14
Penelope’s heart is still beating horribly fast – she’s trying to breathe quietly, but the air shudders in her throat. She slides down the rough rocks, pulling the damp moss down with her, and ends up under cover of the branches of the fir tree. She’s so terrified that she’s shaking. She creeps closer to the trunk where the night’s darkness is at its most dense. She hears herself start to whimper when she thinks of Viola. Björn is sitting motionless in the darkness under the branches with his arms wrapped tightly around him, muttering to himself over and over again.
They’ve been running in panic, not looking back, have stumbled and fallen and got back up, they’ve clambered over fallen trees, scraping their legs, knees and hands, but they’ve kept rushing on.
Penelope no longer has any sense of how close their pursuer is, if he’s already caught sight of them again or if he’s given up and decided to wait.
They’ve been running, but Penelope has no idea why. She can’t understand why they’re being hunted.
Maybe it’s all a mistake, she thinks. A terrible mistake.
Her racing pulse starts to slow down.
She feels sick, and almost throws up, but swallows hard instead.
‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ she keeps whispering to herself. ‘This is impossible, we have to get help, someone ought to find the boat soon and start looking for us …’
‘Shhh,’ Björn hisses with fear in his eyes.
Her hands are shaking. A series of rapid-fire images plays in her mind. She tries to blink them away, tries to look at her white trainers, at the brown fir needles on the ground, at Björn’s dirty, bloody knees, but the images keep forcing their way through: Viola is dead, sitting on the bed with her eyes wide open, the look in them unreadable, her face blotchy and white and wet, her hair lank and dripping.
Somehow Penelope had understood that the man standing on the shore beckoning Björn to swim back to land was the person who had killed her sister. She could feel it. She put the few pieces she had together and interpreted the image in an instant. If she hadn’t they would all be dead.
Penelope had screamed at Björn. They were losing time, it was going too slowly, and she hurt him with the end of the boathook before she managed to get him on board.
The black inflatable boat had appeared round the end of Kastskär and picked up speed on the flat, open water.
She had steered straight for an old wooden jetty, then hit reverse and switched the engine off as the hull hit a post. They’d slid sideways with a great creaking sound, then just fled from the boat in panic. They didn’t take anything, not even a phone. Penelope slipped on the rocks and had to cling on with her hands, then turned and saw the man in black quickly tying the inflatable to the jetty.
Penelope and Björn ran into the forest, rushing along side by side, swerving round trees and dark rocks. Björn groaned when his bare feet trod on sharp twigs.
Penelope pulled him along after her, their pursuer wasn’t far behind.
They had no thoughts, no plan, they were just rushing in panic, deep into dense ferns and blueberry bushes.
Penelope heard herself sob as she ran, sobbing in a voice she had never heard herself use before.
A thick branch caught her sharply in the thigh and she had to stop. Her breathing was ragged as she pushed the branch away with trembling hands. Björn was running towards her. Her thigh muscle was throbbing painfully. She started running again, then speeded up. She could hear Björn behind her as she ran deeper and deeper into the dense forest without looking back.
Something happens to your mind when you’re seized by panic. Because the panic isn’t constant – every so often it shatters and is replaced by purely rational reasoning. It’s like switching a horrible noise off and finding yourself surrounded by silence and a sudden overview of the situation. Then the fear comes back again, your thoughts go back to being one-track, chasing round in circles, and all you want to do is run, get away from whoever is chasing you.
Penelope thought plenty of times that they needed to find other people, there must be hundreds of them on Ornö that evening. They needed to find the inhabited parts of the island, further south, they had to get help, get hold of a phone and call the police.
They hid under cover of some fir trees, but after a while the fear became unbearable and they raced on.
As she was running Penelope could feel his presence again, thought she could hear his long, quick steps. She knew he hadn’t stopped running. He’d catch up with them if they didn’t get help soon, if they didn’t reach the inhabited part of the island.
The ground was rising again, stones came loose beneath their feet and rolled down the slope.
They had to find some people, there must be some houses somewhere near. A wave of hysteria ran through her, a desire to just stand still and scream, call for help, but she forced herself to keep going, to keep climbing.
Björn coughed behind her, gasped for breath and then coughed again.
What if Viola wasn’t dead, what if she just needed help? Fear chased through her head. On some level Penelope was aware that she was thinking things like that because the reality was so much worse. She knew Viola was dead, but it was incomprehensible, just a big, black void. She didn’t want to understand, couldn’t understand, didn’t even want to try.
They scrambled up another steep cliff, past pines with scratchy branches, rocks and lingonberry bushes. Using her hands to support her, she made it to the top. Björn was right behind her, he tried to say something but was too out of breath, he just pulled her on – and down again – with him. On the other side of the ridge the forest sloped down towards the western shore of the island. Between the dark trees they could see the pale surface of the water. It wasn’t far away. They carried on down the slope. Penelope slipped and slid part of the way, hitting the ground hard. She hit her mouth on her knees, got her breath back and started to cough.
She tried to get to her feet, wondering if she’d broken something, then suddenly she heard music, followed by loud voices and laughter. Leaning against the damp rock-face, she stood up, wiped her lips and looked at her bleeding hand.
Björn appeared beside her and pulled her along, pointing to where they should go: there was a party somewhere up ahead of them. Taking each other’s hands they started to run. Between the dark trees they could see coloured garlands of lights wound through a wooden veranda overlooking the water.
They walked on warily.
There was a group of people sitting around a table in front of a beautiful rust-red summerhouse. Penelope realised it must be the middle of the night, but the sky was still bright. The meal was long since over, the table was strewn with glasses and coffee cups, napkins and empty bowls of crisps.
Some of the people at the table were singing, others were talking and topping up glasses from wine-boxes. The barbecue was still radiating heat. There were probably children asleep inside the
