‘NEARLY THERE,’ KATE says, as we clamber painfully over yet another stile. The marsh is so strange in the darkness, the route I thought I remembered in daylight retreating into the shadows. I can see lights in the distance that must, I think, be Salten village, but the winding sheep paths and rickety bridges make it hard to plot your course, and I realise, with a shudder, that if it wasn’t for Kate, we’d be screwed. You could be lost out here for hours, in the darkness, wandering in circles.
Fatima is still holding Thea’s arm, guiding her steps as she stumbles with a drunkard’s concentration from tussock to ridge, and she’s about to say something when I stiffen, put my finger to my lips, shushing her, and we all stop.
‘What?’ Thea says, her voice slurred and too loud.
‘Did you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’ Kate asks.
It comes again, a cry, from very far away, so like Freya’s sobbing wail when she’s at almost the peak of her distress that I feel a tightness in my breasts and a spreading warmth inside my bra.
A small part of my mind registers the irritation, and the fact that I forgot to put breast pads in before I left – but below that the much, much larger part of me is frantically trying to make out the sound in the darkness. It cannot be Freya, surely?
‘That?’ Kate says as it comes again. ‘It’s a gull.’
‘Are you sure?’ I say. ‘It sounds like –’
I stop. I can’t say what it sounded like. They will think I’m crazy.
‘They sound like children, don’t they?’ Kate says. ‘It’s quite eerie.’
But then the wail comes again, longer, louder, rising to a hysterical bubbling pitch, and I know that is not a gull, it can’t be.
I let go of Thea’s arm and I set off at a run into the darkness, ignoring Kate’s cry of ‘Isa, wait!’
But I can’t – I can’t wait. Freya’s cry is like a hook in my flesh, pulling me inexorably across the darkened marsh. And now I’m not thinking, my feet remember the paths almost automatically. I vault the muddy slough before I’ve even remembered it was there. I sprint along the raised bank with the mud-filled ditches either side. And all the time I hear Freya’s high, bubbling cry coming from somewhere up ahead – like something out of a fairy tale, the light that lures the children into the marsh, the sound of bells that tricks the unwary traveller.
She is close now – I can hear everything, the siren pitch as she reaches the furious peak of her scream, and then the choking snotty gasps in between as she revs up again for the next wail.
‘Freya!’ I shout. ‘Freya, I’m coming!’
‘Isa wait!’ I hear from behind me, and I hear Kate’s footsteps pounding after me.
But I’m almost there. I scramble over the final stile between the marsh and the Reach, hearing the rip of the borrowed dress without caring – and then everything seems to slow down to the pace of a nightmare – my breath roaring in my ears, my pulse pounding in my throat. For there, in front of me, is not Liz, the girl from the village, but a man. He is standing near the water’s edge, his silhouette a dark hulk against the moon-silvered waters – and he is holding a baby.
‘Hey!’ I shout, my voice a roar of primal fury. ‘Hey, you!’
The man turns, and the moonlight falls upon his face, and my heart seems to stutter in my chest. It’s him. It’s Luc Rochefort, holding a child – my child – like a human shield across him, the deep waters of the Reach shimmering behind him.
‘Give her to me,’ I manage, and the voice that comes out of my mouth is almost alien – a snarling roar that makes Luc take an involuntary step back, his fingers tightening on Freya. She has seen me, though, and she reaches out her little chubby arms, her scarlet face sparkling in the moonlight with tears, so furious that she can’t even muster a wail now, just a long, continuous series of gasps as she attempts to draw breath for a final, annihilating shriek.
‘Give her to me!’ I scream, and I bound forward and snatch her out of Luc’s grasp, feeling her cling to me like a little marsupial, her fingers digging into my neck, clutching at my hair. She smells of cigarette smoke and alcohol – bourbon maybe, I’m not sure. It’s him. It’s his smell, all over her skin. ‘How dare you touch my child!’
‘Isa,’ he says. He holds out his hands pleadingly, and I can smell the spirits on his breath. ‘It wasn’t like that –’
‘It wasn’t like what?’ I snarl. Freya’s small, hot body flails and arches against mine. ‘What’s going on?’ I hear from behind me, and Kate comes running up, panting and flushed. Then, incredulously, ‘Luc?’
‘He had Freya,’ I say. ‘He took her.’
‘I didn’t take her!’ Luc says. He takes a step forward, and I fight the urge to turn and run. I will not show this man I’m afraid of him.
‘Luc, what the hell were you thinking?’ Kate says.
‘It wasn’t like that!’ he says, louder, his voice almost a shout. And then again, more levelly, trying to calm himself, and us, ‘It wasn’t like that. I turned up at the Mill to talk to you, to apologise to Isa for being …’ He stops, takes a breath, turns to me, and his expression is almost pleading. ‘In the post office. I didn’t want you think – but I turned up and Freya, she was beside herself – she was screaming like this –’ He gestures to Freya, still red-faced and sobbing but calmer now she can smell me. She is very tired, I can feel her flopping against me between bursts of screeching. ‘What’s-her-name, Liz, she was panicking, she said she’d tried to call you but her phone was out of credit, and I said I’d take Freya outside for a walk, try to calm her down a bit.’
‘You took her!’ I manage. I am almost incoherent with rage. ‘How do I know you weren’t about to drag her off across the marsh?’
‘Why would I do that?’ His face is full of angry bewilderment. ‘I didn’t take her anywhere – the Mill’s right there, I was just trying to calm her down. I thought the stars and the night –’
‘Jesus Christ, Luc,’ Kate snaps. ‘That’s not the point. Isa entrusted her baby to Liz – you can’t just take matters into your own hands like that.’
‘Or what?’ he says sarcastically. ‘You’ll call the police? I don’t think so.’
‘Luc …’ Kate’s voice is wary.
‘God,’ he spits. ‘I came to apologise. I was trying to help. Just once – just once – you’d think I’d learn from my mistakes. But no – you haven’t changed, none of you. She whistles, and you come running, all of you, like dogs.’
‘What’s going on?’ It’s Fatima from behind us, with a staggering Thea on her shoulder. ‘Is that … Luc?’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ Luc says. He tries for a smile, but his mouth twists, and it comes out halfway between a sneer and the expression someone makes when they’re trying not to cry. ‘Remember me, Fatima?’
‘Of course I do,’ Fatima says in a low voice.
‘Thea?’
‘Luc, you’re drunk,’ Thea says bluntly. She steadies herself on the stile.
‘Takes one to know one,’ Luc says, taking in her muddied dress and smeared make-up.
But Thea simply nods, without rancour.
‘Yes. Maybe it does. I’ve been on the edge enough times to know you’re pretty fucking close right now.’
‘Go home, Luc,’ Kate says, ‘sober up, and if you’ve got something to say, say it in the morning.’
‘If I’ve got something to say?’ Luc gives a short hysterical laugh. His hands, as he runs them through his tangled dark hair, are shaking. ‘If? What a fucking joke! What would you like to talk about, Kate – maybe we could have a nice chat about Dad?’
‘Luc, shut up,’ Kate says urgently. She looks over her shoulder, and I realise, unsettlingly, that it’s not impossible that anyone will be out at this time of night. Dog walkers, people from the dinner, night fishermen … ‘Will you please be quiet? Look – come back to the Mill, we can talk about this properly.’
‘What, don’t you want the world to know?’ Luc says mockingly. He puts his hands to his mouth, making a trumpet, and shouts the words out to the night. ‘You want to know who’s responsible for the body in the Reach? Try right here!’
‘He knows?’ Fatima gasps. Her face has gone pale as clay. I feel my stomach dropping, and suddenly I feel as sick as Thea looks. Luc knows. He has always known. Now suddenly all his anger makes sense.
‘Luc!’ Kate’s voice is a sort of screaming whisper. She looks beside herself. ‘Will you please shut up for God’s sake? Think about what you’re doing! What if someone hears?’
‘I don’t give a fuck who hears,’ Luc snarls back.
Kate’s fists are clenched, and for a minute I think that she is going to hit him. Then she spits out the words as though they are poison.
‘I’ve had it with your threats. Get away from me and my friends, and don’t you dare come back. I never want to see you here again.’
I can’t see Luc’s face in the darkness, only Kate’s, hard as stone and full of fear and anger.
He doesn’t say anything. For a long time he only stands, facing Kate, and I feel the wordless tension between them – strong as blood, but now turned to hate.
At last though, Luc turns, and begins to walk away into the darkness of the marsh, a tall black figure melting into the night.
‘You’re welcome, Isa,’ he calls back over his shoulder as he disappears. ‘In case I didn’t say. Looking after your baby – it was nothing. I’d be happy to take her again.’
And then the sound of his footsteps fades away into the night. And we are alone.