Ducking my head into the rain, wielding Peppa Pig in one hand, and using the pathetic glow from my cheapo phone as a torch in the other, I began making my way along the side of the building, in the direction of home. I crept towards the end of the wall. Heart hammering. Eyes straining. Feet squelching.
Suddenly, someone burst around the corner and, with no time to alter course, slammed into my chest, pitching me backwards.
I landed with an oomph in a stream of gravelly water, the umbrella and phone clattering to the ground as I instinctively reached back to protect my fall. All light now extinguished, I sensed as much as saw the person who’d knocked me down looming over me. Scrabbling for the umbrella, I sucked in as much air as my petrified lungs could muster and screamed.
Whew. I could scream. Somewhere behind the paralysing, hysterical fear, I impressed myself. And as the long seconds – one drawn-out, endless, Munch-type scream – passed and my brain began to slowly unscramble, I knew that if what loomed over me was indeed the monster of my nightmares, the best thing to do in this village chapel car park was to make as much noise as possible.
If nobody came to my aid, they’d at least come to complain.
And if I thwacked the monster a couple of times in the face with the umbrella, so much the better.
Or so much the worse, as the man – and it was a man judging by the size and the shape of his shadow – grabbed the umbrella and wrenched it off me, tossing it aside before trying to take hold of both my arms as I lay there on the wet ground. I fought with him. Fought for my life. Fought like I should have fought Snake. Eventually, he gave up trying to wrestle my arms, and pressed one hand firmly over my mouth. While I tried to prise it offenough to bite down, he yelled into the vacuum created where my scream had been.
‘Faith! It’s Dylan.’
It took a few more seconds for my neurons to process those words. Dylan.
Oh.
Ah.
Whoops.
‘Are you going to let me help you up?’
I nodded. He pulled me to my feet, the rain running off his brow as he peered through the darkness.
‘I thought you were kids causing trouble. I really didn’t mean to crash into you. Are you hurt?’
As soon as he let go, I fell against the wall, my bones like water, and began to slide back down to the ground.
‘Ah, no. Don’t do that.’ He swept me up against his chest, and when my legs refused to steady, he scooped me up and carried me. I must have weighed twice as much as usual due to the gallons of water in my clothes. Burying my head into his shoulder, I clung on as he jogged across a stretch of grass before dumping me onto a welcome mat and unlocking a bright-red wooden door into a cottage.
‘Faith? Come in out of the rain.’
‘Urgh. Right.’ More than a little disconcerted, I staggered through the door into Dylan’s man cave.
‘Are you okay to wait here for a couple of seconds?’ I nodded as he disappeared into the main house, leaving me stood in the tiny entrance hall dripping rain onto the wooden floor. The stairs were to my right, steps piled high with books, papers, a jar of nails, a hammer, a sports bag and various other clutter. Judging by the slamming and rattling sounds, I guessed Dylan was trying to make the place presentable. Given some of the places I had lived in during my younger, scarier days, I reallywasn’t bothered about the mess. I was however in need of a moment to compose myself following the sweeping off my feet thing, let alone what had led up to it.
And after our previous argument, now I had ended up here, alone with Dylan in his house, the storm raging all around us.
I was wearing Dylan’s clothes! His clothes!
A pair of bunched-up tracksuit bottoms and a navy sweatshirt with a furry inside. They smelled of pine trees.
Oh dear. I had been doing so well.
He handed me a mug of steaming hot chocolate. I took a tentative sip, pretending that the warmth oozing through my insides was purely down to the drink. We sat down on opposite sides of his breakfast bar.
While my clothes dried, I recounted what had happened.
‘I can’t think of anyone asking about you, or about someone with red hair. I would have remembered that because of the guy at HCC.’
‘He wasn’t asking for Faith.’
‘No? Who was he asking for?’
I took a deep breath. Remembering that little girl, the person I used to be, her hopes and fears and the terrible things she grew to understand. Remembering how it sounded on her lips, what it meant – the name my mother gave me. The name I used to call myself. The name Kane knew me by.
