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Tom looks at Gil. ‘But you said the body wasn’t his?’

‘It isn’t. And Helen didn’t start the fire. It seems the Paris fire brigade now suspect it began in an empty flat below.’ Gil can almost see the thought behind Tom’s eyes. ‘Spit it out. We haven’t got time to waste.’

‘You’re right. We need to go. I should have gone after her once before.’ His face sets. ‘Hang on. I’ll be back in a sec.’ When he returns, he’s clutching a hatchet taken from the outhouse.

‘We’d better find her before Huntingdon does.’

‘We will,’ Gil says. ‘I know the Dales like the back of my hand, and I know where she’s going.’ He hesitates. ‘Although I doubt she does. Not yet.’ Without waiting to see if Tom will follow, he heads for the lychgate and hears it shut as Tom comes through behind him.

The sun was setting as they drove up to Wildfell, dusk is drawing in as they go through the gate and the Dales are in darkness by the time the ground under their feet gives way to gorse, bracken and the wild grass that grows faster than the few feet using the path up from Wildfell can keep trodden.

The previous days’ rain has emptied the sky and the afternoon sun burned off what remained of the clouds. Above them, stars spread in a huge bowl, only fading at the edges where the light of distant cities intrudes. The Dales flow before them like a wild sea and in the distance like a floundering ship stands the Scar, sharp in the darkness. As always, when he looks at it, Gil feels himself drawn by its mass.

‘She’ll go there,’ he says.

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do.’

‘We should shout as we go.’

Gil shakes his head. ‘No. We should listen. Shouting will warn him we’re coming and if he’s got her already he’ll keep her quiet until we pass.’

‘You’re a journalist?’

‘Most of my life.’

‘What else did you do?’

‘Short-term commission.’ Gil saw Tom’s blankness. ‘Three years in the army. Not for me, I discovered … We should speed up.’

‘You’re sure that’s where she’ll go?’

‘I think so.’

‘You said—’

‘That’s where she’ll go.’ He lets Tom push ahead; he can hardly lose his way since there’s no way to lose; all he has to do is keep heading for the Scar looming in the distance. The young man – well, probably not that young, younger – walks with his head down and his body bent slightly forward. When he slows, Gil thinks he’s heard something.

‘Last night …’ Tom says. He hesitates and Gil knows that’s somewhere neither of them really wants to go. ‘Helen said something I didn’t get about a boy. But there’s no sign of a boy at the house. And her sister didn’t mention anything.’

‘He’s Iraqi,’ Gil says.

‘She adopted him?’

Gil shakes his head, almost invisible in the looming darkness. ‘He’s dead.’

Tom stops, and Gil jerks his head to say they should keep going. He wants to hate this younger man with his vague good looks, hesitation and quiet intensity. Gil doesn’t doubt that in some way, Tom has a claim on Helen’s affections; although you aren’t meant to think like that these days. The way Tom stared at the bra and T-shirt, his shock was almost physical. The way he dashed outside to grab the hatchet now hanging loosely from his hand. Even though Gil can see that going after psychopaths in the dark is the last thing Tom is cut out to do.

‘She took his photograph. In Iraq,’ Gil says, not so much for something to say as to help keep thoughts of Tom and Helen at bay. ‘You probably saw it in the papers, just didn’t make the connection. He died right before she got together with Art. The shock of it was probably why she got together with Art. She more or less said as much.’

Tom stares at him, confusion evident on his face.

‘How much did she tell you?’ Gil asks.

‘Enough,’ Tom shrugs.

‘Syria?’

‘I’m not sure she got as far as Syria. We … She crashed out, she was tired.’

‘It was bad,’ Gil says shortly. ‘It’s been bad for a long time.’

‘Why did she tell you all this?’

‘She needed someone to talk to. I was there …’ And she was buying my silence with confidences and secrets, Gil doesn’t add.

‘If he was hurting her, why did she stay?’

‘Ask her.’ Gil catches himself. ‘Actually, don’t. I think she’s had enough of that question. She’ll talk about it if she wants.’ He hesitates, then says it anyway. ‘I thought I saw the child once. Staring from the back of her car. I had a grandmother who saw things. That said, I’m not sure I believe in things like that.’

‘You’re saying he’s a ghost?’ Though Gil can barely make out Tom’s face in the gloom, he knows he’s looking at him as if he’s mad.

Gil sighs heavily. ‘He haunts her, if that’s what you mean. It’s not the same. As for me, I was probably just seeing things.’

‘We need to speed up,’ Tom says.

Nodding, Gil increases his pace.

The Scar looks closer than it is, so obvious and visible in the night-dark sea of gorse and grass. A couple of miles? Surely not that far … Tonight it feels centuries distant and sharper than he remembers. The moon is halfway to being a sliver but it lights the Scar’s edges with a tallow glow and muted light from a distant urban sprawl beyond makes it stand out against the sky. She will go there. Gil knows she will go there. She will go there, and her tormenter will go there, and he and Tom will follow after and should any come out of this alive they won’t believe the Scar was calling.

He’s beginning to sound like his grandmother.

Keep up, Gil tells himself. That’s all he’s ever been trying to do. Gorse drags at his suit trousers and thorns scratch his wrists and he barely lets himself notice. When this is done – however this is done, he thinks darkly – if he is still alive, he will call Liza and he will ask her out for dinner and if she offers he will sleep with her, because he likes Liza and he wants to sleep with her, and he will make his peace with his daughters, if that is possible, and with their mother and her no-longer-new partner. Her
husband
, however much he hates that word. He will not let, he cannot bear to let, what has happened to Helen happen to them. He should never have let the gap grow to the point where he couldn’t be certain they’d tell him if it did.

‘You’re out there,’ Gil whispers.

Even he doesn’t know if he means Helen, her attacker, or the Scar. They stop to listen in case they can hear Helen calling for help or her attacker blundering through the gorse. Although Art doesn’t seem the type to blunder. He seems the silent stalker type. Gil has come across more than a few of those in his life. Mostly standing in the dock, being glared at by the hollow-eyed family of their victim. It’s the ones who never go to court, whose violence and cruelty are hidden that are the most dangerous.

Helen called Art the master of the unseen bruise. She said it with a shiver. Gil hadn’t been sure whether or not to believe her. He believes her now.

37

‘Helen. Stop NOW.’

Helen does. She stops dead on the path from the lychgate, heart pounding behind her ribs, wrists burning from where they’ve been torn by thorns. The pain feels familiar, not welcome but expected. She stops and turns and he’s not even running after her now. He’s slowed to a steady walk. When he sees her looking, he stops altogether.

‘Come here.’

Years of obeying lift one foot from the ground. What is the worst he can do? Short of killing her, there isn’t much he hasn’t tried already. Why not let him do that? A sense of relief courses through her at the thought. As if she always knew this was how it would end. That what the woman said to her in Turkey was bound to prove true.

‘Faster. You pathetic little fool.’

He shouldn’t have spoken. All the he-shouldn’t-have-spokens collide.

Would you like to go out for dinner? Why don’t you stay? Let’s move in together. I think we should marry.

For a second she would have gone to him; habit, obedience and a crushed spirit delivering her to his cold, waiting anger. He shouldn’t have spoken because his voice unexpectedly wakes her, she hesitates mid-step. For a moment she’d forgotten how much she hates it. He sees her begin to turn, and there’s just enough moonlight to reveal his fury. Art will never forgive her this. No amount of cajoling, of obeying, of curling up into a ball, will be enough.

This time when she runs, she runs.

Behind her he stumbles and curses viciously. Then she hears the sound of him running and runs faster. Too late, she realises she should have headed for the village or thrown herself on the mercy of the first car to sweep along the road and catch her in its headlights. This path leads up to the Dales, which stretch like an ocean until she expects to feel water splash around her knees. The gorse drags against her ankles and she struggles to run faster, feeling thorns whip as air scalds her throat and her heart hammers. She can’t run this hard for much longer; and she can’t afford to slow down or risk turning to see how far he is behind.

There’s nowhere safe out here. No forests to hide in or trees to climb. There are ditches and dips, old drystone walls and new ones, but nothing that will provide enough shelter for her to hide without the man who follows knowing where she’s hidden. So she runs, and keeps running, until her throat is as tight as if it’s been gripped, and her breath is raw. Her ribs hurt, and there’s a stitch in her side as brutal as the after-effects of any punch.

‘Helen. Enough …’

Keep shouting
, she thinks.
Shout every time you see me falter or seem about to stop. I can run from that voice for ever. I can run from it faster and for longer than you can try to keep up
. She wants to believe that. She knows she can’t afford to stop, that her fear creates the adrenalin that keeps her running, and lactic acid is what burns in her muscles, making them want to lock. Her thoughts splinter. She’s watching herself run as if from a distance. She’s watching as she pushes herself over the edge of what she can stand.

She’s been here before many times: outside herself, watching some pathetic snivelling thing face down on a bed, curled around its whimpers and misery on the floor. What comes next is darkness, and waking with tears and bruises she doesn’t remember acquiring.

She’s always grateful for that.

A drystone wall appears and she runs beside it until she realises she’s being herded into a corner. So she swings herself up, rolling clumsily over and tearing her jeans on flint before landing on the other side. Run, she tells herself. Run.

He grunts as he rolls himself on to the wall, grunts louder as he lands. She can hear his ragged breath in the silences between hers. This is every nightmare from which she’s ever woken in a glaze of sweat. Hunted from room to room, running blindly for her life. Which came first? The fear or the dreams?

She’s underwater, drowning, lungs burning and throat tight from trying to drag in enough air to keep moving. As she puts one foot in front of the other, running blind, at the mercy of the first stone to send her sprawling, the first rabbit hole to break her ankle, she knows her body is shutting down everything except what it needs to survive. She’s seen it a million times.

God knows she’s seen it.

In famines and battle zones and places where badly built buildings fall in on those inside. Her mind is slowly separating from her body. She will run and run until she drops, until the darkness pulling at the edges of her mind takes her. If she goes down this time she won’t wake. The last thing she’ll see is Art standing over her. The last thing she’ll remember is his face.

The ground goes soggy beneath the grass, her toes suddenly cold from water. Before she knows it, she’s crossed a stream. Seconds later Art does the same. The ground is hard beneath her feet again, the rough grass dry enough to lacerate her ankles.

She runs on despite the pain.

A ripped knee and lacerated ankles are nothing to what Art will do. Out here, alone, with no thin walls to make him snap at her, no need to worry about people in the flat below, what’s to stop him? She wonders if she should shout for help. But why waste the breath when there is no one out here to help her?

In the middle of a moor in the early hours of the night, chased by the man who once pledged to love and cherish her above all else. Behind her, she hears a curse and turns before she can stop herself, to see Art tumble over a grass hassock she somehow avoided. Grabbing a mouthful of cold night, she shouts.

‘
Help me. Anyone. Please, help me.
’

Art’s face lifts and she sees her death in his wild eyes as clearly as if it has happened already. She’s running again before she realises it, bare feet pounding on dirt that echoes hollow beneath, lungs grateful for the briefest possible break. Ahead is the Scar, closer now than she remembers. It juts from the dale like a black iceberg. The moon is a thorn bright enough to light her way. The stars are high and cold, clear and singing in a way she can’t describe. The Dales are suddenly almost luminous. So unexpectedly different she fears her heart is failing, her body giving way, these are the seconds before she drops with exhaustion.

The Scar was always where she was heading.

She simply hasn’t realised it before.

Art is closing in. He’s so close that if she trips or hesitates he’ll be on her. The ground slopes up from here to the Scar. As if black rock pushed up the dirt hundreds of yards all around. She’s been here before with Gil, this is where they climbed, but it feels older, more familiar than that. Scrambling on her hands and occasionally knees, she climbs a dirt bank with the dark rock rising over her.

‘Helen. Don’t be stupid.’ Art’s words are broken, breathless. But from further behind than she expects. When she glances back she sees him, bent slightly forward, hands resting on his knees as he grabs breath. He’s stopped at the bottom of the earth slope as if he can’t be bothered to clamber up it after her.

‘There’s no escape.’

‘There never was,’ she says.

Art looks at her and his face is yellow with moonlight, his hair lank with sweat. He was beautiful once. At least she thought so. But it was a mean kind of beauty and she should have known better. There’s nothing left of even that. His cold smile, once so confident, now seems less certain. Helen sees Art properly for the first time and wonders, if she saw the old version on the street, would she even take a second look?