roar that made her ears feel boxed in. Perhaps a wider passage would have been unable to support the weight of the earth under which it was buried. She was far too capable of sensing all that weight, which felt poised to squeeze any possibility of breathing out of her. How long might the tunnel be? It had walled her up for over a minute, enough time for her to lose count of her nervously shallow breaths, but there was no sign of daylight, nothing ahead except seats thrashing back and forth like sleepers unable to escape a nightmare. Why had she let herself be taken on this helpless ride? If Rory was in a coma he wouldn't even know that Hugh and his cousins were there. The thought made her feel spied upon, grubby with guilt at having had it. She was too far into her journey to turn back from visiting the hospital. She could bear the rest of the tunnel, even if its walls seemed to be blackening the light that spilled from the carriage, absorbing it as a preamble to draining the light inside. The tunnel wasn't about to cave in, crushing the train like a tin can, shattering the windows, packing the carriages with earth and debris. The notion would have been easier to shake off if it hadn't felt underlain with secret glee, as if somebody were wishing it on Charlotte, anticipating it with wicked delight. She gave in to glancing over the back of her seat, but the others were owning up to no presence. As she faced forwards again a lanky shape leaped into view beyond the lurching doors. Its scrawny outstretched limbs were branches. It was a bush at the side of the track, and it was sunlit. The train had escaped from the tunnel.
She had been underground for less than three minutes, but she felt as if they or their stifling confinement hadn't released her – felt surrounded by a darkness all the more claustrophobic for its invisibility. When fields beneath a sky piled with shades of grey began to flank the carriage, the openness seemed ready to immure her in another tunnel. Whenever the train slowed, her breath did too. It was only halting at a series of small towns as yellow as sand, some of them dominated by factories. Each time it announced its departure with the shrill alarm, she dug her fingertips into the upholstery to resist fleeing to the doors. All this appropriated most of half an hour until Huddersfield raised lofty chimneys beside the track and gathered an industrial estate around it, corrugated metal buildings that resembled the outsize houses of a gentrified shanty town. In another minute Charlotte was able to liberate herself from the train.
She didn't want to be shut in a taxi. Hugh's number rang as she came in sight of a low huddle of them outside the station, and she loitered beside them as the simulated bell continued to ring. She was wondering if he'd gone out, though surely he would have taken his mobile with him, when he gasped 'Charlotte.'
'Are you at home?'
'Where else would I be?'
The question sounded embittered or worse, not at all like Hugh, but she thought it best to pretend she hadn't noticed. 'I'm at the station. How do I get to you?'
'Aren't there any cabs?'
'More than enough, but I'd sooner walk.'
'A cab's quicker. It won't cost much.'
'Is Ellen there?'
'No.' With equal bewilderment Hugh said 'Why?'
'Then there's no rush, is there? I thought we were all going to the hospital together.' At once she felt sufficiently guilty to add 'Or has there been a change? Is Rory conscious?'
'He wasn't an hour ago. He hasn't been yet.'
'But you've seen him. How is he otherwise?'
'I don't know. I've been waiting for you two like you said.'
'Since yesterday?'
'He wouldn't care either way, would he? He wouldn't have known I was there.'
She heard dismay bordering on desperation. She oughtn't to make him feel worse about his brother. 'Let's talk about it when we're together,' she said. 'Which way are you from here?'
'Empire Street.'
'I know the address, Hugh.' She didn't understand why he'd taken several seconds to prepare to say it. 'I'm asking how I get there,' she said.
'Up the hill.'
Charlotte assumed this referred to the road that climbed past a small factory, dilapidated but not defunct. 'I see it, and then?'
'Is something up with your phone?'
'Not that I'm hearing. I go up the hill, and then . . .'
'So it's me.'
'Your phone? It'll just be a crossed –' Charlotte said, having grown aware of another voice in her ear. Before she could identify its few muddy words or distinguish more than how pleased it seemed to be with itself, the line went dead.
She was almost irritated enough to call Hugh back. Instead she went to the last taxi in the queue. How could just stooping to the vehicle make her feel shut in? Even asking for directions did, though the driver was almost maternally anxious to help. So did climbing the steep road towards a blackened sky that looked pregnant with a storm and all the lower for it, and following the road across a bridge around which the air was thick with the fumes and the rumble of four lanes of traffic beneath, and tramping along a protracted stretch walled on one side by a factory while trees above a wall overhung the other. At least the route wasn't crowded; indeed, there was never anyone behind her whenever she failed to resist the temptation to glance back. She felt especially ridiculous for doing so as a narrow side street brought her to her cousin's house.
It was the near end of the terrace that formed the right side of Empire Street. Clothes of all colours drooped on lines in front gardens as small as the sandstone houses. Hugh's had no clothesline, just an abundance of weeds bordering the cramped mossy path and raising their ragged heads from its cracks. Charlotte was hauling the unhinged gate aside when a plump woman in a sari stepped out of the next house. 'How is Mr Lucas?' she said. 'Have you seen him?'
'Not yet. We're going soon.'
'Where are you going, please?'
'To the hospital.'
'Please forgive me. I did not know this. Could you say that Mrs Devi was asking about him?'
'I will,' Charlotte said and wished she didn't have to add 'If he knows we're there.'
Mrs Devi lifted stubby hands beside her face as though to shape her mouth rounder. 'What has happened to him?'
'He was in some kind of accident on his way here.'
'He was run over? I forever tell the children –'
'No, in his van.'
Mrs Devi looked as confused as Charlotte had begun to grow. 'He is a driver? Where does he keep it?'
'Sorry,' Charlotte said and would rather not have gone on. 'Who are we talking about?'
'Mr Lucas,' Mrs Devi said, vigorously waggling her fingers at Hugh's house. 'Are you not familiar with him?'
'He's my cousin. Are you trying to tell me something's wrong with him?'
'He has not been to work for nearly three days now.'
'You get time off even if you work for Frugo. I expect he'll have taken some because of our cousin, the one who's in hospital, that's to say his brother.'
'He has not been out at all.'
Charlotte peered at Hugh's house, but the faded scaly front door remained shut, and her voice hadn't brought him to any of the windows, which were slated with reflections of clouds. She tried to conceal her unease as she said 'I'll let him know you were asking.'
'If he ever needs his neighbour he knows where I am,' Mrs Devi said and withdrew into her house.
Charlotte felt watched but could see no observer. As she advanced up the path she had the impression that the house wasn't growing as it should. Of course this was an illusion, but she could almost have imagined that the house was shrinking to shut her in, like a cottage in an unpleasant fairy tale. She spent some energy in fending off the idea as she thumbed the grimy plastic bellpush.
The electronic tolling sounded blurred by dust or age. When it brought no response, Charlotte rang again and levered the knocker up and down above the equally rusty letterbox. The reluctant clanking was followed by a
