I turn round. The room is full of pale-honey light. The morning has come. I see the blanket lying on the floor where Joe dropped it. I pick it up and drape it over my shoulders. It’s freezing in here. I sink to my knees and pull the blanket tight around me. I have no idea what to do. I could try calling out of the window again but the silence out there is ominous. There is nobody left here. I’ve been abandoned.

As the warmth of the blanket envelops my skin I look across and see Grace’s journal on the other side of the room where I dropped it. Easing myself across the floor I take it and open up where I left off.

… When I opened my eyes I was lying on my back in the clearing. Every part of me was aching: my head, my legs, my arms. Looking down, I saw the shape of a gun imprinted in the snow and smelt the familiar smell of gunpowder drifting on the air. But the gun was nowhere to be seen. After a few moments I got to my feet and looked about for Isobel, but there was no sign of her either. I tried calling her name, but the wood returned my voice as fresh snow began to fall. I followed the line of flakes as they fell from the sky and settled on the ground and that’s when I saw it: a patch, the size of a small animal, of deep red blood, staining the snow at the exact spot where I’d been lying. I quickly examined myself for cuts or wounds but I was untouched.

No. No, it couldn’t be. I called out for Isobel again as I stumbled through the snow and tried to remember what had happened. I remembered her coming to me as I lay under my doss bag. I remembered her asking me to help. Then I remembered the plan, the plan I’d spent hours perfecting, and I remembered that name, the name of the animal she was planning to run away with, the one she said she couldn’t live without.

Steve Markham. She loved him but when I saw him sitting there on the tree stump puffing away on his cigarette I could tell that he wasn’t fit to lick her boots. He was a beast, a sneaky-looking fool who had no business being around my Isobel. She couldn’t see that though. She couldn’t understand that he had violated her. But I knew. I knew from the moment I saw him with his dirty hands wrapped round her. I knew that I wanted to kill him. That had been my plan: to get Isobel to lead me to him, then I’d put a bullet in his head. But all I could remember was approaching the crag, seeing them together. Then nothing. Why couldn’t I remember?

As I reached the end of the wood I saw something lying in the snow. It was Isobel’s red ribbon. I picked it up and placed it in the palm of my hand. Then I brought it to my face and sniffed it. It smelt of shampoo and flowers, it smelt of goodness. It smelt of Isobel. What had happened to her? Why hadn’t I been able to protect her? I was a failure, an idiot, I told myself as I put the ribbon in my pocket and staggered across the road towards the village. It must have been about four in the morning as the sky had that strange silvery sheen to it that only comes in a mid-winter dawn. I knew those things because me and Sarge had spent our life together observing the seasons and the sky, we’d lived in peace, and now I’d brought an outsider into our lives and all hell had broken loose.

And in that moment I remembered and my blood ran cold.

Sarge. He had been there. I’d shouted at him and told him he was a liar but him turning up had stopped me from carrying out my plan. He’d saved me from myself. The blood on the ground wasn’t mine and I know now it wasn’t Isobel’s. She’d got away and dropped her ribbon. It had to be his. What have I done?