Dead Scared

AT THREE O’CLOCK, when the sun was low in the sky, Evi and the dog that was already answering to Sniffy went outside. There were tracks in the snow from Sniffy’s earlier explorations. And two none-too-fragrant little presents from previous calls of nature. As Sniffy padded round, poking her nose under shrubs and squatting periodically to leave pools of yellow in the snow, Evi walked the length of where she judged the path would be.

At the bottom of the garden was a low brick wall with an iron gate that led to the river bank and a tiny landing stage. Tied to a post and covered in tarpaulin was a small canoe. Evi had plans, when she was feeling better, to take up canoeing. Her arms were as strong as anyone’s and there was no reason why she wouldn’t make a reasonably good canoeist.

If she ever felt better again.

She’d spent most of the night huddled under the duvet, waiting for painkillers she shouldn’t have taken to kick in or for the amitriptyline to knock her out. The dog had joined her on the bed and Evi hadn’t the heart to push her off. Sniffy’s presence soothed her somehow, even though it was the dog, more than anything, that was making Evi believe that Laura’s first instinct might have been right after all. That she was nuts.

Because Sniffy had been completely unperturbed, either by the music or by the voice. There couldn’t have been anyone in the house, playing music and speaking to her, because the dog would have heard, sensed or smelled them. The only conclusion left was that the music and the voice had been in Evi’s head.

Excited by the snow, Sniffy was leaping around the garden now, digging with her front paws, hurling snow into the air with her nose. She raced down to the wall, turned and sped back again. She was very fast.

A few hours before dawn, Evi had fallen into an exhausted doze, only to be woken at seven when Sniffy needed to go out. Laura had called round mid-morning, as promised, to take her out for a run. They’d been gone for an hour and had returned drenched in sweat and trembling with exhaustion.

Exercise-induced weariness aside, Laura had been looking hugely better that morning. She’d slept well and thought she was managing to shake off whatever bug had been threatening. Her sleep hadn’t been disturbed by a single dream.

Evi had said nothing about her own night.

After Laura had left, Evi had called Jessica’s friends in St Catharine’s to see if they’d heard from her. They hadn’t. At six o’clock that evening, they told her, Jessica’s tutor would contact the police. Evi sent a short email to the tutor stating that, in her opinion, Jessica was a vulnerable person who needed to be located as a matter of priority.

Evi fall.

Before coming out, Evi had wrapped her thickest coat round her shoulders. She’d pulled on gloves and a scarf. None of them stopped her shivering. Twice now, once on a mountain in Austria, once in a new house in Lancashire, she’d almost died after a fall. Sometimes she dreamed that she was falling. She never hit the ground in her dreams but in those few seconds it always felt as though this was how it was meant to be. That Evi was destined to fall to her death.

No one could have learned that on the internet. No one could have Googled Evi Oliver and discovered that the song with the power to break her heart was Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’. No one could have found out that she hated fir cones. Laura had been wrong. This wasn’t someone bent on revenge, or even someone down here trying to stop her from rocking the boat. She was losing her grip on reality. Going nuts. It was as simple as that.