drive her to the hospital.'
Metal noises, the hatchback being lifted, the back seat folded down. Liz was floating – no, hands were lifting her. It felt as if her pain had made her soar into the air. When they laid her down, nothing beneath her felt solid. 'You're coming too,' Isobel said, suddenly alarmed and startlingly close.
'I must get Anna. There she is.' Footsteps were running away. When he shouted Anna's name, the footsteps quickened. 'She must be heading for Derek and Jane's,' he said.
^ 4 I can't let you go by yourself, not the way you are.'
'I'm all right. Just let me take care of myself for a change. You get Liz to the hospital,' he said more gently. 'I can deal with things here, don't worry.'
Liz heard him running after Anna, then hood's door slammed. She could imagine Isobel shaking her head sadly, blaming Liz for his stubbornness. It didn't matter: Liz was floating away from her pain, and she didn't want to come back. Wait – wasn't there a reason why Anna shouldn't go to Jane's cottage, why she oughtn't to be there with Alan? The car started gently, and her pain surged up. She couldn't have stayed even if she'd wanted to. She was floating away where there were no more thoughts.
Fifty-two
Anna closed her eyes, which were smarting with the fog, and clung to the signpost, though the wood oozed like a snail in her hand. The ground squelched under her feet, mud was seeping into her shoes. Fog drifted toward her and away, making her feel as if she were swaying. She wanted to run and never to stop, but she couldn't go on until her heart slowed down. Besides, she wasn't sure what she had just heard.
She couldn't think, she couldn't plan. Her heart felt as if it was thumping her to pieces. Daddy had almost caught her, and then mummy had. When the car with daddy in it – if he was still in it – had started after her, she'd taken to the grass verge, sobbing inside herself and shaking as she'd tried to creep along. She'd been abreast of mummy before she'd seen her; the fog had parted and shown her mummy a few steps away, glaring about, looking for her. Anna had wanted to scream and give up, but she hadn't been able to; her feet on their aching ankles were still moving, smuggling her past in the fog. The fog had closed before mummy had seen her, and she'd stumbled as far as the signpost and was clinging there when she'd heard the sound.
It had something to do with the car. She'd heard a thud, and the car had stopped. Now Granny Knight was crying, 'Oh my God,' over and over. Perhaps the car had gone off the road and crashed into something; perhaps that was what the voices were muttering about now – but Anna couldn't tell whose voices, or even how many. It wouldn't help her if the car had crashed; it would only mean that Granny Knight, who might still be on her side, would be left behind by mummy and daddy while they hunted Anna in the fog.
She heaved herself away from the spongy signpost and began to run. She was weeping as the glare of the fog stung her eyes, weeping with hopelessness. She couldn't head for the village, and it was too far to the hotel. She could only run toward Jane's.
They'd heard her. The muttering stopped, and daddy shouted her name. She ran faster, taking to the verge to make less noise. She could hear daddy running to the signpost, coming after her along the coast road. She could hear the car. It was heading for the village.
So Granny Knight didn't care what happened to her. Mummy and daddy must have said something to her, to make her believe they weren't going to hurt her. Anna had no breath left to scream, and in any case, Granny Knight wouldn't believe her screams. The car dwindled into the fog and then, suddenly, between two painful heartbeats, it was gone. All Anna could hear now were daddy's feet padding quickly after her.
She couldn't hear mummy. She fled along the verge, terrified in case mummy had sneaked ahead of her and was waiting to pounce. Dripping grass-blades slashed at her, fog oozed back along the slimy hedges; underfoot the grass was slippery as polish. Whenever she slipped, she felt as if she were at the edge of the cliff, falling toward the sea she couldn't hear.
Daddy had stopped shouting her name. The fog made it impossible for her to tell whether or not he was catching up with her; his footsteps sounded closer than her own. He'd stopped shouting so that he could hear her better. He was going to catch her. All he had to do was run faster than she was running, along the road.
She dodged, sobbing, off the grass verge, towards the edge of the cliff. She had no idea how close it was. She felt she must be near Jane's by now, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking. The fog dragged over the grass, which looked coated with it; blades nodded, as if the passing of the fog had forced them down. The road had vanished, and the fog seemed to be spinning around her now; there was nothing to hold her sense of direction. She shouldn't have left the road, because now she couldn't hear daddy any more – or anyone else who might be coming for her. Was someone watching her, just at the edge of her eye? When she turned there was nothing but a fading glimpse of red.
She stumbled through the unkempt grass, and felt as if her feet were sinking into the soggy ground; mustn't quicksand feel like this? She wasn't running so much as putting her feet forward to stop herself from falling. She hardly knew where she was, or what she was doing. When she finally reached a landmark she knew, she was almost in it before she remembered what it meant.
It was the blackberry thick: t. That meant she wasn't far from Jane's, though she wasn't as near as she'd been praying. She could follow the path through the mounds to the field next to Jane's house. The blackberries would hide her. She limped between the first of the dark thorny mounds.
At once she wished she hadn't. The mounds and the fog made her feel closed in, unable to get out of the small dark grubby place that was growing darker and grubbier. As each mound swelled up out of the fog she thought that it was lying in wait for her, and then that something behind it was. She would have turned back, except that her sense of being followed was even stronger. That made her run wildly, flinching as each new mound loomed up, but now the blackberries were trying to catch her too, thorny tendrils fastening on her clothes. When they caught her they felt like claws, like mummy's or daddy's fingernails tearing at her flesh. Once, when she swung round to disentangle herself, there were no thorns at all, only a blur of red in the closing fog. The red must be berries – the tendrils must have let go and sprung back, but she had no time to be sure, she was too busy running and sobbing.
By the time she realized she'd strayed from the path between the mounds, she didn't dare turn back. Now she wondered if that flash of red really had been berries after all. She was struggling along a side path and praying it would take her out of the mounds, crawling as thorns closed overhead. When thorns clawed her shoulders, she felt as if someone had leaned down to scratch her, like a cat playing with a mouse. The blurred shapes that loomed over her seemed red more and more often now, but she couldn't raise her head to see.
She wormed her way between two mounds, sobbing because there was nothing left of her except the urge to sob. Sand squeezed under her nails, sand rubbed her sides; it felt like salt in a wound. What was it that kept looming over her and at her back besides the thorns? She struggled among the blackberry roots, so wildly that she dislodged part of one mound, uprooting part of the tangle overhead. The net of thorns was falling on her, it would hold her until daddy and mummy came with their nails that were worse than thorns. But she heaved herself out from between the roots with an effort that left her back a mass of scratches, and suddenly she was out of the thicket.
She plunged into the tall grass at once. She must be facing Jane's house. Now that she was in the grass she couldn't stop to think or get her bearings; the sound of the grass, loud as a flock of birds, drove her onward – and so did a growing notion that she wasn't alone in making the grass rustle. If something was running after her or with her, she'd never see it until it got to her; leaving aside the fog, the grass was almost as tall as she was. She longed to stop for a moment, for she was deafened by the grass, but the thought of slowing down even a fraction terrified her. She was almost blind with running when part of the fog loomed up, grew paler, more solid, turned into a white wall. But it wasn't Jane's cottage, it was the windmill.
She would have hidden in there if she had been able to open the door, but not only was it locked, the hinges as long as her arm were rusted solid. She huddled against the door, clammy flakes of old paint clinging to her smarting back, and tried to think which way she must be facing. You could just see this door from Jane's cottage when it wasn't foggy, if you leaned out of a window and looked to the left; that meant that the cottage must be to her right now, or was it to her left? If you looked in a mirror and raised your left hand your reflection raised its
