Hide and Seek, page 19
I sat back in my chair, frustrated. I just wanted to go and see if I was right. Dan was far too busy with the evacuation for me to have another go at persuading him to come along with me, which meant I was stuck.
I turned off the computer but stayed in my chair at the desk, chin on hand, thinking. I had promised not to get involved.
Anyway, I didn’t have a car and I’d need one to get to Swifthook Cottage.
I’d done my bit by pointing Dan Henderson in the right direction. What I’d told him would bother him, I knew. He wouldn’t admit it to me, but he’d make it his business to get to Leemouth at the earliest possible opportunity. And I had enough experience of getting into trouble to know that you could run out of luck, generally when you least expected to.
Gilly had run out of luck a long time ago. Even before she met Mr. Lowell, she’d had to cope with her mother and her mother’s problems. She was used to keeping secrets. She was an easy target for Mr. Lowell. He’d seen that she was isolated and he’d made sure she stayed that way. I had no doubt he’d told her to dump Nessa as a friend. He’d told her to get rid of her phone. He’d controlled everything.
The rain was whipping against the windows and drumming on the roof right above my head. The wind made the house creak like an old sailing ship in a gale. If it was this bad up the hill, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like down on the seafront, with the waves smashing into the promenade. On a normal day the beach was completely under water at high tide. It would be flooding onto the road tonight. Anyone further down the town would have to hope the council had put out enough sandbags to keep the waves at bay.
And the same went for every beach along the coast. If it was going to be high tide in—I checked—two hours, Swifthook Cottage would be in trouble.
Who did I know who had a car? Hugo was the obvious answer, since he was actually in the house. His little yellow Fiat, Miss Lemon, was his pride and joy. Even though Hugo wasn’t all that devoted to helping others, he found it hard to resist an opportunity to go for a drive. I went to find him. He was lying on his bed, headphones on, eyes closed. I found a rolled up pair of socks on his floor and threw them at him.
He opened an eye. “What do you want?”
“Take the headphones off.”
“What?”
I mimed it instead of shouting, and very reluctantly he lifted them off.
“What is it?”
“Can I ask you a huge favor?”
“You can ask. I reserve the right to say no.”
“Can you drive me somewhere?”
“I knew getting a car was a bad idea,” Hugo said. “I should have just signed up for my taxi license and made it official. Where do you want to go? Darcy’s house? If it’s just round to Will’s, I’m not doing it. You can walk.”
“In this weather?”
Hugo groaned. “Don’t make me get out of bed for a two-minute drive.”
“I’m not. I don’t want to go to Will’s. I want to go somewhere a bit further.”
“Where?”
“Leemouth. Well, just outside it.”
Hugo narrowed his eyes. “Explain, please.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed and did my best to tell him what had been going on with Gilly’s disappearance, and where I thought she might be. He was shaking his head well before I got to the end.
“No way. Absolutely not. Even if Miss Lemon worked in wet weather, which I’m not a hundred percent sure she does, there’s no way she could make it along an unpaved road, particularly if it’s muddy. It’s been raining for hours. She’d get stuck in a puddle.”
“What about taking me to Leemouth? I might be able to get a taxi from there.”
‘“Might’ is right. You won’t. No way. Not on a night like this, and possibly not in Leemouth ever. You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
“Once.”
“So you know what it’s like. It dreams of being a one-horse town. They’re saving up for a Shetland pony.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to live there. I just want a lift.”
“To do something typically crazy and dangerous. In the first place, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s a little bit wet out. It’s too risky to drive around on country roads when the weather’s like this. No nonessential journeys, it said on the news.”
“I love how you’re taking the warnings seriously when I want to go somewhere. If you were the one who had a reason to go out, nothing would stop you.”
“That’s possibly true. I’m not ashamed.”
“You’re never ashamed.”
Hugo grinned. “It’s a wasted emotion.”
“You’re not normal.”
“Normal is overrated.” The smile faded. “Come on, Jess. What are you going to do if you find the cottage and she’s there? Break in? Make a citizen’s arrest? I think your Wonder Woman costume must be cutting off the circulation to your brain.”
“I just don’t want to sit around while someone I know is in trouble.”
“Sorry. The answer’s no.” Hugo put his headphones back on. Speaking a little bit louder than he needed, he said, “Not from me, anyway. And good luck finding someone else to take you on a night like tonight.”
There was absolutely no point in trying to persuade him to change his mind. Hugo had spoken. I went back to my room and paced about, too tense to settle down. I did know someone else who had a car. The obvious person to ask, in many ways.
I just didn’t think I had a hope of convincing him.
* * *
“I thought you’d say no.”
Will was leaning forward, peering through the windscreen and the water that was cascading down it. “I probably should have.”
“But you love me too much to say no.”
He gave me a look. The bruises had darkened on his face. He looked tough and capable and, at that moment, amused. “I know you too well. You’ll go on your own and get yourself into trouble.”
“Well, whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here.” I put my hand on his thigh and squeezed it. “All I want to do is see if Gilly’s there. If she is, I’ll call your dad and tell him. If she’s not, no harm done. We go home and no one is any the wiser.”
“It sounds so easy when you put it that way.”
“It should be easy.”
“Should be.” Will was driving slowly, coaxing his car through the enormous puddles that were gathering on the roads. We were on a typical Devon lane, so narrow there was only room for one car at a time. The bends in the road and the high hedges on both sides cut your chances of seeing an oncoming car to almost nothing. There was an occasional passing place to let cars coming in the opposite direction go by, but otherwise there was nowhere to go if something unexpected loomed up. I was trying to keep the terror off my face, but I definitely felt scared. The engine stuttered and Will pulled a face.
“If we don’t break down.”
“Is that likely?”
Instead of answering me, he laughed, and I found myself thinking I didn’t really mind if we got stuck in a ditch somewhere as long as I was with him.
Assuming it was on the way back from not finding Gilly. I could taste the worry I felt about her. It was like metal in my mouth. I wanted to find her, but more than that I wanted to check that she was nowhere near the coast, nowhere near Mr. Lowell. Safe somewhere.
Happy, even.
I wished I believed that was likely.
“It’s high tide in less than an hour.”
Will nodded. “We’re nearly there.”
“I don’t want to be too late.”
“We won’t be. You said it was an old cottage. It’ll have survived a few high tides in its time.”
I realized that I was leaning forward with my hands clenched on the edge of the seat and made myself relax a little. “So there’s no need to panic.”
“There’s never a need to panic,” Will said, calm as ever. He steered the car round a sharp bend. “We’ll just— Oh shit.”
I whipped my head round in time to see a confusion of branches, and fractured but all too solid wood filling the road. A tree, I thought, brilliantly, before we were on top of it.
The car lurched sideways, skidded, collided with something massive and—after what felt like forever—stopped. It was leaning at an uncomfortable angle, so I was higher up than Will. Everything in the car that wasn’t actually attached slid to the right with a slither and a rattle.
“God,” Will said. “Are you OK?”
“I think so,” I said shakily, trying to work out what hurt and why. My head had snapped forward and back again so my neck ached, and I could feel a burning sensation across my chest where the seat belt had dug into me. I’d put a hand out to brace myself against the dashboard and my whole arm felt bruised from the force of the impact. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” Will leaned across and popped open the glove compartment to get a flashlight. Then he opened his door and slid out. “I just need to check if the car survived.”
I sat and waited for him to return, staring out through the windshield at the fallen giant that blocked the entire road. Will had tried to steer round it, but there was nowhere to go. We’d ended up almost sideways across the carriageway, and there was no way I could get out on my side. I undid my seat belt and clambered over the seats.
A noise behind me made me jump, and I twisted in my seat to see that Will had opened the boot. He saw me looking and held up a reflective triangle. “Just getting this. I need to put something in the road to warn other drivers about the car.”
“Is it OK?”
“It will be. But I can’t move it. It’s caught on a branch and I don’t want to try to push it off in case I rip the engine out.”
I nodded and watched him walk away, disappearing round the bend. I probably didn’t breathe again until he was back in sight, talking into his phone with one hand over his mouth to cut the noise from the wind to a minimum.
When he’d finished, he poked his head through the open door. “The cops are sending a recovery vehicle, but it won’t be soon. They sound a bit frazzled.”
“I’m not surprised. I bet this has happened all over the place.” I slid out to stand beside Will. I was shivering by now. We were sheltered from the worst of the rain and wind by the car, and it wasn’t the cold that was making me shake.
Will wrapped his arms around me. “It’s OK. We’re fine. The car will be all right.”
I leaned into him. “I know. It was just…”
“Yeah.” Will rested his chin on top of my head. “Scary.”
“I’m being a wimp. Sorry.” With an effort I stood upright, on my own. “I’m sorry for getting you into this.”
“All in a good cause.” He sighed. “The bad news is that we’re not going any further in the car.”
“Is there any good news?”
He nodded. “We can walk from here.”
22
Will was right. The turning for the cottage was just beyond the fallen tree. It was little more than a track, and I doubted whether the car would have got more than a few meters further. Grass grew along the middle, and I tried to walk there rather than on the sticky black mud on either side. I bent my head against the wind and rain sweeping in from the sea, following the light of the torch that Will shone on the ground in front of us. The high hedges gave us some protection from the weather, but it was still brutal, still terrifying in its power. I hadn’t yet seen the sea, though I could hear the surf booming and crashing ahead of us, and the rain tasted of salt.
“Car.” Will ran the beam of the torch over the back of a VW Polo that was pulled up by the side of the road. It was empty, the windows fogged with salt. The wheels were clogged with mud.
“Mr. Lowell’s,” I called back.
When we turned the next corner, we were facing the sea. The beach was basically gone, the sea thundering into the dunes. Every wave seemed to reach higher and higher again. We were still twenty meters from the edge of the surf, but I didn’t feel as if that was far enough. There was no barrier between the sea and the land, nothing to hold the water back. It cut into the soft sand of the dunes, and every time it retreated it stole more of them away.
I climbed onto the nearest dune to get a better view, and the wind almost took my breath away. I blinked against it, battling to stay upright, and saw a light glowing not far from where we stood. The night was so black I couldn’t pick out anything else—not the ridge of the roof or the white walls of the cottage—but there were no other buildings near the beach.
“I think the cottage is that way,” I yelled over the sound of the waves, and pointed. “But we’ll have to go across the dunes.”
I followed Will as he picked out a route, staying low, looping around to come up behind the cottage. Once we reached it, the solid mass of the building provided a little shelter from the tearing wind. There were no windows this side, which sort of made sense, because who wanted to look at the rolling featureless dunes when there was the sea to stare at?
“What do we do now?” Will asked.
“Look through the windows? Try to see if Gilly’s inside, and if anyone else is?”
“And if she is?”
“Call your dad.”
He grimaced. “Wait here.”
“What? No. I’m not waiting. You go left and I’ll go right.”
“You’ll get blown away.”
“I can cope with a bit of wind.”
“OK. Don’t say I didn’t offer.” Will headed off to the left without waiting for me to reply. I went left, gasping as the wind caught me full in the face. There was a window halfway along the side of the cottage, and I worked my way toward it, stumbling a little on the tufted grass. A generator hummed, providing the electricity for the cottage, and cover for me if I made any careless noise. The light was shining onto the ground, so I didn’t want to get too close: I’d be easy to see if I wandered into it. I pulled my hood forward and crept along until I was just beside the window. Then, slowly, I inched to the left until I could see a section of the cottage’s living room. It was just as dingy as I’d suspected from the Web site, although to be fair I probably wasn’t seeing it at its best. The light came from the bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling. It shone harshly on the stack of furniture that was blocking the door. I couldn’t tell if it was a barricade against the weather or intruders.
There was a loud boom as a particularly big wave hit the beach. I watched in horror as water swelled up under the door, seeping up through the floorboards, spreading out across the floor. I was so busy staring at it I forgot I was supposed to be keeping a low profile. I stood on tiptoe to get a better view, and then froze as Mr. Lowell walked into my line of sight, like an actor walking onto the stage. He stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the door and the water oozing back toward the sea. His face was turned away from me, but it would only take a glance in my direction for him to see me. I started to sink down, moving slowly. He looked just the same as usual—he could have been standing in his classroom, not in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. As I watched, he said something over his shoulder, and I stood completely still again as Gilly came into view.
I suppose I’d expected her to be tied up, if she was there at all. I’d thought she would look desperate. She was just the same as ever. Her feet were bare and bluish with cold. She looked small, and tired, but not frightened. Resigned, if anything. She put her hand on Mr. Lowell’s back and spoke to him, her face close to his. I thought she was trying to persuade him of something, or comfort him, and it was so intimate it made me feel as if I was intruding.
But then, too quickly for me to do anything to hide, Gilly looked straight at me. Her eyes widened in shock, but she didn’t give me away. She stroked Mr. Lowell’s shoulder a couple of times and said something else, still with her eyes fixed on mine. She tilted her head to the right and I got the message: Come to the other side of the cottage. Then she turned and walked away from Mr. Lowell, out of sight.
I ran, slipping and sliding on the rain-soaked grass. As I rounded the corner of the cottage, I collided with Will. He tried to hold onto me but I wriggled free. “I saw her. I saw Gilly.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Then come on.” He reached out for me. “We need to call Dad.”
“You do it. I have to talk to her.” And maybe rescue her. I was thinking of the water sliding up through the floorboards, the cottage creaking as its foundations weakened.
Will took out his phone and checked. “No signal. Damn.”
I checked mine. “Me neither.”
“I’ll have to go back to the road.” He looked up. “But I don’t want to leave you.”
“You won’t be long.” I kissed him. “I promise I’ll be careful.”
I didn’t wait for him to reply, but ran, hurrying in case Mr. Lowell got there first; in case Gilly changed her mind; in case there was anything I could do.
She was waiting at the bathroom window, which was small, high up, and had a bar across it for good measure. Her fingers were curled round the bar and her face was strained in the light that streamed from behind her. I got a toehold on a pipe and levered myself up so I could see into the room. She was standing on the edge of the small bath.
“Jess! Oh my God, Jess…”
“Are you OK?” I tried to keep my voice low. It was hard to hear over the noise of the storm, but shouting didn’t seem like a good idea. “Are you hurt?”
“No—nothing like that.”
“What are you doing here? Did Mr. Lowell kidnap you?”
“No! Not exactly.” Gilly bit her lip. “It’s complicated. I wanted to get away from my mum and he was able to help me.”
“So you want to be here with him?”
“Of course. But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be one night, but then…”
“Then he wouldn’t let you go.”
Gilly’s eyes were wet. “We can’t go back to the real world. No one understands there. They’d arrest him. Throw him in jail. Stop him from being a teacher any more. All because he loves me.” She shook her head. “It’s so unfair.”
