Page 18 of Summer at Harbour View House
‘What time is it?’
‘Just after five.’
‘Hannah, it’s still night.’
‘Exactly. That’s when human sacrifices get made to pagan gods.’
‘I thought they did it on solstices and days like that.’
‘And those!’
Hannah wasn’t going to be put off. Natasha forced herself to sit up, head spinning. Hannah was already dressed. For some reason she had rolled up a tea towel and tied it around her head like a thick, white headband.
‘What about our stuff?’
‘It’s downstairs, in the entrance. Come on, let’s go.’
‘Give me a minute. This is mental, but if you really insist.’
‘I don’t want to be sacrificed!’
Natasha put on yesterday’s clothes and gathered the things she had brought into the house. Then, the two of them sneaked out of the room and crept downstairs, Hannah letting out a little gasp at every woody creak, completely wrecking any chance at stealth. Downstairs, they found their cases stacked by the front door. A cat came wandering over, rubbing up against them, miaowing to be let out.
‘We’ll have to take it with us,’ Hannah said. ‘It’ll give us away.’
‘I’m not stealing Jago’s cat! We’ll just let it out.’
‘What if it runs away?’
Natasha rolled her eyes. ‘Well, same difference, isn’t it?’ She bent down to give the cat a rub. ‘Look, he’s cute. I don’t think he’ll run away.’
‘Go and put him in the kitchen, just in case. I’ll get the bags out of the door.’
Natasha sighed and scooped the cat up into her arms. He seemed quite happy about it as she carried him back to the kitchen. His food bowl was empty so she took a handful of kibble out of a packet on the worktop and dropped it into the bowl. Then, spotting a notepad on the kitchen counter, she took a pencil out of a holder on the windowsill and scrawled a quick apology:Sorry, we decided to get out of your hair early and see the sunrise! Thanks so much for your hospitality! Natasha and Hannah.
She left the cat to eat his breakfast. When she got back to the entrance, Hannah had managed to haul the suitcases out of the door, but a dog had woken up and was berating her with muffled, geriatric bowwows from his kennel near the door.
‘I don’t want to die,’ Hannah sniffed.
‘He looks a bit old,’ Natasha said. ‘I don’t think you have to worry.’
‘We’d better hurry. I can still hear the chainsaw.’
By “hurry”, she meant marshalling Natasha, who still had to do the bulk of the pushing, with the cases again piled on top of each other. Now, though, they were an extra mile or so away from where they had started, and had to negotiate a bumpy, potholed farm lane before even getting to the road.
‘It’s coming closer!’ Hannah said. ‘Quick!’
The only sound that Natasha, struggling to push the cases, could hear, was the gentle hum of machinery coming from inside a building to the right. She heard the gentle mooing of cows and assumed it was a dairy. Too tired to argue with Hannah, however, she just gave a tired nod.
‘We’re definitely going to die,’ she said, wishing she could go back to sleep.
The hangover was a distant memory, blown off by exertion by the time they made it as far as the road. Natasha, her back soaked with sweat, had at least managed to convince Hannah to help, the younger girl trotting along in front of her with the smallest of the cases while Natasha hauled a pile of the rest.
‘I need a break,’ Natasha said as they came up to the junction with the main road. She propped the cases up against a SLOW warning sign and stretched out her back. The farm lane, which had felt so short when they were riding in the back of Jago’s trailer, had seemed about ten miles long on foot and laden down with luggage.
‘We can’t stop,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s still following us.’
‘What is?’
