I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to find Lenny and get out of here. I was even willing to take the hit on the bank loan for early payback penalties. I didnotwant to be here on this precarious headland, looking at – well, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but I didn’t want to see it, whatever it was.
‘Go on, now.’ Lachlan gave me another small push. ‘They won’t hurt you. They can’t.’
I couldn’t say anything. All that would come out of my mouth was a small squeak, but I had to dosomething. Figuring that the small boy, tipping horse dung onto the big heap and shaking the basket to make sure all the bits came out, was my least-threatening bet, I walked over. ‘Hello,’ I tried to say. What actually came out was ‘hnnnnerrr’.
Nothing. The boy didn’t glance my way or acknowledge me at all. Apparently scraping horse poo off the inside of a basket wasmore important. He must have been about four or five, with a haircut that would be getting him teased to hell in school and a shirt and trousers that looked as though they were his dad’s and made to fit with string and a few pins.
I walked a few wobbly-legged steps towards him, but I’d only got a few metres before the horse noticed me. Its head came up and it snorted wildly while the others tied up alongside did the same, all blowing at the air as though trying to keep me at bay through the power of breath. ‘It’s okay,’ I squeaked. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
For some reason this did not reassure them as much as I’d hoped. The grooming man laid a hand on the neck of his beast. ‘Hey now,’ he said. ‘Easy.’ But the horses were terrified, eyes bulging so that they were more white than pupil, hindquarters swinging, heads up. Grooming man got a hefty kick when he tried to push his horse over and he turned around to see what they were all looking at.
I waved, feebly.
He stared straight through me as though I didn’t exist. ‘Get away now, you daftie,’ he said in a friendly tone, but it was aimed at the horse, not me. ‘There’s naught to see. Is it a cleg biting you?’
The horses continued to boggle in my direction, heads high, eyes wide and a film of sweat beginning to form on their coats.
‘Animals can see us. Or sense us. Or something. People can’t.’ Lachlan sounded as deadpan as though he were delivering a lecture. ‘They particularly dislike Mal, for some reason.’
I turned on him. ‘It’s a trick. It’s got to be.’ For some reason the non-acknowledgement of the grooming man and the very much apparent acknowledgement of the horses was absolutely terrifying. It was like walking into a room at a party and absolutely nobody at all even looking in your direction. Itmade me feel – vulnerable, which was ironic. How could I be vulnerable if nobody could see me?
This was mad. Someone, somewhere, had to be behind this. Was this Lenny’s idea of a joke? I dismissed that thought almost immediately. Lenny’s sense of humour leaned more towards the whoopee cushion and ‘knock knock’ jokes; this was too subtle for him.
‘Look.’ Lachlan took me by my now unresisting sleeve and led me over behind one of the small wooden coops. These were built of random pieces of wood piled up and covered with brushwood and looked more like potential bonfires than animal accommodation. ‘It’s okay. It’s a shock. We’ve all been there.’ He stared away into the middle distance now, twitching his hair out of his eyes with the back of a hand. ‘We don’t know how it happened, but one minute we were there on the excavation, then it started to rain, we came inside in search of shelter and…’ The hand went wide. ‘Then this. We all went through what you’re feeling – you’re a day or so behind us, that’s all.’
There was that wobble in his voice again, as though good sense and practicality were at war with what he really wanted to say.
‘A day or so?’ I whipped my head around to stare at him now. ‘You’ve been here a couple ofdays?’
Lachlan shrugged. At least, the collar of the coat went up and down and there was movement inside it. ‘Roughly, aye. We’re not counting or anything.’
I stared a bit longer. He had stubble on his chin and didn’t look as though he’d slept well for a few nights, but… ‘If you’re the archaeological expedition who was working on the castle, you’ve been gone for more than three months.’
Now he dropped the air of world-weary, ‘seen it all before’ man-in-charge, and gave me a look of pure fear. ‘Threemonths? Seriously? It can’t be.’ The hand he’d pointed with began toshake and, without acknowledging this, he stuffed it back into his pocket.
‘You went missing in April. It’s the middle of July now. School broke up last week.’
‘You’re still atschool?’ His horrified look almost made me laugh, decidedly unflattering though it was.
‘I’m a teacher. Chemistry,’ I added, as though holding on to details was very, very important right now.
‘Oh.’ His jaw twitched convulsively. ‘Well, that… makes things complicated. I was in the middle of moving. I’ve probably been repossessed by now, and that was a lovely wee house too.’
‘And people will be missing you,’ I said, somewhat sarcastically.
This didn’t seem to have occurred to him. ‘Oh, that too, I suppose,’ he added as though he felt he ought to. As though he was trying not to let the words occur to him.
‘So, whatisgoing on?’ I spared another look over at the yard behind us, where the man had resumed his grooming but the horses were shifting nervously as though they half expected me to run out at them screaming. ‘What thehell?’ I noticed my voice rising towards panic, tried to stop it and wondered why. Although teaching could be full of moments of high drama and we were taught to keep emotions in check and never show fear, if any situation warranted hysterics this was it.
Lachlan sighed. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that,’ he said, removing his hand from the pocket and tortoising himself inside the collar of his coat.
‘What? You seriously thought I’d have a moment like – that…’ I waved to indicate the still-sweating horses and the unconcerned groom. The boy had stopped scraping muck now and was sitting throwing pebbles at a chicken in an impersonal way. He didn’t seem to have any real grudge against the hen inquestion, he was just occupying time. ‘And I’d sit down and say, “Well, that’s a bit odd.” Seriously? You really thought that?’
I must have had my Big Teaching Voice on because Lachlan backed away a couple of steps and widened his eyes. ‘No. Of course not. Unless you fall backwards through time regularly.’
‘Lachlan,nobody“falls backwards through time regularly”!’I snapped. ‘Nobody falls backwards through timeat all.There’s something going on here that I am trying to get my head round. I’m confused and I’m upset and I’m… well, whatever it is that I am, it’s not something that I experience every day.’
Now he smiled and it was a nice smile, I had to admit. Lachlan was older than I’d taken him for when he’d only been a muddy coat and an accent, but the smile lit his eyes and made him – I hated to even think it given that I was in a situation that seemed to tread a fine line between insanity and the unimaginable – quite cute.
