Free Promises to Keep by Elizabeth Haynes

JO
    It usually takes her ten minutes to find her stride. By that time, she’s run the length of the field and has been in the woods for a quarter of a mile. Her breath evens out, her pace becomes hypnotic. Nothing but the smell of the damp, compacted earth pounding under her trainers. Even Dixie has found his rhythm; he’s given up the sniffing and the scampering from bush to tree, it’s all about the run for him now, just as it is for her.
    When she gets to this point, her mind wanders. Everywhere else in her life her mind is like a city rush hour: exhausting, hot, intense, sometimes it’s like nothing can get through. Here, in the woods, it all unravels like a knotted rope into a single zen-like thread. Patterns become clear. Conversations play out the way they should have done, there is clarity, calm. Hope.
    Conversations like the one this morning, for instance, Jo sitting at the table in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a mug of mint tea. Sam comes in dressed for work, freshly showered, grey trousers, navy blouse. Her heavy blonde hair is still damp at the ends.
    ‘You’re up early,’ she says, kissing the top of Jo’s head. She drops bread into the toaster.
    ‘Yes. I’m going to the library.’ Jo can feel Sam gazing at her.
    ‘It’s only six. I’m fairly sure the library won’t be open for a while.’
    Her voice is gentle but even so, Jo bristles at it. ‘I wanted to see you off to work.’
    ‘You’re not going for a run, are you?’
    The toast pops up in the seconds before Jo thinks of her reply. In the end, she settles for the basic lie: ‘No.’
    If Sam thinks she’s lying, she manages not to say. ‘That’s good. We can go out together when I get home from work, then.’
    The truth is, Sam won’t be home until late, because that’s just the way it is. It’s getting dark by five, and Sam hasn’t been home that early since this job started a week ago. It’s a murder investigation, that’s all Jo knows about it. It’s usually either that, or a kidnapping, or a rape. She’ll be lucky if Sam’s home before bedtime. There will be no run this evening.
    Sam eats her toast and Jo sips her tea, trying to think of something to say. Trying to be bright and happy and positive. She can’t even manage to pretend. The cloud is big today, big and black and overwhelming. For a moment she thinks twice about going for a run, despite Dixie twisting himself around her legs, his tail thumping against the table. She thinks about going back to bed, pulling the duvet over herself and waiting.
    ‘I wish I could stay home with you today,’ Sam says.
    She’s noticed, then. She usually does.
    ‘I’ll be fine, it’s okay. I’ll be better when I’m out.’ Jo gets up from the table and washes her mug at the sink, even though it was still a quarter full, to hide the tears that are brimming.
    Sam comes up behind her, slips her arm around her waist, nuzzles into her neck. Jo tries not to flinch. She has no reason to, but intimacy doesn’t seem to help when it feels this bad.
    ‘I’ll call you later,’ Sam says. And then, when she’s pulling on her jacket: ‘Promise me you’re not going to the woods?’
    But the woods are the only place Jo can run. The roads are too busy, too many people, even in the middle of the day when they should be at work. Jo doesn’t like to see people. She doesn’t like to stop and chat and pass the time of day. She has a plan when she’s running: it takes her eight minutes to reach the post in the woods, seven minutes to get to the clearing in the centre. Any longer than this and she’s slacking.
    She rarely sees anyone in the woods, but today there’s someone up ahead. She considers running past but the path is narrow; she’ll need to stand to one side. She pulls an ear bud out of one ear, calls the dog: ‘Dixie!’
    The dog is ahead of her now, trotting up to the stranger. It’s a man, scruffy-looking, an unkempt beard and long hair – a rough sleeper? But his clothes