I crossed the road to follow the line of the fence. A few feet along, there was a stile and I climbed over – or rather hauled myself, my legs pretty much shot after a full day’s walking. As I clambered down the other side, first thing I did was put my foot in something. A big, slippery pool, stinking to high heaven. Oh, great, cows again, but not safely penned in this time.
The grass sloped upward into the blackness. I followed the fence along for a bit – it was flatter, and you could see a bit better here with the streetlights – until I reached the corner of the field and there was no option but to climb, away from the road and into the darkness. The sky seemed to have disappeared, blocked out by the hill and, I discovered, a clump of trees. They were on the other side of the fence, but there was a gate, so I hauled myself over again and blundered up, bushes tearing at my jeans, until I found a flatter bit underneath the trees – actually a bit of a dip in the ground, a hollow. I checked for cowpats as best I could, and sank down.
I curled up like a baby in the blanket Britney had given me, wrapping it around my body and over my face. It hardly kept the wind off me at all. As usual, I thought I’d never sleep: My head was full of Spider, always Spider. Was he asleep now? Was he lying somewhere, awake like me, chest rising and falling? How many breaths did he have left? But when I’d stopped shivering and my body’s own warmth started to heat the space inside the blanket, I drifted off, the darkness around me sweeping into my head, switching off the thoughts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
There was someone chasing me, so close I could hear his breath, feel it on the back of my neck. I was running faster than I’ve ever run. My chest was bursting, and I was running, running, but he’d got me, there was nowhere left to go. It was too much, I couldn’t cope with it anymore. I wrenched myself back to the surface, becoming aware of my surroundings, opening my eyes slightly to see the gray light of dawn.
Just a dream after all. But the noise was still there, someone near me, so near I could hear the breath in and out, in and out. Spider? Just for a minute, I thought he was next to me again. Oh, Jesus. I rolled over slowly. There was a dark shape right on top of me, an animal of some sort, snuffling around. Cows? I’d thought they were in the other field. But it wasn’t a cow, it was a dog: a big, black dog with its nose in my backpack.
I froze. Ray may have been a sheep in wolf’s clothing, but I still didn’t trust dogs, and this was a big one, tall and skinny, but with bulging muscles in its shoulders and back legs.
Another noise broke in now, a woman’s voice. “Sparky! Come here! Come
“Oh, shit! Sparky, come here!” He looked up, then dipped his head again. Time was running out for him. One last chance to grab a mouthful. The woman got her fingers into his collar and yanked him right away. “I’m so sorry, so sorry. It’s the food. He’s an incurable scavenger. Oh, God, he’s eaten your food. I’m so sorry.” Her voice was anxious, posh.
There was an awkward silence. I was still lying on the ground, woozy with sleep. The woman and her dog loomed over me. She was waiting for me to say something, worried about my reaction. I sat up and shuffled away from them on my behind.
“I’m sorry, he woke you up, didn’t he? Scared you. He wouldn’t bite you. It was just the food. Look, I only live down there. You could come and have some breakfast, a cup of tea.” It didn’t look like she meant it; she was probably just trying to say something to make things better.
“No,” I managed. “S’alright.”
“He’s eaten your food. I could bring you something…?”
“No, honest. I’m alright.”
“I don’t think I’ve got any money on me.” She reached into her pockets. “Oh, look. You could buy some breakfast with this.” She held out a handful of change toward me. I just wanted this all to stop. I wanted her to take her bloody dog and her middle-class niceness and her do-gooding pity away.
“I don’t want your fucking money, I’m alright.” That did the trick.
She recoiled visibly, tightened her grip on the dog’s collar. “Right, OK. OK. Sorry.” She backed off, then bent to clip on the dog’s leash.
They took a wide semicircle below me on the hill and went through the gate into the next field, where they stopped for a moment. The woman unclipped the dog, dug about in her pocket, and then looked back at me. Then the dog took off suddenly, stretching out its legs and tearing across the field. The movement rippled along him, like a wave, as if he was a little black racehorse. She set off walking after him along the path, and I stood up to watch them go. He circled around her three times, then trotted up close and followed along, steaming gently in the morning light. Watching them made me feel lonelier; hadn’t thought it was possible.
My gaze shifted from the two of them, getting smaller as they reached the other side of the field, to the view beyond. The wind from last night had disappeared completely. The sky above was a clear, pale blue, the last few stars still visible. Beneath, clouds of the whitest, fluffiest cotton streaked across the scene at ground level. Honey- colored spires and towers stuck up through them, islands in a billowing sea. I’d never seen anything like it. Somewhere beneath the fog, people were sleeping and waking, farting, scratching, taking a morning piss, but on the surface it looked like Disneyland.
I’d been nervous about going into the city. Now I felt a strange burst of confidence. Nothing bad could happen in a place like this, could it? I rolled up my blanket and tied it onto my backpack. My fingers were clumsy with the cold. All my things, and the clothes I was in, were wet from the dew.
I set off down the hill toward the gate, my feet adding another set of prints to the two trails of the woman and dog. As I reached to open the gate, I saw a little pile of coins on the top of the post. She’d left her change after all. I put it in my pocket. It felt grubby taking her money, different from Britney giving me her stuff. It felt like charity, and I didn’t want to be nobody’s charity case.
I went through the far gate and crossed the street. No one around here. I cut down an alley between two terraces, heading into the city center. The path went under a railway bridge and then, suddenly, I was back in the twenty-first century and right by a main road with cars and trucks flashing by, their lights disorienting me, their noise ringing in my ears. I was still only half awake. I looked at the slowing stream of traffic, and darted forward.
A horn blared out to the right of me, injecting adrenaline into my bloodstream, making my heart jump and my legs run faster. Where the hell had that come from? I needed to keep my wits about me. I ran for a minute or so, then slowed to a walk, over a bridge spanning a thick, brown river. On the other side there were hotels and bars, and then shops, not real ones, but the sort tourists would go into. Rip-off shops. They all had Christmas lights and decorations in the windows – sparkly, twinkly tat. Nothing was open.
I looked at my watch. It was only ten to eight. Right in the center, there were a few people around: window cleaners, someone emptying the trash bins, people letting themselves into shops, or hurrying along, chins tucked down into their scarves, some smelling of their first cigarette of the day as they passed. No one gave me a second glance. It’s the time of day when you don’t want to be bothered with anyone else. If you’re out that early, you’ve got something to do, or somewhere to be, and you just get on with it.
My knee was still giving me grief, but I didn’t want to stop anywhere, so I walked through the city. There was a group of dossers on some steps, swigging Special Brew for breakfast.
“Alright, love?” one of them called out, holding his can toward me.
“Alright,” I said, my eyes flicking back down to the pavement, avoiding his automatically. And I kept going, stepping over the cans lying ’round the bottom of the steps.
I walked down the main drag, under swags of Christmas lights, and right at the bottom found the only place that was open – McDonald’s. I’d got enough money for a cup of tea and an Egg McMuffin. I always used to like that smell, the smell you get in a McDonald’s, but as I waited for the guy behind the counter to fetch my order it was making me gag. I took my stuff outside, grateful for the fresh air, and wandered back up the street.
There was an archway leading to a square with loads of seats and a huge tree planted in the middle. I was
