It took what felt like a hundred hours, a swamp load of tears, and countless verses of ‘Lean on Me’, but together, we got her out and somehow carried her to the other side of the gate.
After several hugs, more tears, a change of clothes for April, and Hester’s emergency chocolate bars for everybody, we were ready to get the heck out of the dangerous wilds of Nottinghamshire. Hester’s hike had managed to make the tents seem inviting.
‘Are you sure you aren’t hurt, April? We can call an ambulance as soon as we reach somewhere with a phone signal.’ Melody took her pulse one more time.
‘I’m not hurt.’ April beamed. ‘I’m fine. You saved me. I was really scared. I thought I was going to be swallowed up into the swamp forever.’
We all took a deep breath. At one point, we had thought that too.
‘Then I heard you sing. And I wasn’t scared any more. I knew you’d help me out. You wouldn’t leave me. So I felt happy.’
‘You felt happy? Stuck up to your waist in that mud?’ Uzma asked.
‘I felt happy ’cos I knew I wasn’t alone. All that time, that whole walk, I’d been scared in case something scary happened. But I didn’t need to be scared. You were here. All of you. My friends. My sisters. You didn’t leave me. I didn’t need to be scared any more.’
I thought about what April had told me about her family – her destructive relationship with her mum, leaving home to kip on friends’ sofas, no job, no security, no one. Until she fell in lovewith a seriously ill man-child fighting addiction. And then he left her, too.
I mentally threw some more of my petty jealousy back into the depths of that swamp right then and there. Squelching my caked feet across the path, I pulled her into a hug.
‘You’re not alone, sister. Don’t be scared.’
‘I could say the same thing to you,’ she laughed, pressing her stinky face against mine.
Marilyn swivelled round and pointed one finger at Hester. ‘Did you plan this?’
Hester patted her head, every spotless hair in place. ‘I’m choosing not to answer that question. But you know by now I do nothing without asking my boss first.’
‘What, Dylan?’ Rowan asked. ‘Dylan planned this?’
Rosa rolled her eyes. ‘She means God, Rowan.’
Around midnight, we stumbled back into camp. Soggy, chafed, blistered and utterly jubilant as we sang another round of musical classics. The notes our half-frozen lungs and exhausted voices produced were no longer pitch-perfect, or even in time. It sounded fantastic.
I slept for eight straight hours. No nightmares, no sweats, no chattering teeth nor trembling bones. I was not alone. I was with my friends. My sisters. I was safe.
19
The sheep bleating in my ear woke me up. Either that or the sound of it ripping off a chunk of my sleeping bag.
Up close, sheep are massive.
Massive, smelly and sharp-hooved. Momentarily forgetting my friends, my sisters, not being alone and all that, I nearly peed my thermal pants.
‘Sheep!’ Marilyn called, from the other side of the tent.
‘No kidding,’ I growled back. ‘Got any bright ideas?’
‘I have to get Nancy and Pete out. Sorry. Mother’s instinct.’ There was a rustle as she scrambled for the entrance, a baby in a mini sleeping bag under each arm.
‘Rosa? Melody?’ I called feebly. ‘Did you know there’s a sheep in the tent?’
A bleary-eyed Rosa poked her head out of her blanket. ‘It’s a sheep. I think it eat your sleeping bag.’
‘Yes. It’s also blocking my exit. I’m stuck here until it moves.’
‘Did you try shooing it away? Like this, shoo, shoo.’ She made a flapping motion with her hands. ‘Or like this.’ She clambered to her feet and shooed again, waving her blanket up and down.
The sheep gazed at her across the tent before bending its head and taking another mouthful of my bed.
