‘Hey, wait up,’ I shouted after her, and cautiously made my way through the meadow as carefully as I could.
We made it into the woods and found our favourite spot, and I felt the happiness wash over me. It was so cosy in here; I felt so protected by the trees and it was always a few degrees cooler than outside. I loved the smell of the warm bracken. The woods had transformed so much since our first summer here together; Dad had given us offcuts of tree trunks, which we dragged through the meadow on a small cart, and we made a den out of branches pressed against a low-hanging tree and put some of the tree stumps inside and some outside in a semi-circle. We also added old pots full of flowers that had dried out and died since our last visit; I would remember to bring some fresh with me next time. Contemplating such a task made me feel like a mother, but not like the mums-and-dads games we played as very young kids. I felt like a proper homemaker, and I took pride in looking after our little spot in the woods and I knew Caitlin did too. Last summer, she had begun making some intricate pebble art in the mud, with all pebbles of all different shapes and sizes. The pattern swirled into a wave, and it was really quite special. Caitlin stooped and looked at it, probably wondering how to expand the design even further. Around that we had pressed flowers into the mud and in a small pot were some water and petals, left over from last winter, which was supposed to be a love potion. Unfortunately, they amounted to nothing, as neither me nor Caitlin found love.
Although there was a lad, Henry, at school who had taken quite an interest in me, and I wondered if now was the time to talk to Caitlin about it. But she seemed so distracted after the incident with Maxwell, I decided to keep it to myself.
She had begun moving away bits of twigs and leaves, using her foot as a brush it felt good giving the camp some sort of facelift after the winter months – when she stopped and turned her head in towards the woods.
‘What’s that noise? Can you hear a noise?’ Caitlin was swinging around, trying to get her bearings on where the sound was coming from. ‘And I can smell something too, what’s that smell?’
She was right. There was noise, which I could just make out to be the sound of a guitar being played softly. The smell reminded me of food cooking on a barbeque.
‘We must investigate immediately.’ Caitlin began to march further into the woods. We walked for a few minutes, all the while the sounds and the smells were getting closer. I was very aware that although we had ventured in this far a few times, we had never been much further than an old battered-down gate, which had served a purpose years ago but was now just rotting wood. To the right, the woods opened up onto a field that belonged to a neighbouring farmer. Half the year he put his cows out there, but during the other half it was empty. Except for today. For, on a small section close to the trees, which continued to weave round where the woods went on further, were several caravans. Outside were rows of washing hanging between them, and in very centre of the cluster was a campfire with several men and women and children sat around it. There were also two scraggy-looking brown long-haired dogs and a grey Staffordshire bull terrier.
Caitlin stopped, rooted to the spot, then ducked behind a tree. I followed her and fell to my knees, glad I was wearing my dungarees, which protected my legs.
‘Who are they?’ I asked, although I had a feeling I knew. I had seen groups of caravans like this parked in areas on the outskirts of Hackney when I was growing up.
‘Bloody travellers. They think they can just rock up anywhere and sit on people’s land. I will have to speak to my father about this immediately, he—’ but before Caitlin could finish her sentence, we both heard the crunch of a branch breaking, and then, suddenly, a figure was looming above us.
He was as tall as my dad, with brown dreaded hair and a beard. He had on a grubby grey T-shirt and jeans, which he was holding by the waist as they were slightly undone.
‘Oh! Shit!’ he began scrambling with his flies.
My first thought was that we were being flashed. It had happened to me and a friend in Hackney once. We were coming home from school across the field and an old man in a long mac pulled open his coat to reveal nothing but his naked body underneath. We screamed and laughed all the way home and were told never to walk home across the field again. But I wasn’t so sure this felt exactly like that.
I didn’t have time to discuss my thoughts with Caitlin, who began screaming, loud and trill, like an army officer’s whistle, as though she had been trained to do it that way.
‘Run, Sasha!’ Caitlin began to run in the direction we had just come from. I stood and looked at the man and shrugged an apology at him and then jogged behind Caitlin.
I reached the clearing where our den was but Caitlin was already out of the woods and running back across the wildflower meadow.
17 London, July 2009
Two months until the wedding
I wake. I can hear someone in the house. The room is pitch black and I am on the sofa – I made it to the lounge at least. I had watched TV for some
