Tom swings the back door shut with a foot. His heart thuds and shakes out the last drops of adrenalin but now he’s indoors, at least he can detect a smidgen of a house’s purpose: to provide shelter and security, or something like that – and for the first time too. He needs to bury his shock from the woods under the cushion of the kitchen lights and the comfort of the girls’ presence. Home. This has to be home, because there isn’t anywhere else for them to be now.
Boots kicked off, he plants and earths his feet on the old lino, then drifts to Gracey, holding Archie under his arm. His daughter’s face remains buried in her mum’s neck but at least she’s stopped crying.
Tom kneels down. ‘Look who I have here.’
Gracey moves her head a fraction, peering with one eye to see what her father cradles: the furry baby of the family.
Archie gazes in the direction of Gracey but can’t summon the usual snuffling eagerness with which he solicits fuss. The dog remains preoccupied with licking his muzzle.
Tom nestles Archie into his basket, where the pup watches and beseeches Tom to be kept within his arms. A pathetic but heart-aching appeal for comfort, but the dog has become heavy and is a barrier between him and Gracey and what he wants to ask her.
‘What a pair. Lost in the wood. You two, honestly. Frightened me and your mum half to death. Twice now. What happened, my love? You see something?’ Tom thinks of the fox frozen in grinning death, black with blood and flies.
‘She’s in shock.’ Fiona says, in shock herself at the very idea that her daughter could be traumatised.
‘Why did you go in there, my Peanut?’ Tom asks, ignoring Fiona’s frown that communicates that this is not the time for the interrogation that she will surely expect to carry out. But Gracey is sufficiently quieted to respond and seems eager to share her horrified fascination with what she experienced. ‘Lady of the woods told me to come in. For lost Waddles.’
‘What lady? The lady next door?’
Gracey shakes her head: no . ‘Lady in the trees said she’s got Waddles up in the wood house wiv the stones.’
‘Wait. This lady, she asked you to go into the wood? When you were in the garden?’
Gracey nods.
‘Who is she?’
‘She’s in the trees by the hill.’
‘You’ve seen her?’
Gracey shakes her head, her expression doleful. But intrigue has crept into her widening eyes as if she’s just realised how strange it is to hear a disembodied voice from inside the wood.
‘But she knows your name?’
Gracey nods.
‘And when you were in there … you met the lady who called to you?’
Gracey shakes her head. ‘She weren’t there. There was white monsters by the hill and a fox in a tree they hurted.’
Tom and Fiona exchange glances. Fiona is mystified but Tom feels ill at the details contained within this simple account. He looks at the kitchen window.
Dark glass, revealing nothing but the inside of the kitchen. Need to get blinds on that. So that nothing … no one can see inside . Out there is what’s left of the old fence dividing the two houses. The end panels smashed. The remnants stacked upon an overgrown lawn. Beyond that: them . ‘Something’s not right here.’
‘You don’t say.’ Fiona is angry with him but shouldn’t be.
He needs to correct her. ‘It’s them again.’
‘Not now. Chrissakes.’
Tom peers into Fiona’s eyes, prospecting, sifting, seeking a hint of curiosity about what the hell just happened to Gracey, let alone him too. He sees nothing but the hard stones of his wife’s disdain, walling him out.
‘You heard what Gracey said,’ he offers, his voice softened, a conciliatory gesture.
‘Who told her the woods belonged to her?’
And then Gracey sits up, forcing herself into the exchange, compelled by the tension between her parents. ‘New Waddles is lost!’