So why did I feel uneasy?
A woman with a spaniel on a lead passed me as I entered the wood. The sight of the dog stirred a memory, which I tried to ignore, exchanging hellos with the woman.
I walked for an hour, still not keeping track of where I was going, failing to drop imaginary breadcrumbs behind me. The path was muddy and I felt foolish in my canvas footwear, but I was determined to keep going. I was lost in thought. But I wasn’t thinking about the book I was supposed to be writing. I was thinking about Priya.
We met in our early twenties. Recently, I’d been listening to the radio and the DJ said something about the approaching twentieth anniversary of Radiohead’s OK Computer. I reeled, unable to believe it had been two decades since Priya and I bought that album. We used to listen to it together all the time. When ‘Karma Police’ came on the radio, I had to turn it off. It hurt too much.
At the time I’d been working in an office and she worked in my local bookshop. I was in there a lot, one of their best customers, and Priya and I got chatting. She was beautiful and clever and all those things. Funny and sexy and wise. Moody and crazy and restless. She had shiny black hair and little moles that I loved to trace with a finger when we lay in bed.
I told her I was an aspiring writer, and when we started dating, through the period when we moved in together, all of those early years, she supported and encouraged me. When I got my first book deal, she was as ecstatic as I was, possibly more. She told me it didn’t matter when my book failed to set the world alight. She counselled me, told me it was all about building an audience – one reader, one book at a time. She calmed me down when my first publisher dumped me. She celebrated again when I got another deal, even though it was tiny. She told me to keep going.
If it weren’t for her, I would have given up. One day I was going to make her proud, show her that her faith was justified. I fantasised many times about calling her, giving her good news. The bookshop where she worked had gone bust and she was working in an office, doing a job she hated, surrounded by people she had nothing in common with. I was going to rescue her, rescue us.
But by the time it happened, it was too late. She was already gone.
I stumbled on the path and the shot of adrenaline brought me out of the pit I’d been mentally wallowing in. I looked around. I was in a clearing in the woods, with one path ahead of me and three behind me. I had no idea which way I’d come. I looked for footprints but had mostly been walking slightly to the side of the puddle-strewn path, on the grass, so couldn’t see any.
I was lost. I took out my phone, hoping I could find my location on my Maps app, but had no signal. I tried to decide what to do – head back in the direction I’d come from, or plough on. Listening carefully, I thought I could hear traffic in the distance. I decided to carry on.
I passed a stagnant pond, gnats darting about the surface. A dog poop bag hung from a branch. I couldn’t be too far from civilisation. As I headed on, the trees thinned and the path became muddier. Within minutes, I was in a large clearing, in a field of overgrown, yellowed grass.
In the centre of this field, which was ringed by trees on all sides, was a dilapidated stone hut. I approached it. The windows were smashed and the wooden front door had half rotted away. I pulled at it, and peered into the hut’s interior. A rank, musty smell floated out. The floor was strewn with ancient litter, but apart from that, it was empty. I stepped inside, trying not to breathe through my nose.
Among the rubbish – rusting drinks cans, crushed cigarette packets and a porn mag with curled pages – was something furry. At first I thought it was a dead rat, but peering closer I realised it was a soft toy. It looked old and weather-beaten, the clumpy, damp fur coated with mould. Its glass eyes stared at me until I had to look away.
I closed the door. I had the sensation that fate had brought me here, because suddenly I felt inspired and keen to get back to my desk, an impulse I hadn’t felt for a long time.
I was still lost, though. To my right I could hear cars, closer than they’d been before. I headed in that direction and, after tramping through another copse of trees, I found the road. There was no pavement, just a grass verge which was dotted with wild flowers. I was pretty sure the writers’ retreat was to the west, so I went that way, keeping to the verge.
Five minutes later, I heard a car behind me. I turned and saw a taxi. Like a chariot sent by the gods. I waved and it pulled over.
The driver wound his window down. ‘Need a ride?’
It was warm inside the cab, and it smelled of air freshener, the chemical scent a welcome relief after the stink of the abandoned hut.
‘What are you doing out here?’ the driver asked in his strong Welsh accent. He was about my age, with thinning brown hair.
I told him I’d gone for a walk and lost my bearings.
He laughed. ‘Happens a lot. These woods can be deceiving. They all look the same, especially if you’re not from round here.’
‘I am from here,’ I said. ‘Well, I used to be.’
‘Back visiting relatives, are you?’
‘No, I’m staying at Nyth Bran. The writing retreat? Do you know where it is?’
‘Oh, I know where it is, all right.’ We set off. He drove with one hand low on the wheel and kept looking back over his shoulder at me. I wanted to tell him to keep his eyes on the road.
‘So you’re a writer,’ he said. ‘What kind of stuff do you write?’
‘Horror.’
‘Oh, really? Doing research, were you? Out in the woods?’
‘Something like that.’
We passed a squashed badger, lying dead by the roadside.
‘My dad’s always got his nose in a book,’ he said. ‘I didn’t inherit the reading gene, though. He’s always nagging me about it. Maybe I should read one of yours. I love horror movies. The gorier the better.’
‘I’ll send you one,’ I said. ‘But only if you promise to read it.’
‘Cool. I’d like that.’ We passed more roadkill, a rabbit this time. ‘So you’re staying with Julia Marsh? I was surprised that she hung around. After what happened.’
‘What do you mean?’
He flicked his eyes at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Oh, you don’t know? It was big news at the time.’
I waited.
‘Her husband . . . He drowned in the Dee. Michael. Nice chap, he was.’
‘Oh my God.’ No wonder Julia looked so haunted. ‘When was that?’
He thought about it. ‘Two years ago? Terrible, it was. But that wasn’t the worst part.’
He stopped, forcing me to ask.
‘What was the worst part?’
‘Her little girl. She disappeared.’
I stared at him.
‘They said she drowned like her dad, but they never found her body. The police were there for ages. Frogmen and everything. Terrible. Everybody in town went down to watch. They said she must have been swept along, all the way to Bala.’
That was the lake where the Dee ended up.
‘And here we are,’ the driver said.
I looked up, confused, expecting to find myself by the banks of Bala Lake. But no, we were at the end of the drive that led to Nyth Bran.
‘Can I drop you here, or do you want me to take you up to the front door?’