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Beth didn’t know how long she’d been standing at the side of the road, but the drizzle had now turned her tan jacket a deep brown. She was looking across from the grass to where she and Luc had been tended by Rae and the other paramedic. The silence of the forest had never unnerved her before. It had always seemed like a place of refuge and safety when she’d escaped there with Luc.
He’d introduced her to his hideaway soon after they started seeing each other. It was his special corner of the world, and she’d been touched that he wanted to share it with her. His family used to spend their summers in the region, and he knew the area better than South London.
It was where they’d taken their very first trip away together. They’d made love in the forest, had drawn up plans and had sat on the bench in front of Gîte Saint-Roch by the brick campfire grill. They’d leaned into each other, reminding themselves what stars looked like, and had let the wood smoke saturate their clothes. When they’d returned to their home under the canopy of city smog and light pollution, Beth hadn’t wanted their clothes washed for weeks after, she’d preferred to inhale them and think about their next escape.
Having grown up in a buttoned-down household, the forest had been the first place where she’d felt truly uninhibited. It had always taken her a day to adjust, but the tranquillity had quickly stripped her reserve. She’d spent her time there wearing just her sunblock, a pair of cut-off jeans and one of Luc’s tee shirts. She’d loved to feel the dry natural floor against the soles of her feet when they’d both run there before breakfast, and to immerse herself in the solitude that was so far removed from their daily lives.
Now, in spite of the familiar beech scents and pure air, she shivered. Beth knew she could never open herself up to it again. How could they ever have suspected the location that nurtured their relationship could wrench them apart in such a horrific way?
Rae Salomon had taken her own life. Walked into the River Epte. Had the crash been instrumental in that? Beth was still partially convinced every event had a knock-on effect. Would she and Luc even have been on this road if a hoodie hadn’t tried to mug them in the car park? But Beth knew she’d drive herself insane trying to trace their fate back to anything more than their own resolve and the brown camper happening to stop dead in the path of their car.
Maryse had said nobody knew what Rae’s motive had been. Her note had simply apologised to those who’d have to deal with the recovery of her body. It sounded as if she was estranged from her family and had very few friends. Had the job taken its toll on her? Whatever her reasons, like the man in the camper, she’d absented herself from the explanation Beth sought.
But what had she expected to hear, even if she had spoken to Rae? Something that would instantly disperse the numbness she felt. Luc was gone. There was nothing that would mitigate that... ever. Her journey here had been nothing but misdirection.
She looked down the road at the trees hugging the curve, their overhang recently trimmed so she had a clear view of it tapering towards the route they were never destined to complete. Beth wondered where they would be if they had. Would they now be taking their new home and happiness for granted?
They both knew couples that had got bored with each other and had vowed that it would never happen to them. Had that been naivety? Had the accident actually drawn a line under and preserved that perfect part of their lives before domesticity drained it of its vitality?
Beth repelled the thought and inhaled the earthy aroma of wet leaves and mud. She looked down at the only remnant of the event – the coach’s deep tyre tracks in the grass beneath her boots. She imagined it swerving to avoid the wreckage and Cigarillo Man finding her and calling the emergency services. He’d at least saved her life, but she had yet to feel grateful to him. But he probably had no control over the tourists he was transporting, couldn’t have made them stay inside the vehicle while they waited for help to arrive.
Beth surveyed the area where their car and the camper had come to rest. Having examined it in the clips, it seemed unreal to be standing in its three dimensions. She was positioned exactly where she’d attacked the crowd; in the spot they’d watched and had recorded every moment of her distress and rage.
She waited for an emotion. If she felt nothing here, Beth knew she was broken. Part of her hadn’t survived the crash. The part she could only remember now. A gentle wind agitated some leaves in the road.
She thought of Luc’s body burning while she was oblivious and the faces that would have been at the crematorium – his mother, her parents, Jerome and Lin. How would he have reacted if he’d looked down and seen her missing? If there were really any sort of afterlife, surely he would have understood where she was and why she couldn’t have been there.
Perhaps he would have found her and looked down at her in her hospital bed. But Beth didn’t really believe in life after death. Luc had been brought up in a Christian household and, although he hadn’t attended church for many years, had never entirely relinquished his beliefs. Beth had always told him that if she were fortunate enough to enjoy a full existence, she would happily take an everlasting nap at the end of it. She didn’t see anything tragic in that.
But now he’d been prematurely taken from her, she found herself struggling to reconcile herself with such a pragmatic perception of death. It felt strange to imagine Luc in an urn on his mother’s mantel, almost laughable. Where had Luc’s sense of humour gone, his imagination, his creativity? Were they like deleted computer files? She thought of the passwords she’d recovered from the house and the residue of his existence left online.
She still couldn’t bring herself to access it. Accounts had to be closed and that seemed too final. Beth knew she would have to dispose of his clothes and belongings sooner or later as well. She wouldn’t be told when that was though. She imagined her mother standing over her and making her do it, telling her it was time to get on with her life and encouraging her to stuff all his things into sacks.
Would she smell his clothes before they were bagged? How long would his aroma remain on them? When it no longer did, were they just jumble? She would decide the time and now was too soon.
She didn’t want to get back in the car either. Once she did, home was the only logical direction. But where was home? Her mother and father’s? Jody’s box room? It certainly wasn’t the new house that had to be sold before she was drowning in debt. Grief and paperwork were a sickening tag team. The prospect of what lay ahead seemed suffocating.
Beth crossed the road to where she had last seen Luc, but felt nothing as she estimated exactly where they lay next to each other. She thought of him whispering sorry to her.
She could have been standing anywhere. There were no other tracks to be found, just a roadside like any other. She placed the bouquet of lemon roses and heather on the kerb, and it felt good to release their plastic wrapping from her hot palm. There was nothing to attach them to. The draught of passing cars would quickly dislodge them and probably blow them into the road. But it felt right to leave them there, even if it was for her benefit. She was a grieving widow and it was a box that had been ticked.
It was the first time she’d really considered her new label. She imagined “widow” would automatically entitle her to sympathetically knitted brows during every conceivable introduction from here on in. Until now, widows to Beth were characters in movies that dressed in black and hid behind a veil.
She looked back at the car and into the brush behind her. Briars and brambles made access to the forest on the other side of the road impossible. There were plenty of wide gaps between the trunks in the woods in front of her, however, so she stepped over the pavement and entered their cool and shady welcome. She wanted to walk away from everything the accident had turned her into, to feel the way she did when she’d been there before, even if it was a fleeting pretence.
Beth ducked under the lower branches and didn’t look back. She’d left the car unlocked but didn’t care. As her boots kicked up the wet leaves, the empty skeletons of the trees augmented her feeling that a once happy place had died. There was a strong scent of mould that caught in her throat, and she had to shield her eyes against the brittle points of the branches as she headed for the darkness at its denser centre.
Light drizzle that penetrated the canopy overhead became heavier and clung to her face, but she was soon loosening her pullover collar to let the moisture at her hot neck and listening to her laboured breath.
It struck Beth it was highly likely the driver of the camper had made his escape this way. He couldn’t have got through the other side of the road, and this route would have been his most convenient exit. If he wanted to disappear, he certainly wouldn’t have walked beside the traffic. After he’d kicked her into unconsciousness, maybe he’d done exactly as she was doing now. Perhaps she was retracing his exact steps. She looked down at the ground as if she would find some sign of his presence, but the carpet of leaves concealed everything.
As she reached what she thought would be the darkest portion of the forest, there was instantly a blacker area up ahead and, having repeated this process for some minutes, she peered back the way she’d come for the first time.
The road was no longer visible, and she was unsure of its exact direction. But it was a good feeling. For the first time since the accident, Beth felt like she was properly alone. She wasn’t likely to encounter another soul and, if she did, there would be no pained expression or words of condolence. She stopped to wipe her face and listen to the silence.
How much farther should she go? Beth felt as if she could keep walking for the remainder of the day. A tiny voice said she should return to the car. It was unlocked and she didn’t want to get stranded with no mode of transport to get her back to the shuttle. She ignored it and kept pumping her boots through the leaves.
Then she could hear the sound of an animal over the wet squelch of her paces and stopped to listen. It was panting and nearby. She scanned the trees around her and when her eyes halted on its seated form, it briefly stopped breathing. Then the Alsatian with the black snout snarled and sprang.
