The Time Rip (5 page)

He indicated a small towel on the bed and said, “It’s a bit old and frayed round the edges,” then with a lightening grin, “A bit like me. I’ll be out back feeding the chickens. Come down when you’re done, and we’ll put Carter back in his harness.”

Without waiting for a reply, he ambled back down the stairs. Freya paused for a moment, taking in the small room with its sense of peace and silence. Then gratefully made use of the things he had provided. The cold water was lovely on her face and hands, and it was good to get the tangles out of her hair. She straightened her skirt as best she could and went back downstairs.

Joe gave her a beaming grin, “Eh lass, you look much more the thing now.” He then launched into a story of one of his chickens that had escaped the coop and ended up on his bedpost. He had awoken to the sound of clucking, and thought for a moment he was still dreaming. “Thing was a bugger to catch, too,” he mused.

Joe relished having Freya around, and seemed to get a kick out of educating her in the care of chickens, veggies and the herd of cows he kept. “Things a young lass like you ought to know about,” he said. Then with a somewhat sly look, “Mr Sanders is looking to do some bits like this so it can’t hurt for you to have some knowledge of these things.”

Freya wondered at his comment, but decided not to question it. She sighed and bit the edge of one finger. Although she was enjoying Joe’s company, she wanted to go home. The thought of the work involved in reporting the loss of her van, calling her insurance company, sourcing another work vehicle, plus all the other chores she had left to do was depressing.

Joe seemed to judge her mood. He quickly finished what he was doing, and started getting Carter speedily attached to the cart. While he was busy with the horse, a stout man wandered up. Dressed in shirt, grey trousers and waistcoat, he greeted Joe as if they were old friends. He doffed his cap somewhat absurdly at her when Joe made the introductions, and Freya gave him a shy smile. The two men chatted about farming for a while and Freya quickly lost interest.

She viewed the little town; watched as a man in a three-piece suit brought out a funny looking black box and rested it carefully on the top of someone’s garden wall. The man bent over the box, fiddling with something just out of sight.

A stiff looking man herded together a group of children, and cuffed one or two about the head until they formed some order.

The other man appeared to be engrossed in his contraption. He swung it around towards her, and she could see that it looked like an old-fashioned camera.

He was holding it in front of his waist as he bent over slightly, indicating that the viewfinder was on the top of the thing somewhere. It had a broad opening in the front revealing polished wood and brass, and some kind of maroon bellows arrangement, which Freya presumed controlled the distance between the magnifying lenses. She had never seen anything like it.

She watched in bemused silence as an odd-looking man came out from a nearby building. He attached a collar round his neck, which appeared to have been cut from a sheet of paper, before standing with the group of kids. That was it! He put her in mind of Abraham Lincoln, it was the beard and hat and everything.

It was a completely bizarre sight and she turned to Joe, intending to ask him about it, but Joe’s friend took his leave then, distracting her, and the moment was gone. Joe held out his hand, clearly waiting to help her up into the cart.

They spent the next two hours driving round all the roads Joe could think of where Freya might have left the van. Joe was sure that Freya had simply forgotten where she had left it, but after going down dozens of country lanes and larger dirt roads, with no sight or sound of the Motorway, Freya was more bewildered than ever.

The countryside was still and quiet. The M4 was either completely empty or simply not there. Perhaps the road was closed. That must be it, Freya reasoned, there must have been an accident and they had shut the road. She shivered a bit, and wondered how bad it would have to be for the road to close for so long, but it was a
six-lane
motorway. She still should have found it.

For one sickening moment, her thoughts turned to Nathan. She quickly banished the memories. It would do her no good to rake up the past in that way. Instead, she racked her brains over how she could have lost not only her van, but also all sense of direction and memory of where she had turned off.

Whenever she remembered the journey here, it was always with only one or two turns from the M4. She began to wonder if she had imagined being able to see the roofs of the cars from the field.

Joe was tactful about it and did not question her too closely. He seemed to presume that because she was a woman it was to be expected. His attitude might have annoyed her at any other time, but right now she felt too bemused to object.

Joe ran his fingers gently over the side of his jaw, “Well, I can’t think of any other roads around here to try. Looks like maybe someone did make off with it.”

“Yeah,” Freya mumbled, still lost in thought. They had stopped in the road where Freya was convinced she had left the van. She recognized the large oak tree on one side, and the field and Farmhouse on the other. She glanced accusingly at the house, and wished she had never seen the stupid place. Then she would not have been tempted to leave the stupid van to go and ask for stupid water.

“I think I’ll walk over to see Jeremy. He might have an A-Z I can look at. I can’t believe the road isn’t around here somewhere.”

“It’ll take a good half hour to drive round that way. I can take you, but we will have to come back later on for it. I forgot I’m supposed to meet Jean today.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I can just walk through the field again.”

“No, no, lass. I can’t have you paying calls on Mr Sanders on your own.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? It’s not seemly, Miss. That’s why not.”

“Come on, Joe, you’re not serious are you?”

“Certainly, I’m serious. You don’t want him to get the wrong idea about you, now. You just let me take you round there later.”

“Don’t worry, Joe. It will be fine, I promise. Jeremy won’t get the wrong idea about me. I will be extra polite. Anyway, he already said I was welcome to drop by whenever, so I’m sure he won’t mind letting me use the phone.”

Joe hesitated, but it was clear Freya was not going to be dissuaded. He was probably old fashioned in his thinking anyway. Young people often went their own way these days and no harm in it, but he still felt he ought to protest a little more.

A short while later Freya surveyed the empty road and field in silence. It was a relief to allow her thoughts their chaos. It had taken a surprising amount of time to convince Joe to leave her to walk through the field, and he had agreed only on the understanding that she come back to find him if she was still unable to get home.

She did not know why he was reluctant for her to visit Jeremy on her own. After all, Joe did not know about that scorching kiss. Unless Jeremy was well known for his flirtatious ways. Hmm, something to think about.

She was gazing unseeing at the dusty road when something else completely inexplicable occurred to her. The road was mostly flat dried mud. Very ordinary, until she considered that there had been tractor marks baked in deep enough for her to stumble over the previous evening.

There were still impressions baked into the mud, but they were of horses’ hooves. It must be a different road. There was just no other explanation. She had been so
sure
. Perhaps she had come back through the wrong field, and just the other side of the house would be another field with her van, and the road, and everything else waiting for her. Feeling utterly relieved by this obvious explanation, Freya began to push through the long grass once more.

As she got closer to the farmhouse, her gaze wandered over the impossible beauty of the surrounding countryside. It was a picture in delicate watercolours.

The fields baked gold and lilac under a sky that ranged from white-hot to an intense blue. The woods were luminous in the sunlight, and flickered with a multitude of emeralds that light and shadow produced. It was enticing, the dappled shade beckoning, making her long to sling a hammock underneath and while away the afternoon staring through the canopy at the clouds above.

Lost in daydreams, Freya crossed the meadow and entered the tree line. She picked the shortest path through, close to where she had walked the previous day, and it was some minutes before she noticed the irregular shaped heat haze, mostly hidden in the dappled shade.

It caught at her attention only because she happened to look directly at it. It obviously had nothing to do with heat rising off the ground, as this would be invisible in the wood, unless there was a vent of some kind in the ground. Furthermore, it looked oblong shaped and was difficult to see if you were not looking directly at it.

She scanned the ground as she walked up to it, but there was nothing visible to cause the ripples in the air. Up close, the ripples formed roughly the same dimensions as a doorway, although it was higher on one side, making a somewhat lopsided frame. She puzzled over it, walking around it as she did so.

From the side it was almost impossible to see. Knife-edge thinness made the thing similar to a large sheet of glass standing upright in the wood.

For the moment, she forgot her problems as curiosity took over. She had the uncanny feeling that she was Alice, and here was the looking glass. She touched one finger to the haze and was surprised to find it cool and not warm. She waved a hand through and then stepped into it. Her vision distorted for a moment, and a slight breeze seemed to push against her and skim away over the field. The sensation made her feel light-headed and she stepped hurriedly forwards, glancing up and out of the wood.

The flashing of car roofs going by on the other side of the field caught her immediate attention. Freya inhaled sharply, and stood in shocked silence viewing the road. She could hear the traffic. What was going on?
Unbelievable
. She had been searching for that wretched road for so long, and now she could both see and hear it.

There must have been an accident and the road had now re-opened. Freya felt her temper rise, everything else temporarily forgotten. Right. Great. Now she would find the road. She could see it, she could hear it, and she would now find it. She stalked angrily back through the field. When she finally reached the dirt road, she got another shock.

Her van sat parked exactly as she had left it. She stared for a moment in stunned bewilderment, walked slowly forwards, feeling tears of gratitude and disbelief welling up. She stroked her fingers wonderingly over the dusty door; taking in the familiar smell of hot metal and diesel. The sound of the motorway was louder here, and she stood listening to the traffic for some minutes, while looking blankly at the deep tyre marks in the road.

This could not possibly be the same road she had persuaded Joe to leave her on, yet how could it be otherwise. She had walked across the field, turned around, and walked back.

She had accepted that someone had stolen her van, yet here it was exactly where she had left it. Furthermore, the tyre tracks baked into the mud gave indisputable evidence that this was a different road from where she had left Joe.

All this could only mean that her van had been here all along, yet how could she have missed this road. The problem went round endlessly in her mind, until she wondered if she had fallen asleep and imagined the whole thing.

She leaned back against the hot metal of the van and frowned at the distant farmhouse. Her fingers brushed the pocket in her skirt and found keys. She climbed into the cab and located her mobile where she had left it, tucked into the side of the door. She glanced at the tiny screen. No signal. Well, no point in delaying things. She had her van back and needed to go home.

She felt a pang of regret that she had not said goodbye properly to Joe. She had thought to pass on her farewells through Jeremy, but, in the end, she had not seen him.

Freya backed the van up the narrow lane until she could turn and head for the M4. Her mind continued to play over all that had happened.

Finally, she decided that she would go back and see Joe another time. She wanted to thank him properly for his help and friendship. In truth, she just wanted to see him again. It was the first time she had been able to speak freely about Nathan with someone other than Janet, and it felt like another step forward away from grief. She wanted to see Jeremy again too, but for entirely different reasons.