First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Mick Kitson, 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 191 4
eISBN 978 1 78689 189 1
To my parents, Babs and Terry Kitson
Contents
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Snares
Peppa said ‘Cold’ and then she went quiet for a bit. And then she said ‘Cold Sal. I’m cold.’ Her voice was low and quiet and whispery. Not like normal. I started to worry she had hypothermia. I saw a thing about how it makes you go all slow and quiet. So I felt down and her back was warm and her belly was warm. Then she went ‘Stop lezzin us – ya paedo.’ And then I knew she didn’t have hypothermia.
But it was cold. The coldest night since we came here. I knew the wind had turned to the north from my compass and the shelter faced southeast because west is the prevailing wind here. So the wind was coming in the top where we’d laid on the spruce branches. Peppa didn’t have a hat. I was going to make her one once we’d snared rabbits. But I hadn’t put the snares out yet. I pulled off my hat and pushed it down onto her head.
‘Is that better?’ I whispered in her little ear. But she’d gone back to sleep. I was awake now and I started worrying for a bit. I used to time worrying by the clock on my phone. I did ten minutes most mornings, but it had gone up in the past few weeks because there was a lot to work out and plan before we ran. I was going to guess the time. I could feel it was nearly dawn. There was no light but I could feel something. I can nearly always tell what time it is. I don’t know how but it used to be important to know it. Because for instance Maw and Robert used to come back at just after 11.00, and after I’d fitted the lock on Peppa’s door I used to make sure it was locked and she was inside asleep just before they got back.
They didn’t even know I put the lock on it. Didn’t know I’d nicked a mini drill-driver and two chisels from B&Q. I snipped the alarm tags off with a nail clipper. I bought a sash lock in the big ASDA and watched five YouTube videos before I fitted it. They didn’t even notice the wee holes I drilled for the key, the paint on the doors in our flat was all scuffed and knocked anyway. Then Peppa had the key. Robert couldn’t get in if he tried. He never tried. If I’d put a lock on my door Robert would have kicked it in and woken Peppa. He wouldn’t have woken Maw because when she was drunk and she passed out you couldn’t wake her.
And he hadn’t started going in Peppa’s room then but I knew he would soon because he said he would and Peppa was ten and that was when he started on me.
So I thought I’d have ten minutes worrying. I knew it would start getting light soon. In the SAS Survival Handbook it says you should make a body-length fire along a lean-to shelter and then build a barrier behind it from sticks to reflect the heat. I hadn’t done that yet because I wasn’t sure this was where we were staying just then. But it was alright. It was a little flat raised bit above the burn and there were big birches all around. We’d tied the tarp up to two of them to make the shelter. The tarp was camouflage brown and beige and bits of yellowy white like for deserts. But it worked because I ran back away from it into the wood and looked down between the trees and you couldn’t see it.
Except you knew someone was there because I could hear Peppa yelling ‘Sal . . . come and get a look at this!’ It was a toad and she stroked it and I said ‘It’s poison on its back to stop predators eating it.’
And she said ‘I’m not going to eat it Sal. Can you eat it? I don’t want to eat it. I’m gonna build it a house.’ And then she made a little house out of flat stones and pebbles and put the toad in it. She said it was called Connor after a boy she liked at school.
I worried about fire and people seeing it, not so much in the day but at night. If your wood’s dry there isn’t a lot of smoke from a small pyramid fire, it’s just smoky if the wood is wet or too new. And also the wind blows it away. And also we were in the Last Great Wilderness in the UK and we were exactly eight miles from the nearest human habitation and roughly four miles from a forestry track and five miles from a road. I chose this place very carefully using an Ordnance Survey map I nicked from the library where they have all the Ordnance Survey maps of the British Isles. We were exactly half a mile into the forest behind a ridge that runs up towards the top where it is just under 3,000 feet. In fact another twenty-eight feet and it would be a Munro and there would be all climbers and wankers in cagoules going up it.
There are no trees at the top but according to the map there is a stone circle. The hill is called something in Gaelic and when I asked Mrs Kerr she said it was pronounced Magna Bra. Magna Bra. I told Peppa and she wanted to go there because I told her Magna means big in Latin and she was delighted and skipped about going ‘Big Bra . . . big bra’. She is a dirty-minded wee bastard and she wants to watch her swearing.
But at night you could see the fire glow from a way off. Not on the tarp side but on the other side. So I thought if I build the barrier they talk about in the handbook it would block the light at night from the east. I don’t know what way they’d come if they came out here and looked for us but they might come from the east. The motorway is east of us and they’d use that if they came out here. But I don’t see how they can or how they’ll know we are here.
I decided after my worry to make the barrier today and then set snares. We had got enough food for another two days I thought. Or three if I don’t eat and Peppa does. So we needed to start trapping and hunting. I had Robert’s airgun. It was short and you pump it up. It shot .22 pellets and I got two tins of them. I wouldn’t let Peppa use it yet in case she shot herself or me by accident. But I am a good shot. I practised in the hall of the flat and I worked out the way to adjust the sight for the parabellum at longer ranges. I watched a YouTube video about it too,