Theres no place like hom.., p.25
There's No Place Like Home, page 25
‘Should we go back into the Portaloo?’ Ruth muttered.
‘It’s too far away. The animal could be on us before we got there.’
The moon flickered out from behind the muslin of cloud which had been straining its light and we were all suddenly spotlit in our hunker of fear. And Mac had been right. Over on the rocks at the opposite side of the camp sat something. Clear white light gleamed off fur of the deepest black and huge eyes were picked out in amber. Small, blunt ears twitched, but otherwise it was completely still.
It was the biggest cat I had ever seen.
Nothing moved, apart from those ears, ridiculously small atop a wide head. Even my heart had stopped and I could feel my blood coagulating in my veins as fear curdled all my bodily functions. The creature looked on us, lazily, unfearing. What did it have to fear, after all? It looked like a fist wrapped in fur; it could have taken us all on simultaneously and left without a scratch. Plus it was full of all our supplies, it probably couldn’t move without waddling.
Junior raised the gun, very, very slowly.
The moment seemed to go on forever. Just the cat, motionless apart from the ears, watching us. Sitting with its paws splayed across the rock, tail laid out behind, for all the world like a huge domestic moggy thinking about whatever it is that cats consider when they stare at humans so unblinkingly.
When it stood up, Ruth gave the tiniest squeak. Moonlight played over a compact, solid body. Shoulders rolled under thick fur, blacker than the night around us, and there was a sense of power and intent that made the air feel as though an electric current had been run through it. As unconcerned by our presence as though we’d been nothing more than weedy saplings, the cat stepped down off the rock, elastic and graceful.
Junior raised the gun to shoulder level. Without a word, Ruth and I moved in front of it, obscuring his firing line, and Kanga put her hand on his wrist. Pushed down slightly until the gun lowered, and Mac removed it from his hand. Behind me, Sebastian gave a noise that sounded like a sob.
Without another glance, the cat paced off into the night, away from the camp. When the final lines of its sleek body had dissipated into the darkness, the almost magical tension that had held the six of us upright vanished and we sprang apart.
Sebastian dropped to the ground, face in his hands. Ruth stared down the route the cat had taken, eyes tracing the heather, while Kanga, fists balled, punched herself in the leg, muttering something about money.
Mac turned to me and I found myself in his arms, our heads close together, and I wasn’t sure which of us was crying.
‘I think…’ I said eventually, pushing myself slightly away from him, ‘that one of us should put that damn kettle on. Even giant cats don’t eat teabags.’
16
Dax found us still there, a couple of hours later. The shock, or awe, or whatever it was, had largely worn off, but none of us could find it in ourselves to go to our tents. We’d shared something so improbable and astonishing that it had kept us together by the fire on that cold night. None of us had wanted to face remembering it alone. We went over and over what we’d seen, what had happened, until the worst of the shock had been worked through and we were left with fragmentary images of dark fur in moonlight, a sense of power and grace and the pure, unutterable reality of something none of us had believed in.
We didn’t talk about not shooting it. Even Kanga didn’t vocalise what she’d clearly beaten herself up about immediately afterwards. We couldn’t have shot it. There was simply no way we could have captured something that had shared the grimness of survival on the moors with us and, by the looks of it, was doing a far better job of making it through.
There was a silent kind of acceptance that none of us would have blamed it if it had eaten us all alive.
Sebastian seemed to feel it most of all. He kept shaking his head and saying, ‘I knew I saw a cat! I knew it!’ as though he felt vindicated for his suspicions all those months ago. Now he knew he hadn’t imagined it, it seemed to give him a new perspective, and he got a bit bossy again when we complained about the lack of sausages. I had to take him to one side and point out that he was being officious, but, to his credit, he apologised immediately and even whinged slightly himself about the fact that the cat had eaten absolutely everything even slightly edible, and all we had to sustain us was three packs of teabags and twenty-four Mars bars.
By the time Dax turned up as dawn was trying to nudge its way through the brittle lines of frost, we were all high on relief, lack of sleep and confectionary.
He was alone, driving the Jeep slowly and carefully across the moor towards us. We hailed him like a band of marooned sailors seeing the first sail on the horizon, as he manoeuvred the vehicle into camp and stopped, looking a bit stunned at the sight of the wreckage. Ruth’s torn tent flapped in a new breeze, we hadn’t bothered to collect up the scattered boxes and bags, some of which had been slashed into ribbons, and we were grouped around the fire as wide-eyed as a bunch of amphetamine addicts at a music festival.
We all started talking at once, following him around as he examined the mess our camp had become, each one of us trying to get our perspective across, although Kanga was, predictably, mostly trying to ascertain whether any of this would be enough ‘proof’ to get us the big prize.
‘Sorry, no.’ Dax answered her query first. ‘Like I said before, we need actual, physical proof. You could have been mistaken in what you all saw, too easy to misread perspectives.’
‘Misread perspectives?’ Kanga enunciated every consonant with evident horror. ‘How? It was a fucking enormous cat, sitting right there!’ She pointed at the rock the cat had sat on to watch us. ‘How were we supposed to get perspective, snuggle up next to it saying, “Look at the size of these teeth removing my arm?”’
Dax shrugged. He looked shellshocked too, as though our stunned incredulity was infectious. ‘The finance department set the rules,’ he said. ‘Film of a cat, with people in shot for perspective, or other proof. Shame you’d all taken your cameras off, I did tell you to keep them on at all times.’ Then, springing back, with his eyebrows indicating his pleasure, ‘Bloody amazing result, though. You actually saw something, and it’s coming across wonderfully. Well done, guys!’
We huddled, muttering mutinously about how much evidence would be good enough, and how one of us should have arranged to get attacked, for proof. None of us, not one, ever mentioned the fact that we hadn’t shot it.
‘We had to fetch the Highland contingent back. Weather closed in and they were afraid of exposure,’ Dax went on, now completely cheerful. ‘The Cannock Chase boys are still out, though. We couldn’t find them when we went over to film, we’re worried they’ve gone feral.’ He twined his fingers in a hand-wringing motion. ‘Oh, this is so great!’
‘Not even £50,000 great, though,’ I said. I’d hoped that our sighting would have been enough. Even allowed myself to believe it. Dax’s shaken head and muttering about there always being the possibility of it being a large domestic cat misidentified had sent my ebullience back down where it belonged. But realism had reasserted, I’d got a small amount of money, I’d sort of reconciled with my mother and I had somewhere to go. And Mac, the ebullience had whispered before it retired completely, and I’d had to smile to myself.
‘Well, no. But…’ Dax took me by the elbow and led me away from the others, who were arguing lightly but with a tone of relief that it was over, and Mac was rifling through the Jeep to see if there were any peanuts. ‘You know that sample you found?’
‘Sample?’ I asked blankly. ‘Of what?’
‘You know.’ Dax looked like his brother suddenly. A bit cheeky, a bit cautious. ‘The… scat.’
I had forgotten about that. The huge lump of poo I’d picked up from near the Portaloo. Even I had half-suspected that it was overflow from the waste system, but, back then, we’d still been about evidence rather than endurance.
‘Mmmm?’
‘I wasn’t going to say anything until the end. Wanted to keep it as a “big reveal”, you see, when we got you into the studio to do the final wrap up filming.’ Dax took a deep breath. ‘But I’m going to tell you now, and please try to look surprised when we film.’ He looked pleadingly at me.
My heart had started to bump against my ribs. ‘What, Dax?’
‘London Zoo didn’t know what it was. There’s DNA in there, definitely big cat, but they can’t say what kind. Best guess is a kind of interbreeding or something, they did explain but I wasn’t really listening, they’re going to email me the paperwork and stuff, but anyhow. The companies who have been sponsoring all this are happy to call it proof. You all get the £50,000. Well done.’
When he’d gone off to listen to the others giving their fourth or fifth version of what had happened out here whilst packing their belongings, I collapsed onto a boulder and sat for a moment, staring out over the moorland.
Mac joined me after a few minutes. ‘Hey.’ He sat next to me.
‘Did Dax tell you?’
‘Course he did. We’ve kind of agreed not to keep stuff from each other from now on. It’s how Mum and Dad were managing us, stopping us from communicating by stirring up bad feeling. So he had to tell me. Anyway, I threatened to tell Junior his deepest secrets if he didn’t.’ Mac gave me a wicked smile. ‘He still sleeps with his teddy, you know. When he’s not got a better offer.’
‘You think he and Junior will stick together after all this?’ I couldn’t help but smile.
‘They’re hoping so. Dax is working on getting Junior presenting another show. One with a touch more organisation and a touch less anarchy.’ Mac put an arm around me, carefully but casually. ‘And what about us? Will we stick together, do you think?’
I felt the relief of having money wash through me. That £50,000 was enough. It would set me up with my equipment, let me get my business running again. It would give me security, back-up, the knowledge that I could be with Mac, but that I had choices. ‘Well, we can only give it our best shot, can’t we?’ I leaned into his arm.
‘There’s something else.’ Mac wasn’t looking at me now, almost as though he were afraid of my reaction; his eyes were combing the grey stretch of hills that rose and fell like panting breath ahead of us. ‘Dax wants to spring it on you, but I don’t think that’s fair.’
‘Mac?’
I must have sounded anxious, because his eyes met mine now. Calm eyes. Caring. It made me nod inwardly to myself in the knowledge that I could do a lot worse than Mac.
‘Dax is going to use his production company to start making the sort of programmes he wants to film and quit all this “commercial television” stuff.’ Mac stopped, as though that had been the sum total of what he’d wanted to say.
‘Nice. But how does that affect me? Us?’ I was still scanning that part-bearded, ragged face with the huge brown eyes. It was so familiar now that I could hardly remember a time when I’d not been looking at it. It felt as though Mac and I had known one another forever, but a month in a tent on a freezing moor with the threat of being eaten will do that to time. Stephen Hawking could have used us as a control group.
‘He wants to make programmes to help people. He’s already got backers, apparently, and they’re nothing to do with Mum and Dad, so he means business. And…’ Mac took a deep breath. ‘They want you to become an Agony Aunt. Just a little slot to start with, maybe filming once a week, a kind of “head to head” with someone who’s got a problem. Dax says that the sponsoring companies have been watching the footage and they’re so impressed with your level headedness, they think you’re the right person to help other people.’ He gave me a little grin. ‘You could be famous.’
‘I can’t. Kanga would hunt me down and kill me.’
‘Yeah, our hunting skills aren’t exactly top notch, though, are they? You could probably change your hairstyle and put on a daft accent and get away scot-free.’ Mac was looking down now, at his boots. Hair flopped and curled and jiggled around his cheeks, largely obscuring his face. ‘Would you do it?’
Would I? No, that wasn’t the right question. Could I? That was more like it. What did I know about helping people, after all?
‘And what would it mean for us, if you did?’ Mac carried on staring at the ground. The black, peaty mud carried the marks of our panicked stampede of the night before, and, in the back of my mind, I was impressed that I could still tell all our footprints apart. ‘It could mean a whole new life for you. TV exposure, a new career. I’ve seen what that does to people, don’t forget.’
‘Does it cause them to detonate on impact?’ I asked. There was a bubble of something – hope, affection, amusement – deep in my chest, inflating until it forced a little laugh out of my throat.
‘What?’ Mac looked up now, confusion rampant. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Shame.’ I glanced towards Kanga, who was indicating, with forceful gestures, the place where the cat had sat to watch us. Dax was listening and, I noted, had one arm around Junior, who wasn’t objecting. ‘Never mind. It’s not going to give me a total personality transplant or anything?’
Mac had begun a little smile himself now. ‘No. You’ll still be the annoying cheerleader type. It might even make you worse, in fact.’
‘So then.’ I hunched myself a little closer to him. Close enough to put a hand up to his cheek and feel the softness of beard forming amid the scrape of stubble. Close enough to watch the conjoined steam of our breathing rise between us. ‘It won’t do anything but give me options. I’ll have money and I’ll have choices.’
Our heads moved and our breath coiled into one single entity as our mouths met in a soft kiss. ‘And I think I’ll choose you.’
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Firstly, Callum, who requested that I use his name in a book, having used his brother, Ryan’s in a former novel, and not wanting to cause sibling strife… Also, my daughter Fern, who ‘saw something’ driving on a late and lonely road home one night and planted the seed of the idea and Richard Watson, who said I should write a book about Bigfoot (sorry, couldn’t fit one into the UK) for lending me the books and DVDs.
MORE FROM JANE LOVERING
We hope you enjoyed reading There’s No Place Like Home. If you did, please leave a review.
* * *
If you’d like to gift a copy, this book is also available as a paperback, digital audio download and audiobook CD.
* * *
Sign up to Jane Lovering’s mailing list here for news, competitions and updates on future books.
* * *
The Forgotten House on the Moor, another funny and warm-hearted read, from Jane Lovering, is available to buy now by clicking on the image below. Or read on for an exclusive extract…
Chapter 1
I defy anyone to be happy to see the police on their doorstep at 4 a.m. I mean, even in the case of a returned lost puppy or the finding of your previously stolen car, at four o’clock in the morning, practically everybody is going to be a bit tetchy, aren’t they? Especially since I hadn’t lost a puppy, my car was still sitting on the road outside my window and hadn’t been the victim of any crime, so the two police officers knocking at my front door were mere unwelcome interruptions to a dream about Ben Whishaw and a trumpet.
At first, it was just a knock. Loud, peremptory and clearly not allowing any turning over and ignoring. In lieu of traipsing all the way downstairs in the dark of a chilly June morning, I opened my bedroom window and stuck my head out. ‘Hello?’
‘Mrs Donaldson?’ The two uniformed officers had to take a step back to look up at me beyond the burgeoning ivy growth that was crawling up the front wall like something out of a horror film. I was still too half-asleep to wonder at their presence.
I made one of those early-morning noises that might be agreement or clearing my throat.
‘Mrs Alice Donaldson?’ The younger of the two tilted her head up now.
‘No, there’s fourteen of us in here,’ I snapped and then felt instantly guilty. They were only doing their job, and they probably weren’t any happier about it being the early hours than I was. ‘Yes. Yes, that’s me.’
‘Sergeant Anthony Williams and Constable Carley Evans. May we come in?’
I stood for a moment, looking down. The street lights were competing with the vague light of early dawn, nasty sodium shadows bleached by the tentative sneaky grey daylight in the empty road. Even the bins, crowded on the pavement for the morning collection, looked suspicious. I felt a presentiment of something nasty tingle down my spine. ‘Why?’
‘We’d rather come inside, if you don’t mind.’
They’d taken their hats off. That meant bad news, didn’t it? I rattled down the stairs to open the front door, heart pumping, desperately trying to think of anyone I knew who might have died, but I couldn’t think of one single person whose removal from the world would have caused me a 4 a.m. disturbance. My parents were both long gone, there was my brother, but his wife would be the one to inform me of his passing – probably accompanied by complaints about him leaving the lawn unmown and a DIY project half-finished. The remaining aunts and uncles all had the cousins to fall back on in the event of their demise. It gave me a sudden realisation of how alone I was in the world. But then, I rationalised during my gallop along the hallway, doesn’t everyone feel like that at 4 a.m.?
Cautiously wrapping my dressing gown tightly around me, as a fleecy defensive shield between the police and my very unglamorous pyjamas, I opened the front door to find the police officers had bunched up into my tiny half-roofed porch, like a pair of vampires eager to avoid the dawn. ‘Come through.’ I ushered them, uniforms brushing the hallway walls, down to the living room, still littered with the detritus of a single woman’s evening at home, unplumped cushions and a plate of toast crumbs and biscuit wrappers. ‘Sorry it’s a bit untidy.’
