Saturday 4th May
Rachel
The house is silent again, but this time I soak it up. I’ve only had four hours’ sleep – Matt carrying me upstairs like he did on our wedding night, minus the flutter of anticipation – but I don’t feel tired. I imagine it will hit me later, after my run, but I almost look forward to it. No doubt Matt will be tired too, and we can drift through a lazy Saturday together. I know our problems aren’t over. I still have the rough waters of Amber Walsh and Jess Scott to navigate next week. But after the terror of last night, I feel invigorated this morning. And for the next three days, the long weekend, I want to enjoy it.
I pull on my trail-running shoes and yank the laces. I need them to feel like an extension of my feet when I run over the slick mud and hard lumps of chalk along the Ridgeway. The trail is an ancient route sometimes called Britain’s oldest road, or the chalk spine of England. It starts fifty miles away in Wiltshire and finishes just north of London. Sometimes I take the path west, past the Kiln Lakes, but today I’ll run in the opposite direction, through Chinnor Hill nature reserve and along the Icknield Way.
I zip my house key into the small pouch at the back of my Lycra leggings and head outside. Some runners like to carry a backpack, but for me, any practical gains are far outweighed by the sheer joy of running unimpeded. Even though my dad ran when I was growing up, I didn’t get into the sport until I became a parent. When the girls were young, every minute away from them felt precious – both a sacrifice and a treat – and I wasn’t going to waste it driving to the gym or relying on other people for an organised sport. Running meant I could just put my trainers on and go. It’s the same for Matt, I think, with his cycling. He only took it up after we moved here, but he’s hooked now. Heading up into the Chiltern Hills whenever his work schedule allows.
The Ridgeway skirts along the top of the village, so I set off up the high street and take the narrow lane towards the fields. Last night’s rain has made the mud sticky again and I have to concentrate on placing my feet to keep from slipping over.
I cross over the single railway track – a heritage railway that’s only used on commemorative occasions – and head up towards the treeline. It’s a steady incline and I can feel my heart pump faster, my breaths become shallower, as my body adjusts. But the sun is peeking over the fields to my right, and the weak blue sky is decorated with white vapour trails above me, and my good mood grows as I reach the chalk white pathway.
The Ridgeway played its part in us moving to Chinnor. Matt and I met at Oxford University – seemingly the only two state school kids with provincial accents at Magdalen College – and moved to Jericho, in north Oxford, when we finished our degrees. We rented for the first few years, and then after we got married, we bought the flat we were living in. It was good for a while – me advancing my career as a social worker in the city, Matt publishing English textbooks at Oxford University Press – but then I got pregnant with Milla, and Matt’s dad was diagnosed with an aggressive stage-four lung cancer.
Over the next nine months, Matt became a different person. Or perhaps a dormant part of him awakened. The flat seemed to shrink in his eyes, and he became obsessed with keeping it tidy. I’d watch him throw away things that I’d grown to love. Listen to him swearing under his breath as he lined up our shoes, or found crumbs that had escaped into the corners of the kitchen floor. After Milla was born, it got worse, but it was also harder to bite my tongue as he shouted at me to put away her tiny things, or be a bit more fucking house proud.
Matt’s mum, Judy, was his saviour – and probably the saviour of our marriage. I didn’t know her well before Matt’s dad got sick. We’d meet up at regular intervals – Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day – but conversation wouldn’t go much deeper than pleasantries.
It was only when Judy became a widow that I discovered how amazing she was. While she must have been weighed down by grief herself, she was the first to see that Matt’s obsessive tidying was a sign of him breaking, and then dedicated herself to fixing him. She would come down most weekends and take him off for a few hours, give me some time away from him, and Matt the space to work through his difficult mix of grief and joy. After listening to him carefully, it was Judy who persuaded Matt to give up his job and train as a teacher – the vocation he’d always wanted but had never pursued.
It was also Judy who – after selling the family home to move somewhere smaller – gave us a financial gift that enabled us to buy a house. And she’d offered Matt the money during one of their walks, a route that Judy had found, along a prehistoric trail near a village called Chinnor.
I reach the ridge and turn left, the terrain instantly flattening out. Sometimes I see a dog walker, or another runner, out on the trail – it feels like I’m deep in the forest, but there’s actually a small car park only a fifteen-minute walk away – but today I’m on my own, and I breathe in the solitude. It’s not quiet though. The birds are making a racket from deep inside the trees, and there’s rustling at ground level too. Squirrels or maybe a rabbit. After about a kilometre, I pause to push open a gate and jog into Chinnor Hill nature reserve. There’s a pocket of green space here – a secret garden – but the surrounding woodland is more dense, and a sense of unease prickles on my skin. If I were dragged into the trees, no one would have a clue I’d been taken. But I shake the feeling away, frustrated with myself. This is my home. I won’t allow myself to be scared of it.
It’s harder to run here because the path has disappeared and the grass is long and wet, but I’ve got plenty of experience, so my pace hardly slows as I traverse the steep hill, drinking in the sight of new bluebells sprinkled along the ground. I can see the gate that will take me back onto Icknield Way ahead of me, but something lower down the hill, half-hidden by a hawthorn bush, catches my eye and makes me pause. I slow to a stop and concentrate on my breathing as I consider my options.
In the autumn I came across a dead deer on one of my runs. I’ve seen plenty of lifeless animals before – squirrels, mice, pheasants, foxes – but the sheer size of the deer was intimidating. There was no logic to it – it couldn’t do me any harm – but I still felt the physical signals of panic as I tried to slow my thoughts enough to decide what to do. In the end, I memorised the phone number on the nature reserve welcome sign and ran home to call them. When Matt and I walked the route the next day, the carcass had gone.
Is that what I should do now?
With my heart rate increasing, I take a few slow steps towards the dark mass. Now that I’m closer, I decide it looks more like a large rucksack than a dead animal. But something – some sixth sense perhaps – stops me from investigating further. My heart pounds in my chest. There’s a noise behind me, a rustling, and I whip my head around. But there’s no one there.
This is stupid. What am I scared of? I take a deep breath, then walk purposefully towards the bush. I push the branches to one side.
And scream.
Stumble backwards. Lose my footing and fall. Scramble away on my heels and hands.
Spew watery vomit on the grass.
Not a backpack, not a deer.
The dark mass is a human body.
AFTER
Saturday 4th May
Rachel
What do I do?
I don’t have a phone so I can’t call anyone.
I’m at least a kilometre away from the main path, so I can’t scream for help.
Oh Jesus – a thought barrels into my brain with so much force it makes me dizzy – what if it isn’t a body at all, but a person, still alive?
My legs are too weak to stand, but I need to check, however repellent the thought. So I crawl on my hands and knees, towards the bush, closer to the body. It’s completely still. I can’t see the face, but long hair, mussed and tangled, is hanging down their back.
Her back, I think. Long hair, small frame, a dip at the waist. Female.
I take a deep breath and reach out towards her shoulder. But my hand is shaking so much that I can’t really control it, and I grab more roughly than I intended. She drops onto her back with a thud, and I scream again. Except this time, I can’t stop. Because her face is bruised and disfigured. Her hair matted with blood and eyes glassy. She’s definitely dead.
And Christ, I don’t really know her.
But still, I recognise her.
‘Hello? Are you okay?’ A muffled voice from far below me, from the path at the bottom of the hill, makes me physically jump. But this is exactly what I need. Reinforcements.
‘HELP!’ I scream. ‘I need help!’
Low but rapid murmuring. Footsteps rustling in the long grass.
‘Rachel? Oh my God, what’s happened?’ I look up. It’s Annie. With her husband Robert and their spaniel, Coco, held firmly on the lead. Then Annie shifts her gaze to my side and her face contorts. ‘Oh fuck!’ she cries out, then her eyes widen. ‘Not Milla, please not Milla!’
I flick my head around, as though I need to check it’s not my daughter, but of course it isn’t. Why the hell would Annie say that? Then realisation hits. Felix must have told her about me calling him in the middle of the night, frantic about Milla’s whereabouts. ‘No, it’s not Milla!’ I say quickly. ‘That was a false alarm. She fell asleep on a bench. This is … someone else.’ I can’t bear to say the name. Because it’s a name I have sworn over, wished ill on for months.
