‘Hey!’ I shouted, as branches tangled themselves in my hair. ‘Hey, Edie, wait! It’s Mum! Don’t run, Edie!’
There, to my left. She’d feinted, swerving away from me. I turned sharply, feeling a branch whip across my cheek. The drumming of my feet was a cadence, her name, over and over, Ee-dee, Ee-dee, Ee-dee. I must be catching her up. My arms pistoned at my sides. I wanted to tell her to stop running, I just wanted to talk to her, I just wanted to explai— whumph! Something slammed into my shoulder with a flat whacking sound, knocking me off balance. I fell with an ugly grunt, tasting mud and dirt. A stitch roared in my side like boiling oil. For a moment I wondered if I’d been shot. Then I saw that hooded figure – Edie? – standing a little way off with something in its hand. A stick? A bat? I propped myself up, reaching out to her. There was so much I wanted to tell her. About how I’d missed her, how things would be different now, how she could have all the freedom and boyfriends she wanted if she’d just come home. I don’t mind, I wanted to tell her, but my voice snagged in my throat. I don’t mind the pain, Edie.
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she said.
I blinked. Her voice was deep and gluey with fear. No, I told myself, not her voice. Not Edie. My breathing was returning to normal but my right side was numb all the way to the shoulder blades. Whatever she’d hit me with was going to leave bruises like night-blooming flowers on my skin. My feet scrambled in the dirt, suddenly cold and stiff.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I told her.
The figure moved forward a little, into a space where I could see her more clearly. She was cautious, almost hopping from foot to foot as if she would take off if I made any sudden moves, like a startled rabbit. ‘We’ve got a rabbit problem,’ Peter Liverly had said to me, and the rabbits in his bag had been bloody and stripped down to the raw meat. The smell of their tiny deaths was everywhere.
‘Why’d you hit me?’ I said, struggling to get to my feet. ‘I think you’ve broken my collarbone.’
The hood slipped down to reveal an angular, bony face beneath a scrawl of dark curls. I saw fear etched on to its male features, drawn with a quick, sure hand. Disappointment settled in my stomach, plummeting like lead. I told him again I wouldn’t hurt him. He didn’t reply, simply pointed to me with a shaking finger. I looked down in wonder at the stiletto knife, clutched in my hand. I hadn’t even been aware I’d pulled it out. For a moment neither of us spoke.
‘I wouldn’t have hurt you, William,’ I said, although I didn’t know if that was true. Why had I drawn it if I hadn’t been prepared to use it? More to the point, a suspicious little voice in my head asked, why did you draw it if you thought it was Edie you were chasing?
‘You come near me with that, you’ll get done for GBH,’ he said. He had his breath back now, the fear replaced with a hostile expression I was more familiar with.
‘I’m sorry – I – I don’t know—’ I stood up, still holding the knife, my other hand reaching for my shoulder, which felt as though it was embedded with hot splinters.
‘Carrying a fucking knife,’ he muttered, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it. He hawked a mouthful of phlegm and spat on the ground between us. ‘No one told me you’d be fucking tooled up.’
He was tall and slight, like a stick of hazel. I didn’t know how I could have thought it was Edie. Rupert would say, ‘The mind sees what it wants to see.’ I laughed when I saw what he’d hit me with: his skateboard, gripped tightly beneath his arm. I bet if I went for him he’d have used it again.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.
I looked at my other hand, the maroon stain it had left on my grey sweater.
I laughed, shrill. ‘It’s fine. It’s nothing. I cut my palm open. God.’ I ran my hand over my sweaty face. He was looking at me, concerned. I must have looked like a crazy woman. Maybe I was. Maybe this was it, the slow burn of insanity. It started in the dark with the frost and the rabbits, the candles guttering on graves. ‘William—’ I said. I thought about reaching out to him, but which hand to use? The one smeared with blood or the one holding the knife? I settled for taking a step towards him. He was looking away, past me, into the dark, somewhere distant and cold and underwater.
‘They’re not nice, those girls. Rattlesnakes. You shouldn’t hang around with them, Mrs Hudson. They don’t want to help you.’
‘You sound like my brother.’ I laughed. It hurt my chest, my shoulder. ‘I could say the same to you, of course. Besides, I have to try to find Edie. The police aren’t doing their job, so I have to.’
‘Is that why you came to our house and made my mum cry?’
‘I didn’t mean to do that, William. That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to talk to your dad.’
‘Why?’
I sighed. I’d no reason to keep Edward Thorn’s secrets but William was just a kid, and he looked as scared as I was. ‘Because your dad knows a lot of people. Important people. I thought he might be able to help me.’
He scuffed his foot on the ground. His head dipped. ‘I wish she’d come back,’ he said. ‘Edie, I mean. We weren’t serious, me and her. But I still wish
