The path followed field edges for the first few miles, right angle after right angle.
“Can’t we just walk across the middle?” asked Ethie, swiping at the crops with her stick.
The fields were full of wheat or barley, ripe and swaying in the warm breeze. Sometimes the farmer had left a good strip along the border. Sometimes they had ploughed right up to the hedge, and the path was churned mud, rucked up under the soles of their feet.
Then they entered another landscape, where the ground sloped down at a vicious angle. The right edge of the path was higher up the slope, and their ankles pulled constantly to the left.
After a couple of miles they sat down for a rest. The sides of the valley were planted with wide sweeps of crops which looked like they’d been painted on with a giant brush.
“I hate this,” said Ethie.
“It was easier walking on the clifftops,” Jen agreed.
“It’s amazing,” said Finn. “Look at the colours, and those lines where the tractor has driven through.”
Ethie glared at him. “I don’t think the drugs have worn off yet,” she said.
Actually, Finn was getting stronger as they walked. To begin with he’d been at the back, limping along, but how he was striding next to Danny and it was Ethie who trailed behind.
Danny handed out cereal bars from his backpack and passed round a bottle of water. “We’ll feel better if we keep moving,” he said.
Three miles on, they reached a road and Ethie sat down on the verge.
“Enough,” she said.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” said Finn.
“Bus.”
“No buses. Look, it’s a country road.”
“I want fruit.”
“No shops, no fruit. We have to keep walking.”
“Actually, there is. Look.” Danny pointed over the hedge. The path had come out onto the road next to a house with a large garden. At the top it was planted with flowers, but at this end it was a vegetable garden, bordered with fruit bushes – raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, strawberries.
“That’s someone’s garden. We can’t just help ourselves.” Finn seemed to have lost in patience what he had gained in energy.
Ethie was on her feet. “I’m not planning to steal them,” she said. “I’m not a thief.”
A large wooden gate was open on its hinges. She marched up the drive, past a white van, and knocked on the door.
The others watched from the verge. The door was opened by a woman. She and Ethie spoke for a few moments, then Ethie disappeared inside.
“What’s she doing?” asked Finn.
Ethie and the woman reappeared from the back of the house. Ethie was holding an empty ice cream container.
“There’s far too much for just me,” they heard the woman say. “My daughter’s not really interested. Prefers to get her food delivered in a van. Thinks plastic packaging means it’s safer. I always give her something from the garden, but my guess is it goes straight in the bin.”
Ethie waved to the others and the woman beckoned.
“Come on round and help yourselves.”
They filled the tub and ate berries straight from the bush. Ethie was particularly delighted with the blackcurrants. Her fingers and mouth were stained purple and she had a dark streak down her once-white blouse. She looked more and more like a street urchin.
“Where are you going?” asked the woman.
“I’ve been looking at the map,” said Danny, “and I hoped we’d make it to Wharram Percy tonight. But we’re making slow progress.”
“I could ask my window man. He’s going that way.”
She was having a new window fitted in her downstairs room and the fitter was about finished. He agreed to give them a lift.
“A couple of you will have to sit in the back,” he said.
The lady made them all a cup of tea and brought out a tin of flapjacks.
“It’s nice to have some company,” she said, as they all sat around on her lawn munching.
When it was time to move on, Ethie and Danny got into the back of the van. The sheets of double glazing were held in place by a timber frame. There was a small space between them and the double back doors.
“You’ll be fine,” said the driver. “The roads are pretty straight, and I won’t go too fast.”
“My stick!” said Ethie. She leapt back out of the van and found the stick where she’d left it on the front step. She climbed back in, lay the stick on the floor beside her and hugged her knees to her chest.
“What’s that for, catching rabbits?” said the driver.
Ethie glared at him and he chuckled and closed the doors.
Jen and Finn got into the front seat.
“Wharram Percy?” asked the driver.
“That’s what Danny said,” Jen replied.
“You know there’s nothing there except an old ruin?”
Jen shrugged. “I’m sure Danny knows what he’s doing,” she said.
Finn and Jen sat squashed together thigh to thigh, holding hands. Finn was nearest the driver and Jen was by the door. The seats had high headrests. Finn leaned back against his and closed his eyes.
As they drove through the village, an ambulance came the other way. The road wasn’t very wide, and the van driver pulled over to the side to let it past. Two pedestrians stood at the side of the road waiting to cross. They were wearing walking clothes – waterproofs and boots. They looked overdressed for the weather. The woman was wearing a yellow hat.
As the van pulled away, the woman saw Jen through the window of the van and she started forward, waved her arm at her. She spoke to the man and waved again. Jen looked back as the van drove away, but there was a bend in the road and they quickly vanished from sight.
“Were they waving at us?”
“Who?” said the driver.
“That couple, walkers.”
He shrugged. “Didn’t see anyone.”
Jen had a sudden pang of longing for Rebecca. That day at the Angel of the North, Rebecca insisted the people didn’t exist. Now Jen was in a van with Finn and a strange window fitter, and in the back were her brother Danny, and Ethie who was probably a ghost, or maybe a figment of Jen’s imagination. Rebecca would say, get a grip, Jen. She’d suggest going for a pint or shopping for shoes. She’d wave her arms and the phantoms would disappear.
Jen looked at Finn. He was pale and the wound looked as though it might have been bleeding again. His eyelids were blue tinged and slightly swollen. His lashes lay dark and soft on his cheeks. They must have walked more than twenty miles, him with a head wound and the drug still in his system. She’d never seen him irritable before. She gave his hand a squeeze and his jaw relaxed into the echo of a smile, although his eyes stayed closed.
After a couple of miles, his muscles softened and he was asleep.
“You walking the Yorkshire Wolds Way?” the driver asked.
“I guess. Kind of by mistake though.”
“Long way to go by mistake.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Is he OK?”
“He’s fine. He hurt his head.”
“Looks nasty. I’d get it looked at if I was you.”
They were approaching a town. The fields had stopped and the road was lined with houses.
“Where’s this?” asked Jen.
“Malton. We just need to pick up the Beverley road. That’s where I’m headed.”
At a roundabout a jeep roared up behind them and the driver swore.
“Watch it mate!”
But the jeep stuck close. As they travelled along the B road it stayed on their tail revving and roaring.
“What the fuck?”
Jen held tighter onto Finn’s hand and leaned against him. He didn’t wake. The road ahead was empty. The van driver put his foot down. The jeep behind kept up. Jen glanced in the driver’s mirror and saw the jeep had French number plates.
The van driver slowed.
“I’ll let him get past me,” he said.
But the jeep didn’t pass him. It beeped its horn and pulled in even closer behind.
“What’s he doing? He’s going to bump me if he’s not careful.”
There was a jolt as the jeep knocked into the van from behind.
“Fuck!”
And again.
“He’s doing it on purpose.”
He put his foot down again, but this time the jeep pulled out to the side and drove up against the side of the van, scraping against the paintwork. The van driver tried to pull away, but the jeep kept pushing and forced him off the road into a tree. Jen felt herself jolt forwards and the seatbelt cut into her shoulder. Her face was buried in the air bag which had shot out on impact, accompanied by the crack and tinkle of breaking glass in the back of the van.
Finn was suddenly awake.
The van driver opened his door and leapt out to confront the driver of the jeep who was also out of his vehicle.
“What the fuck…?” began the van driver.
“Où est-elle?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know you have her. Open the van.”
“You’ve broken all my glass.”
“Fuck your glass.”
Jen felt the door open. Someone grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the van.
It was Beau. He pushed her forward so she was standing in front of the van driver.
“This one was with her. Where is her friend?”
Finn jumped out of the van and pushed Beau. “Leave her alone!”
Beau pushed him back and Finn tumbled into the nettles at the side of the road.
“Is she behind?”
Beau went to the back of the van and pulled the doors open. Jen and the driver ran after him, followed by Finn, back on his feet.
Inside was a mess. The glass had all broken. Some of it was in large pieces, and some in shards on the floor. It caught the sunlight and shone so the back of the van appeared to be filled with light. Danny was standing right by the door, pressed against the wall of the van, his hands spread flat. There was no sign of Ethie.
Beau turned to the rest of them.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the driver. “I was giving these people a lift. I’d like your insurance details.”
Beau looked back into the van. The light seemed to be even brighter, as though the glass were burning. Ethie’s stick rolled out onto the road.
“Where is she?” he yelled at Jen.
Finn stepped in front of her. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m calling the police.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“Merde!” Beau peered one last time into the back of the van and then leapt into his jeep and tore off down the road.
They watched until he was out of sight.
“I got his registration,” said Finn.
“Where’s Ethie? Danny!” Jen was frantic.
Danny jumped down onto the road. “She’s in there.”
Ethie appeared first as a silhouette in the light of the broken glass, then she was her real self, covered in blackcurrant stains with dirty hair and the medallion still glinting at her neck.
“I’m calling the police,” said the van driver. “I’m going to report that maniac. The footpath to Wharram Percy is half a mile up the road.”