But she’d been so sad in Manchester. So lost. This was supposed to be therapeutic.
Couldn’t one thing in her life just…work?
“Oh.” Darren scratched his salt and pepper stubble. He was far too tanned for this time of year, which meant he either frequented the sun beds – something Harper doubted she’d find around these parts – or had recently enjoyed the earnings of his guest properties in the sunny Mediterranean.
She waited expectantly. He must have had a backup. He couldn’t just leave her here without a place to stay.
Could he?
“Well, I’ll direct you to the nearest B&B, though it’s a fair walk from here.”
He could.
She looked at her ruined suitcase pointedly. Hadn’t it been through enough? “Can’t you at least drop me off in town?”
He winced as though she’d asked him to donate a kidney, glancing at his phone. “I’ve got to wait here for the plumber. Sorry.”
If he wanted to see a grown woman cry, he was well on his way. Harper took a step back, scanning the woods in the hopes she might find a saviour. She’d settle for a walkable road or a magically appearing taxi.
There was nothing but twisted tree trunks, thin silver birches, and more of that faint, trampled footpath she’d been following. “So there’s absolutely nothing you can do to make sure I don’t die in the woods tonight?”
He pinched his chin, lips twitching with suppressed amusement. “It’s honestly not that far. You just follow the—” His phone began to buzz, and he eyed the screen eagerly. “Hang on.” Mobile to his ear, he greeted whoever was on the other end and began to give them directions. Realising Harper was still waiting for something, anything, he began pointing down the path while mumbling to the person on the line.
Shakily, Harper grabbed the handle of her suitcase, nodding as Darren held the phone to his chest and whispered, “Follow the path north.”
“That would be handy advice if I had a bloody compass,” she muttered under her breath. She should have listened to her mum and participated in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award as a teen, but she hadn’t fancied camping with taunting high schoolers who would probably push her air mattress out onto a lake,Parent Trap-style.
As she wandered away, she checked if her phone had miraculously gained 4G so that she could at least use Google Maps to guide her…
But the bars were empty.
“You’re getting a bad rating and review, Darren!” she shouted, and then sprinted off in case he’d heard.
Harper was officially on a holiday from hell.
2
Despair washed over Harper as she glared at the corner of her phone screen. Despite dragging her suitcase throughmorepine needles and squelching mud, plus collecting what she could only assume by the occasional waft of bad stench was fox poo on the bottom of her boots, she still hadn’t stumbled across a hotspot, nor a way out of these woods.
The afternoon light waned through the trees, casting eerie shadows that stretched endlessly through the forest. She shivered both from the brisk cold and the panic jangling her nerves, her breath a visible cloud in front of her.
“This is why I wanted a nice city break, by the way!” she shouted into the deserted forest. Prague had been her first choice, if only because Kenzie was always talking about how much she wanted to go, but she’d forgotten to renew her passport last year. She was officially about to lose her mind, and nobody would ever find her. She would be destined to wander this forest for the rest of her lonely life. She would become a myth, a legend. Maybe they would call her the Wailing Witch of the Woods. Or maybe she would get attacked by wolves, or Highland cows, orbears.Her half-eaten carcass would be proof that there was no right answer to that “man versus bear” debate she’d seen on social media. Like most, she’d decided that to be left in the woods with a bear was the lesser evil, but that didn’t mean she liked the sound of either.
A fence caught her eye, fairly new judging by the bright brick-red paintwork.
A sign of human life! Oh, thank god. She scurried over with her suitcase, then leaned against the fence to catch her breath. If she’d known how exhausting this ordeal would be, she wouldn’t have quit those spin classes after the first painful, sweaty session a few months ago.
All right. That was a lie. No level of fitness was worth the chafing on her undercarriage from the cycling chair. But maybe if she ever got out of here, she’d consider getting a gym membership.
She checked her phone again, as though the fence might transmit the 4G she desperately needed. Or 3G. She’d settle for 3G. But the signal remained non-existent, and she let out a loud groan. The time on her screen read five-thirty.Already? Would anybody even be able to offer her a room this evening? It was October. Daylight was a thing of the past, especially this far north. It would be pitch-black soon, and then she really would be in trouble.
She massaged her throbbing temple, anger bubbling inside her where once anxiety had simmered. She should have been curled up by a lit hearth with a strong cup of tea by now, editing her photographs to post on Instagram before she opened her newly bought leather-bound notebook and got down to business. She deserved more than just a refund for this.
Exhaustion weighed on her joints as she began to inspect the fence, searching for a gap or a gate, anything that would lead her out of Mother Nature’s torture chamber.
Her spirits lifted at the sight of moss-eaten eaves and wooden panels through the slats of the fence. A house! Or… a shed, maybe. But it was something! It was walls that real humans had built!
A heavy slam beat out a rhythm somewhere nearby, and she warily wondered if she was better off carrying on down the footpath. What if it was aman? Like most women and queer people, she barely felt safe walking through the crowded streets of Manchester. Approaching a cabin, where a loud noise was emanating, sounded like the beginning of a horror movie.
