Free The Missing Link by Kate Thompson

navigating sleepily from my pocket, we set out across the city.
    The power was down, and the streets were black with blacker shadows. Oggy tuned in to my anxiety.
    ‘I’ll protect you, Christie,’ he said. ‘No one tangles with Oggy.’
    A man with a pale, slack face leant out precariously from a shop doorway.
    ‘Did that dog just talk to you?’ he asked. His voice was mumbly and I could smell the drink from three metres.
    ‘You’d want to stay off that stuff,’ said Tina.
    By the time the sun began to lighten the sky we were passing through suburbs where dogs barked from behind closed doors and cats scowled at Oggy from high garden walls. And soon afterwards we found a little café, where we ate till we were full to the gills, and furtively slipped a few extra rounds of toast into our bags. When we headed out on to the road again, Danny seemed to be walking a bit faster and more smoothly than before. The rest of us still had to adjust our speed to his, but not as much. I found myself wondering why Maurice had always kept him so cooped up. Was it really for Danny’s sake, or was it for some other reason? Because Maurice was ashamed of him, perhaps? It seemed to me as though this adventure was exactly the cure that Danny had been waiting for.
    We were walking through an area of richer houses. Beyond them, a range of low hills rolled away into the distance. Oggy bounded ahead of us, exploring every garden and field and hedgerow along the way. The chill wind had dropped and the sun was making the hills glow with green promise. Darling ignored us all for a while, then took it upon herself to perform for us. She sat on a telegraph post and came out with the most amazing set of impersonations. She did a chicken first, then an alarm clock, then a curlew and a jackdaw and a sheep. And once she had our full attention, she got us all in stitches by mimicking All Saints, Marge Simpson, and Oggy begging for Buddy. For the moment, at least, I forgot that I didn’t want to be there, and we covered the next few miles in companionable silence.
    There was very little traffic on the road, but there was some. Whenever a car passed, Tina thumbed it with frenzied enthusiasm, but I was sure that she only made us look even weirder than we were, and she didn’t have any success. We walked on and put slow miles behind us, and at around midday we stopped for a break and a bite to eat. We felt that we had gone for miles, and we were all in great spirits until Tina got out the map. Then we deflated. All those hours of walking did not even add up to one inch of progress. We were barely clear of Glasgow.
    It put the journey ahead into cruel perspective. We had grown up, all of us, in a world where walking was a leisure activity and not a means of travel. A hundred miles to me meant boredom in the back of a car. But now that I had just barely covered six in an entire morning, the concept of distance changed in my mind, quite dramatically.
    When we felt rested enough we set off again. As the afternoon wore on, the sky clouded over and mist engulfed the higher points of the hills. Darling floated above us like a guiding star, and the way ahead was constantly marked by the waving white flag of Oggy’s tail. I remember a moment of perfect peace, when I felt as though I could have gone on for ever like that, strolling with my friends towards Inverness.
    But afterwards I came to see that glowing moment as the calm which comes before the storm. Because it was very soon afterwards that everything started to go wrong.
    Another car came flying along the road and, as Tina stuck out her thumb I could see that she was sharing my mood. Her hitching performance, normally urgent and weird, was suddenly quite relaxed and charming. I had always thought of Tina as awkward looking; too thin and gawky to be pretty. But when she was happy and not hunched up over herself, she looked quite different; almost beautiful. There was a man in the car and as he approached us