He spent the rest of the evening ranting about the church and hypocrisy and illegal wars, then he started talking about the desert. ‘There was all this blood. It was everywhere,’ he said, his eyes glazed with beer. That bit startled me because he had never said it before and I wondered what he meant. Had he killed someone? But I knew not to question him when he was in that mood. Also, though I feel terrible saying this, I wanted him to be distracted. While he was talking he drank three large tankards of home brew that I kept on refilling for him. I knew that if he kept thinking about the vicar and the war and kept drinking more booze then he’d forget about the foxes. And I was right. When he finally stumbled off to bed I went to the back door to look out and there were no traps, just a calm, still autumn evening. But I did see my vixen. She was standing in the shadow of the house up by the side, and she was looking at me so intently, so peacefully, like she knew what I’d done for her, like she knew I was her friend.

9

Lisa

Think, Lisa, think, I tell myself as I pace around the musty living room. You’ve made it here. Now what?

I stand at the grimy window and look out at the lake, remembering her words.

If you ever need to get away, the house is yours. It’s peaceful there. Safe.

Yet I feel anything but safe. I feel like any moment now he’s going to knock on that door and find us. Even standing at this window I feel exposed, though I know that it’s impossible for him to know where I am. I’ve made sure I haven’t used my bank card, relying instead on the cash I’ve been saving these last few months, withdrawing ten and twenty pounds here and there so the police wouldn’t be able to track my bank card here. I had planned this escape down to the very last detail yet the one thing I couldn’t have predicted was that the safe house she promised me would be like this. Why did she tell me to come here, knowing the state it was in? Was it a trick? No, I can’t allow myself to think that. She’s my friend and she protected me when I was at my most vulnerable. She would never lead me to danger. I have to believe that. I have to trust that I have made the right decision. For both our sakes.

I step away from the window and look at Joe. He is sitting on the pile of cushions in the living room, his knees pulled up to his chin, his eyes fixed on the floor in front of him.

He hasn’t spoken a word in over an hour.

I’ve tried to coax him out into the garden to play, told him that if we’re lucky we might see some animals, but he’s not interested. It’s like he’s shrunk inside himself. The silence unnerves me so I fill it by singing a song my mum used to sing when she was doing the housework, an old Irish folk tune that my grandmother had sung to her when she was small. But I don’t get as far as the first chorus before Joe starts banging his fists on the floor and shouting at me to stop.