would have given him away in an instant.
“How about you?” the man continued pointedly.
Avery’s newly exercised neurons fired gratifyingly fast.
“Oh, I’m not walking!” he said in a tone that might make them feel stupid for thinking such a thing. “I’m just stretching my legs. On my way to a job in Tavistock and thought I’d take advantage of”—he swept out an arm—“all this. My car’s just over that rise.”
They both glanced at the rise, then back at him, and he gave them his special smile. The man didn’t go so far as to smile back, although he nodded in acceptance, but his wife lost herself in his smile and beamed happily.
“Oh yes, too nice to be stuck in a car or an office today.”
They all nodded then, finally on common ground in every sense.
The wife cheerfully poked her husband with her walking pole.
“Get on, then, Father!”
The man gave a small smile and raised his eyebrows at Avery before starting to move.
“You have a nice walk,” he called after them and they turned to wave at him.
He breathed a sigh of relief. That could have been awkward and—more importantly—time-consuming.
He knew that time was of the essence. There were things he needed to do—things he wished he didn’t have to. He wished he could just head north and keep going, but despite his initial panic at being free, Avery had already devised a plan and now only had to stick to it.
He had to give himself the best possible chance of success. He had to make the most of his time on the run.
He had to send a postcard.
Avery walked for three hours before he saw the village, and by the time he did, he was shivering. The sun that had greeted his freedom was now a sharp, pale disc in a white-smoky sky.
It was not a proper village, and he never knew its name, because he didn’t approach from the road. He skirted the moor above the twenty-odd houses until he saw the shop and then dropped down between the houses to reach it.
The shop was tiny—just the converted front room of a two-up-two-down cottage with bulging walls and liquid glass in the windows. A billboard for the
A rickety carousel outside the shop held yellowing postcards. Most were of Dartmoor, or sheep, or pretty, rose-covered cottages, but there was one compartment that held several of the same card, showing Exmoor blanketed by purple heather. Avery’s stomach thrilled at the sight. He took all six cards on the rack and stuffed them into his back pocket. Then he picked another card of a Dartmoor sheep and went inside.
Although the day had turned dull, his eyes still had to adjust to the gloom of the interior. There was a newspaper rack on one wall, shelves of goods on the other, and an ice-cream freezer in between. Avery could see that the shelves were crammed with a startling array of goods—spray cleaner, toilet paper, dog food, chocolate bars, curry-in-a-can, nails, Band-Aids, Coca-Cola, scrubbing brushes …
A glance into the ice-cream freezer showed him that most of it had been annexed for frozen peas and chicken portions. In the remaining corner he recognized a Zoom lolly but nothing else.
There was a small counter and an archaic till, but nobody behind them, so he opened a plastic liter bottle of water and swigged down several gulps. There was a charity box on the counter—RNLI. Lifeboats. In the middle of Dartmoor? Who gave a shit? He shook it briefly and almost smiled: apparently, no one.
“All right?” A long, stringy girl of about fifteen slid into the room and slumped in a kitchen chair behind the counter.
“Hi,” Avery said. “Do you have any postcards of Exmoor?”
“Postcards are outside.”
“Yes, I know. I looked. Couldn’t see any of Exmoor, though.”
The girl looked at him vacuously.
“This is Dartmoor.”
“I know. I want a postcard of Exmoor.”
She stared at the door as if a postcard of Exmoor was expected any second.
“Don’t we have one?”
Avery breathed steadily. Control. Patience. Valuable lessons.
“No.”
The girl tutted and jerked to her feet. Avery saw she was wearing skin-tight jeans on the thinnest legs he’d ever seen. And stupid little ballet shoes. She slouched past him without a glance and went outside.
He watched her as she turned the creaking carousel on its rusty spindle, her slightly bulging blue eyes frowning at the cards, chewing a ragged lock of her mousey hair.
She was too old for him. Her innocence was lost, or well hidden behind boredom or stupidity. It made him hate her more as she stood, hand on hip, looking at the postcards he’d already looked at.
“Can’t see one,” she said finally.
“No,” he agreed.
“Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry. He’d like to make her sound sorry—it would be so easy—but he didn’t want to waste his time.
He followed her back inside.
“Can you see if you have any in stock?”
“I don’t think we do.”
“Can you check for me?”
She tossed her hair by way of an answer. He mustered his reserves of self-control.
“Please?”
She made an irritable sound with her lips, and scuffed back through the interior door. He heard her ascending or descending some wooden steps, surprisingly heavily for such a thin girl. Letting him know she was put out.
He smiled, then leaned over the counter and hit the OPEN key on the dirty old till that was more like a fancy money box. There was sixty pounds in tens; Avery took three of them and a handful of pound coins. When he’d last been in a shop there had still been grubby green pound notes.
He noticed a pale green cardigan slung over the back of the chair and stuffed it into a plastic bag.
He filled the rest of the bag with Mr. Kipling cakes, peanuts, a couple of prepacked cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, and more water, then leaned out of the door to leave it just out of sight on the pavement. Then he picked up a chewed Bic pen from the counter and wrote on one of the Exmoor postcards.
He heard the girl stamping up or down the stairs again and slid the card of Exmoor back into his pocket as she reappeared.
“We don’t have any.”
“Oh well, I’ll take this one, then, please. And a first-class stamp.”
The girl served him sullenly and he paid for the sheep card with a single pound coin, putting his change in the RNLI box.
Outside, he tried licking the stamp, but found it was already sticky—an innovation he had to adjust to.
As he dropped the Exmoor postcard into the letter box, he noticed that the collection time was a mere half hour away. Avery was not crazy; he knew it didn’t mean God was on his side. But he also knew it meant God really didn’t give a shit one way or the other.
When he was a reasonable distance from the village he sat down on the sheep-shorn grass, ate three cherry Bakewell tarts, and drank a third of a liter of water. The sugar suffused his blood and made him feel strong and confident. The sun came out and warmed him and he lay back and stretched like a cat on a carport roof.
He lifted one hip, took one of the remaining Exmoor postcards from his back pocket, and unbuttoned his jeans.
Twenty minutes later, Avery stood up and focused on his surroundings once more.
