A noise came, a quiet rustle. A bird? A fox perhaps? There it came again. She froze. A rustling noise. She couldn’t see a thing; it was pitch-dark beneath the tree. She fumbled with her phone, but she couldn’t use the battery life up on the torch: she was miles from home and would never get back without it.
‘He— Hello?’ she called out.
‘Hello?’ came the voice back, slow, steady, assured.
It couldn’t be. Her fevered consciousness was imagining things. Maybe she was becoming hypothermic. Her heart raced. Oh God. She was dreaming. This was awful.
‘Carmen? Is that you?’
It wasn’t possible. She stood, stock-still, frozen, then thinking that she could back away – run, stop any car, grab any bus, just get out of there and her stupid, over-fevered imagination. She managed to take one step backwards.
‘Carmen?’
He put on his torch. She couldn’t see a thing, completely dazzled by the light. She wanted to shout and run, but was stuck to the spot against the ancient trunk.
‘It is you! No way! What are you doing here?!’
Her voice stuck in her throat; she was completely hoarse.
‘Oke?’
‘Of course!’ She blinked as he came into focus. ‘Who else?’
‘But … but you’ve gone home! You’ve gone!’
He glanced at his phone, turning the torch over.
‘In three hours,’ he said. ‘I was about to start making for the airport. I came … I came to say goodbye. To the tree,’ he added hastily. ‘It’s odd – I kept … I kept dreaming about it.’
Carmen didn’t hear this.
‘I … I wanted to say goodbye,’ she said, her voice low and hoarse. ‘I wanted to say goodbye to you.’
‘I came to the party at the bookshop,’ frowned Oke. ‘Did Skylar not tell you? I came to see you at the shop but she said you had a thing with Blair.’
‘What? Blair?’
‘Uh, yes? Then I saw Blair and he said he’d been with you … ’
‘Did he say that? Did he say those actual words?’
Carmen no longer felt cold, but boiling with molten fury. She saw Oke’s face frown in the torchlight.
‘Well, not exactly—’
‘No, because it wasn’t me! It’s Skylar who was with Blair! I don’t like him at all.’
‘But I saw you speaking to him!’
‘Yes. He texted me,’ said Carmen. And she forced herself to do what he was doing: to be honest.
‘I liked him to begin with. Then I saw what he was really like. And … and I got to know you.’
He looked at her, hope leaping in his heart.
‘Are you sure?’
She shook her head and took the tiniest, most tentative step forwards, and realised she was trembling.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Oh. No.’
‘You’re frozen,’ he said, examining her closely. ‘Come here. Come here.’
And before she had the chance to think about it, he had her hands in his larger ones, soft and strong, and was holding them together.
‘You are freezing.’
He drew her closer and she found herself still terrified, heart still racing, but in such a different way and for such a different reason.