“We’ve been cornered by this absolute unit,” I shout as the guy gets out of the Land Rover. He shakes his head and pats the cow on its rump. “Off you go, girl! Go on! Hup! Hup!”
The cow makes a few huffing noises, turns, shits everywhere, I’m talking buckets of the stuff pouring out of its arse, then meanders off. I just stare in utter horror at the ground. Why would anyone want to live like this?
“Can I help you, lads?’ the man says.
“Please, sir,” I say, for some reason adopting the tone of a Dickensian orphan. “We’re looking for Raven Farm?”
The old guy frowns. “Old Man Cooper’s place? What business have you there?”
OK, so I immediately don’t like the sound of this “Old Man Cooper”, his “place” and the idea that it wouldn’t be obvious what “business” we had there, when it’s meant to be the location of a luxury cabin which features on various reputable holiday websites. But, anyway. “We’re meant to be staying there,” I tell the guy.
There is a low rumble of thunder.
“Raven Farm’s over yonder,” he says, pointing towards a gate at the end of the field.
“Yonder?” I repeat. Why is it suddenly, like, 1836?
“’Bout a mile up the lane, then left at the old oak, along the dirt track ’bout another half mile. Entrance is opposite the abandoned mine.”
Nate flicks his eyes to mine. “Abandoned mine?”
“Since the accident,” the old guy says, shaking his head. “Terrible business.”
“Well!” I say brightly. “This all sounds perfect, thank you for your kind help, and I’m loving the fact there are no road names in the country, only vague landmarks. We’ll be on our way.”
I turn and start to head off.
“Lads!” the old guy calls after me. “If you see any roadkill on your way, take it – there’s usually a dead rabbit or a pheasant on the lane somewhere. If he’s still got that old dog, the only thing that placates Daisy is the flesh of the fallen.”
I nod my thanks and head off with Nate. “OK, gross, we’re not doing that.”
Nate is notably silent.
“I’m sure it sounds worse than it is,” I say.
“What website did you find this place on?”
“Oh my god, literally Booking.com, I’m a hundred and ten per cent confident it’ll be fine!”
“You can’t get a hundred and—”
“I know, but everyone says it anyway!”
There’s another rumble of thunder.
We plough on.
Now it’s really getting dark.
I can’t tell you how much I wish I wasn’t wearing flip-flops.
I’m not going to cry.
Eventually, we come to a big tree, which, since it’s next to a dirt track, we assume is the “Old Oak”, although there is literally no way of telling.
“Look,” says Nate, pointing to a dead rabbit at the side of the lane.
“Yes?”
“Should we take it? For Daisy?”
I’m about to tell him, no, don’t be crazy, when we hear, in the distance, the most savage and ferocious barking that sounds more like a demonic wolf than it does a dog.
Nate swallows and looks at me. “If Daisy gets to us before Old Man Cooper, we might be in trouble.”
“I’m not even considering this,” I say, “but, hypothetically, how would we carry it?”
Nate pulls a plastic carrier out of his rucksack and glances at me, with a look in his eye of someone who is about to do something unutterably gross. Nate is unbelievable. You just know he’d be the first to tuck in to his fellow passengers in the event of a plane crash on a remote mountain.
“It’s my dirty clothes bag,” Nate explains. “Mum always makes us carry one, because it’s easier to separate what’s clean and what needs washing.”
I shake my head. “Great. I love information of how other people handle laundry logistics.” I cock my head at the dead rabbit. “Pick it up, then.”
Nate chews his lip, then pokes round the verge, eventually finding a big stick, which he tries to wedge under the rabbit. But every time he manages to lift it up, the rabbit wobbles off and falls back to the ground.
This goes on for about five minutes, Nate repeatedly trying to pick the rabbit up with the stick, and the rabbit falling back down, until I find him another stick, so now he can – I’m sorry, this is obviously disgusting – skewer it with a pincer movement, and I close my eyes and hold Nate’s dirty laundry bag open, and he drops the rabbit in.
And then it starts to rain.
We hurry up the dirt track, thunder echoing around us, as the rain gets harder and heavier, until we come to a ramshackle wooden sign, on to which the letters Raven Farm have been stuck.
But Nate isn’t looking at that. He’s looking at the other side of the road.
“Is it fine that there’s a big stick with some sort of animal skull on top of it stuck in the ground?” he says.
I glance at it. Admittedly, it’s not the sort of welcome I would expect of a “luxury” establishment.
At this point there is an actual crack of lightning, and suddenly a fearsome, craggy face is illuminated, right in front of us.
I can’t help it, I scream again.
The man stares at me, death and murder in his eyes. “Jack Parker?” he says. “Hope you didn’t have trouble finding the place. I just need you to sign some paperwork, then we can get you settled in – have you brought a car?”
I shake my head. “We can’t drive yet.”
“No problem, son,” he says. “Need any help with your—” He glances down at Nate’s carrier. “What have you got there?”
“Rabbit,” Nate mutters.
The man frowns.
“For Daisy?”
The man crosses his arms. “Daisy? Who’s that, then?”
“Your … dog?” Nate says.
The man shakes his head. “Someone’s been feeding you boys a pack of porkies!
