Danny did a project at school on suspension bridges. He showed Jen pictures of them on the internet.
“The Humber Bridge used to be the longest in the world,” he told her. “It’s nearly a mile long.”
Jen wasn’t keen on bridges. When they went over them in the family car, she closed her eyes. Sometimes she closed her eyes when she was walking over a bridge, but mostly she just held her breath and walked fast.
“There’s a footpath,” Danny told her. “People walk over it, and run. There’s a race every year that goes both ways.”
Jen shuddered. “You wouldn’t catch me doing that,” she said.
“It’s perfectly safe,” said Danny.
“It’s perfectly safe,” said Finn.
They were standing on the path leading up to the bridge. Ethie was sitting on a wall, swinging her legs.
“Look, all those cars going over,” said Danny, “lorries too, the bridge takes their weight. It’s not going to break when you walk over.”
“I know.”
“I’ll hold your hand,” said Finn.
“I’ll hold the other one.”
“No.”
“Just cross the bridge,” said Ethie. “She’ll follow.”
“But…”
“Leave her alone.”
Finn and Danny looked uncertain. Ethie slid off the wall and started walking. Her steps were slow, and Jen wondered if she was in pain, but neither of the boys offered to hold her hand. They looked at Jen.
“Are you sure?”
“Just do what she said. Go.”
They set out across the bridge. Danny had the longest legs, and although Finn was getting stronger, he couldn’t keep up. Soon the three of them were stretched out in a row, Danny in front, then Finn twenty feet behind and Ethie falling further into the rear. Finn looked round a couple of times, but Jen waved him on.
She didn’t start walking until Ethie had passed the midpoint. By then Danny was almost out of sight, a stick person moving behind the railings. Jen couldn’t see Finn because a family was coming the other way and blocked her vision.
Ethie was moving slower and slower.
Jen couldn’t hold her breath for a mile. She wrapped her arms around herself, smoothing the shiny fabric of the sports jacket between her fingers. She breathed in, breathed out and set off.
Every few yards there was a little hole, and if you looked down you could see the water way below. Jen kept her eyes fixed firmly on the ground in front of her feet.
After a while she felt her muscles relax. This was OK, this was walking, it was safe, she could do it. She didn’t look left or right. She didn’t look ahead. She’d catch up with the others when she did.
The cars passed, each with a whooshing noise. Jen started to count them.
Her legs were moving one in front of the other. She was nearly halfway.
A juggernaut went past. It didn’t whoosh so much as roar, and Jen felt the shockwaves rock the ground beneath her feet. Oh God, she thought, I’m right in the middle.
But she kept on walking. She could see the brown river water in her peripheral vision, but pretended she couldn’t. Ahead was dry land. Ahead were her brother and her boyfriend. Was Finn her boyfriend? How could you tell such things? They’d not discussed it, she couldn’t imagine discussing it. But that night in the B&B in Filey, it had felt right.
She was nearly there. There were trees below the level of the bridge. Soon she would be above land, not water.
A group of people were blocking the path, standing in a small circle. One of them was speaking into a phone. Something was on the floor in the middle of them.
Jen pushed forward and looked. Ethie was lying on her side, her stick on the ground beside her. A woman was putting her into the recovery position.
“She just collapsed,” the man was saying into his phone. “She was walking along and fell. Probably fainted.”
“She’s my friend,” said Jen. “She’s my cousin.”
She knelt down beside Ethie and put her hand on her shoulder.
“Eth.”
Ethie’s eyelids fluttered a bit, then her eyes opened.
“She seems to be waking up. There’s someone with her now, her cousin I think. I can’t see any injuries.”
The man listened for a moment then ended the phone call.
“You OK?”
“They’re not coming, unless we call back. They said to give her water and sugar.”
“Fruit,” whispered Ethie.
“Fruit?” said the man. “Yes, I guess fruit will do.”
“Is everything OK?”
Jen looked up. Danny and Finn had come back and were standing in the circle.
“We’ll take care of her,” said Danny. “She’s with us.”
“Here,” said a woman. She thrust a banana into Jen’s hand. “Give her this.”
Then the crowd melted away.
Ethie ate the banana and drank some water from Danny’s bottle.
“Come on, you daft ha’peth. Let’s find somewhere to camp up for the night,” Danny helped her to her feet.
“Are you OK?” Finn asked Jen.
She grinned at him. “Yes. I made it.”
They found a spot to pitch the tent behind a hedge at the edge of a field. If the farmer came along he’d probably tell them to clear off, but the light was fading, and they’d pack up early in the morning. Leave no trace, Danny was insistent on that.
As soon as the tent was up, Ethie planted her stick in the ground and crawled inside. The walk from the end of the bridge had been slow and painful, along the riverbank, through a nature reserve, Danny and Finn both supporting her. When they stopped and let go of her arms, she nearly fell again.
“I’ll see how she is,” said Jen.
The boys nodded, and Jen squirmed feet first through the tent’s opening, so she was lying next to Ethie, both of them on their tummies, supported on their elbows.
“You have to leave me,” said Ethie.
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m slowing you down. I can’t keep up.”
“We’re not leaving you.”
“It’s me they’re after.”
“Not only you. I’m a missing person. And I didn’t notice you leaving me behind when I was ill.”
“You needed me then.”
“And you need me now. We’ll find a way. If it’s important to get to Norwich, then we’ll get there. Have you heard from Wolf?”
Ethie frowned and shook her head. “He can’t help us anymore.”
Jen moved her forearm so her hand covered Ethie’s and squeezed.
“If I don’t make it, you should find Jules. And you should go to the cathedral.”
“We’ll go together.”
“You’ll find what you’re looking for at the cathedral.”
“Ethie, we’re not leaving you. Have you eaten anything else?”
Ethie shook her head.
“I’ll get you something.”
Danny and Finn were leaning against the gate, looking across the darkening fields to the river. The brown water flowed slow as mud, dotted with white and orange detritus, which on closer inspection was a group of swans and the reflections of lights on the far bank.
They didn’t hear Jen approach.
Danny was saying, “We have to get her back.”
“It’s up to her.”
“She’s been ill. She needs looking after.”
“We can look after her.”
“You know that won’t do. She needs her family – the rest of her family.”
“But you’ve heard her, she doesn’t want to go to her family. She’s dead against it. We can’t force her.”
“We could call Barbara.”
Finn was quiet for a moment. Their open bags were on the ground halfway to the tent, the tub of fruit in the top of one. Jen slid it out quietly.
“I’m not calling Barbara,” said Finn, “unless she agrees to it.”
“She won’t agree to it. Don’t you see? She thinks she’s OK here, that everything will be fine. I don’t think she even knows where she is. We have to decide for her.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“If you won’t call Barbara, then I will.”
Jen coughed. Both of them turned.
Their faces were in shadow, but she could tell they were both wondering what she’d overheard.
“The river is beautiful,” she said. They turned back to look at it. It was so quiet. They could hear the plash of the water on the river beach, the squawks of water birds.
“Is Ethie OK?” asked Finn.
Jen shrugged.
Back at the tent, Ethie took the box of berries eagerly. She thrust in her hand, shoved currants, gooseberries and raspberries into her mouth. Juice ran between her knuckles and from the corner of her mouth. Jen watched, fascinated.
Once, Rebecca had a dog for the summer. His name was Homer and his owners had gone travelling. Rebecca had been nagging her aunt and uncle for a pet of her own, and when their colleague asked if they knew anyone who’d take Homer, they thought it would be a good way to test the waters. It turned out that dogs and Rebecca didn’t work well together – she wanted a creature to be her soulmate and devoted companion when she needed it, but wasn’t really prepared for the time and effort she’d need to put in herself. Homer ended up spending quite a bit of the summer at Jen’s house. Jen, Danny and Dorothy were all really sorry when he returned to Cambridge at the end of the summer.
Jen remembered how excited he was by food. How his eyes shone as he drooled and hopped about. How when you put his bowl in front of him, he almost dived in headfirst.
Ethie shovelled in more fruit, and more, until the box was empty and her hands were purple. She pushed the box and the lid away from her and wiped her hands on the grass.
“Better?”
Ethie nodded. She folded her arms and lay her head on them as a pillow.
“Good idea,” said Jen. “Get some sleep.”
I crossed the bridge.
“You haven’t crossed the bridge.”
I walked it. I walked across the Humber Bridge. You told me to go to the bridge.
“That’s not the bridge. If you’d crossed the bridge you’d be home. Are you home?”
What do you mean? What home? Your home is an island in the sea, but you were born in the fens like me. Water runs in our veins. We are like fish. Why would I want to be in Ely?
“When you reach the bridge, I will be there to help you.”
I already crossed the bridge. Do you think that was nothing? Do you know how hard it was?
“Let the stories carry you. You’ll get there. When you get to the middle, that isn’t the end. Keep walking and come out again.”
I feel eyelids. I feel them close. I don’t want to look at you sitting in that chair. I don’t want to know about the bridge. I already crossed it.
At Easter, Rebecca went abroad with her aunt and uncle. She wasn’t in Ely. If she’d been in Ely, Jen might have gone to her. Rebecca would have known what to do. She’d have told her aunt, and Lucy would have taken charge, taken Jen under her wing. Rebecca had never felt at home in Ely, even though she’d lived there for seven years. She said it was like a really long holiday, that she was a Yorkshire girl at heart. She missed the rain.
Jen was pressed right up against the canvas. She moved her head and took in a deep breath. With her head tipped back she could see stars. The front of the tent was open.
She turned onto her belly, corkscrewing herself so as not to roll backwards and squash Ethie. She leaned on her elbows and looked out. It was dark, but the stars cast a bit of light and a quarter moon was hanging above the water casting a silver cone of light across the surface of the river.
She looked to see if Ethie was awake, but her cousin wasn’t there. The other half of the tent was empty space.
“Ethie?” she called quietly. There was no reply.
She’d probably gone outside for a wee. It must have been her movement that had woken Jen. She leaned her chin on her hands and closed her eyes, opened them again to starlight.
Somewhere nearby, her brother was sleeping. Danny, her big brother who’d been at the hospital the night she was born and demanded to hold her even before they cleaned her up. He was three years old, and when their parents decided it was time to go to hospital, they had dropped him off with Dorothy. It was nine in the evening, and she’d tried to put him to bed, but he had screamed and yelled and cried and demanded to be taken to hospital to see his new sister. By one in the morning Dorothy had had enough. She bundled her grandson into the car and they arrived at the maternity hospital just as Jen was making her entrance into the world. Twenty minutes later, Danny was gazing into her blinking eyes.
Dorothy loved telling that story. How Danny had taken his favourite train with him to the hospital – Percy the Green Engine. He’d pulled it out of his pocket to show to his new sister, but it caught on a thread. He tugged and the thread broke and he bashed baby Jennifer in the face with Percy’s wheels.
“But you didn’t cry,” said Dorothy. “You just kept staring at him and blinking.”
The nurses had taken the baby away from him and given her to their father. Eventually Danny was persuaded to go home with his dad and gran, but only after they’d promised to bring him back first thing in the morning.
When Danny was eleven and Jen was eight, he was embarrassed by this story. When she was thirteen and he was sixteen, Jen was embarrassed by it.
Now she was nineteen, and Danny was out there in the darkness with Finn, who might be her boyfriend. She might be in love.
She heard a noise near the gate. There were pools of darkness behind the hedge on either side, but she thought she saw movement. Something pale, perhaps a white shirt. Then the noise again – a sob or an intake of breath.
“Ethie?” she called, a bit louder than before.
There was no response. Jen got out of the tent as quickly as she could. She ran to the gate.
“Ethie!”
Her cousin was squatting on her heels. One hand was held out in front of her, as though in supplication, palm up, fingers down, wrist exposed. In the other hand she held a piece of glass. She was using the broken edge to cut a line from her inner elbow.
“No! Ethie, no!”
Her cousin looked up and the moonlight lit up her face, the tear-shine of her eyes, the berry juice, the streaks of clean skin where the juice and dirt had been washed away.
Jen shook her head. “Don’t,” she whispered. “It won’t help. It doesn’t make anything better.”
There was a line of blood beading up along the edge of the glass, but Ethie released the pressure. Then the others appeared out of the darkness. Danny crouched beside her, and took the glass from her. She fell against him, sobbing.
“Give me your t-shirt,” said Danny. Finn stepped forward, pulling his shirt over his head.
Their mum thought he was going to be a doctor. That story, the night-time visit to the hospital, she thought it was an early interest in matters medical. But she was wrong. He’d done well in all of the sciences at school, but he wanted to build bridges. He’d been offered a place at Cambridge to study civil engineering.
“Tie it round her arm, above the cut, as tight as you can.”
Finn did as instructed. Ethie was shaking now.
“We need to get moving,” said Danny. “We’ll set off at first light.”
“But how…?” began Jen.
“We’ll hitch,” said Danny.