Free Bone Jack by Sara Crowe Page B

broke whatever spell had brought Dad back to life. ‘Yeah,’ he said at last. ‘Thanks, Dad.’ He glanced across the kitchen. Next to the back door stood a small rucksack and a couple of fishing rods sheathed in canvas.
    Dad saw him looking and smiled as he set down two plates of eggs on the table. ‘I thought we could go out fishing today,’ he said. ‘Unless you’ve got other plans.’
    Mark’s note, summoning Ash to his camp in the wood. Or I’ll find you …
    Ash hesitated for a heartbeat. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean, no, I haven’t got any other plans. Yes to fishing. Fishing sounds great.’ He sat down opposite Dad. ‘Where’s Mum? Isn’t she up yet?’
    ‘Yeah. She’s gone out. Visiting Harry, I think.’
    Harry, short for Harriet. Mum’s closest friend in Thornditch, a booming woman in her sixties who lived in a tumbledown cottage at the other end of the village.
    ‘Harriet!’ said Ash. ‘I’m amazed she hasn’t called round since you got back.’
    ‘She probably has,’ said Dad. ‘I know Mr King next door came round yesterday morning. I heard his voice. Mum sent him away. I don’t think I’m allowed visitors at the moment. Probably for the best.’
    ‘I thought Mum would be here with you,’ said Ash. ‘Now you’re up and about.’
    Dad gave a wry smile. ‘I think she’s had enough of me lately.’
    They finished their breakfasts. Dad made a stack of untidy ham sandwiches, filled a Thermos flask with coffee and a plastic bottle with tap water. Ash loaded everything into the rucksack.
    ‘Pike Tarn all right?’ said Dad.
    The other side of Tolley Carn, and where they used to go when Ash was a kid. A cold clear mountain lake, sunlight burning through mist rising off the water, the eerie calls of curlews. ‘Yeah,’ said Ash. ‘Pike Tarn would be good.’
    They set off up the lane. Sun beating off the road surface. Where the lane hooked around the ruins of an ancient barn, they stopped to stare at the leathery remains of a frog, flattened by a passing car and sun-dried to a perfect cut-out version of itself.
    ‘You tried to eat one of these once,’ said Dad.
    Ash laughed. ‘I never did.’
    ‘Aye, you did. You were about two, I think. You peeled it right off the lane and your mum just got it away from you before you started chewing on it like a liquorice bootlace.’
    ‘Ugh,’ said Ash. ‘Gross. Best I don’t remember that.’
    ‘Do you remember the last time we came out here?’ said Dad. ‘When we slept out under the stars.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Ash. Laughed again. ‘And we didn’t bring any food with us because you said we’d catch our own supper. But we didn’t catch anything.’
    ‘I’d forgotten about that part.’
    ‘You had to blag food off those campers.’
    ‘Baked beans and macaroni, aye. Delicious!’
    ‘We were that hungry by then even a squashed frog would have been delicious.’
    They didn’t mention last night, the long walk up to Stag’s Leap and the Cullen farm and back.
    They left the lane. They followed the footpath past a row of wind-twisted thorn trees up the lower slopes of Tolley Carn. Then, in the valley below, there was a wink of dazzling light.
    Dad flinched and shouted out. He grabbed Ash’s wrist, hauled him behind the cover of the nearest thorn tree, pushed him down to the ground.
    They crouched there.
    The seesaw of Dad’s breathing, quick and raw.
    ‘What?’ said Ash. He was trembling, couldn’t stop. ‘What is it, Dad?’
    Dad’s breathing slowed, steadied. He gave a sharp laugh. Shook his head. ‘That flash of light down in the valley,’ he said.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Ash. ‘I saw it. It was just sunlight catching a car wing mirror or a window or something.’
    ‘I know. I know what it was.’
    Ash watched him.
    ‘There were snipers,’ said Dad. ‘Out in the desert. They’d lie in wait in the dunes or on the rooftops of buildings along the roads. Sometimes the sunlight would flash on their rifle scopes. You learn to dive