The Hunter

A gorse bush rattles with the sharpness of a deliberate taunt, and Trey barely keeps her footing on the wall. She understands for the first time what hunted her dad indoors and kept him penned there, these last few days.

She recognizes this as an inevitable response to what she told Nealon. Something brought her the chance of revenge, the same way it brought her Cal, only this time she turned it down. Whatever’s up here isn’t on her side any more.

She marks out the route she’ll take, cutting across fields and over walls, the quickest way down the mountain for anyone who knows it like she does. It’s starting to get dark, but the summer dusk is still long; she’ll have time. She’ll be careful.

Her mam’s silver Hyundai appears on the road, tiny with distance but still identifiable, going fast. Light flashes off it as it turns into Lena’s gateway. Trey jumps down off the wall.

—

Lena is on her sofa, with a mug of tea and a book, but she’s not reading. She’s not thinking, either. Trey’s face and Cal’s are in her mind, oddly alike in the closed-off, determined set of their features, but she lets them be, not trying to work out what to do about either one of them. The air feels thick and restless, pressing in from all sides; at the window, the evening light has a sickly greenish-purple tinge, like something rotting. Lena stays still, conserving herself for whatever is going to happen.

In their corner, the dogs twitch and huff irritably, trying to doze and getting on each other’s nerves. Lena drinks her tea and eats a couple of biscuits, not out of hunger but while she has the chance. When she hears the car coming up her drive, even though it wasn’t what she was expecting, she rises to meet it without any real surprise.

The car is bursting at the seams: Sheila and the children and Banjo spilling out of the doors, bin liners full of clothes hanging out of the boot. “You said you’d have us if I need it,” Sheila says, on the doorstep. She has Alanna by the hand and a stuffed holdall on her shoulder. “Will you?”

“I will, o’ course,” Lena says. “What’s happened?”

Banjo is squashing his way past her legs, making for her dogs, but there’s no sign of Trey. Lena’s heartbeat changes, turning slow and hard. She wouldn’t put it past Trey to have told Johnny straight out how she spent the afternoon. After all this time, she still can’t predict Trey. She should have found a way to ask Cal. Cal would have known.

“There’s a fire in our yard,” Sheila says. She shifts the bag higher on her shoulder, so she can catch Liam’s arm and stop him climbing on Lena’s geranium planter. “By the shed. I’d say Johnny threw a smoke that wasn’t out.”

“How bad?” Lena asks. She doesn’t understand what’s going on. She feels like all of this must add up in ways she can’t see.

Sheila shrugs. “Small, only. But everything’s dry as a bone. Who knows what it’ll do.”

“What fire?” Liam demands, trying to twist away from Sheila’s hand. “There’s no fire.”

“It’s behind the shed,” Maeve tells him. “That’s why you didn’t see it. Shut up.”

“Did you call the fire brigade?” Lena asks. She can’t get a grip on Sheila’s calm. It’s not her usual heavy shield of detachment; this is the vivid, alert coolness of someone expertly managing a complicated situation on the fly. Lena turns to look at the mountain, but her house blocks the view.

“I’ll do it now,” Sheila says, fishing in a pocket for her phone. “I’ve no reception up there.”

“How do you know?” Alanna asks Maeve.

“Trey said. Shut up.”

Alanna thinks this over. “I saw the fire,” she says.

Lena says, “Where’s Trey?”

Sheila, phone to one ear and a hand over the other, glances at her. “She’s coming,” she says.

“Is she up there? Is Johnny with her?”

“She’s coming,” Sheila says again. “I’ve no clue where he is,” and she turns away. “Hello, I’ve to report a fire.”

—

The door of the shed sways open, showing the tumble of things piled in the wheelbarrow; the smell of petrol curls out like a thick shimmer. Trey picks up the whiskey bottle she left by the door and finds her dad’s spare lighter in her pocket. She lights the soaked rag stuffed in the bottle’s neck, lobs it into the shed, and is running before she hears the smash of glass.

Behind her the shed goes up with one huge, gentle whoof, and a dangerous crackling starts to rise. At the gate, Trey turns to make sure. The shed is a tower of fire, house-high; the flames are already snapping at the spruce branches.

Trey runs. As she jumps for the top of the wall, something sounds in the recesses between the stones, a hollow scrape like bone along rock. Trey, startled off balance, misses her footing. She comes down hard and feels her foot bend inwards underneath her. When she tries to stand up, her ankle won’t take her weight.

—

The rhythm of the spade has become part of Cal’s mind, something he’ll be hearing long after he leaves this place. Johnny sags after every blow. The hole is thigh-deep on him, long and wide enough to fit a small man. Around its edges, dirt is piled high.