Whispering Back by Adam Goodfellow Read Free Book Online Page B

or villages, but still we managed to take a wrong turning. We came to a house, expecting there to be a drive. There was a muddy footpath leading through some trees. I suggested we park and have a look down it.
    ‘Nonsense,’ Nicole stated, so firmly that anyone might have thought she knew what she was talking about. ‘Where’s the driveway? It must be up there,’ she said, indicating a stony track which continued beyond the house. ‘She does say in the book that she lives halfway up a mountain.’
    Ignoring the voice in my head, which was getting a touch uneasy about this little jaunt, I turned the car up the track, which was not immediately too steep for a mountain goat. As we came out of the trees, however, all I could see ahead was a barren mountainside, strewn with rocks, the odd scrap of vegetation clinging to its near-vertical face. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, knowing full well that she wasn’t. ‘I don’t see how she could possibly live up here.’ I glanced across the car towards the valley in which two other houses could now be seen. ‘Perhaps it’s one of those.’
    ‘Look, let’s just see if it’s round the next corner.’
    But the next corner led only to more bleak cliffside, and the gradient of the track was now so steep that the car was having trouble climbing any further. So was I, as my ears popped with the altitude and my vertigo began to make me feel that I was about to veer off the road and down the precipice that loomed just inches from the passenger side wheels. Oblivious to the danger, Nicole was humming cheerfully. By now, I was starting to pray that our destination would be just around the corner, because hopefully there would be somewhere to turn around, and I would not have to go down this slippery track backwards.
    ‘Look,’ I said as calmly as I could, ‘this is ridiculous. How could anyone live up here and not die from exposure?’
    ‘Well, why do you think there is a track, if nobody lives up here?’
    Nicole had a point, although I found it hard to believe anyone would build, let alone buy, a house stuck on the side of a precipice when there was a perfectly cosy valley a few hundred feet below. I agreed to keep going and look around the next corner, and then the one after that. Reversing was the only option, anyway, as the track was only just wide enough for the car. With a cliff going down on one side, and up on the other, I was seriously toying with the idea of abandoning the vehicle, escaping on foot and making up a story as to what had happened to it. I was just thinking up my excuses when, around the next corner, we came to a passing place, cut out of the rock on the side of the track. It looked just big enough to turn the car around, and I pulled in.
    ‘What are you doing, it can’t be here,’ Nicole protested, but I categorically refused to drive any further, and as she didn’t have a driving licence, there was no arguing with me. ‘It’s probably just around the next bend,’ she protested. ‘Well, then, we’ll know when we get there,’ I said, turning off the ignition and getting out. The air was cold and clear, and although I wouldn’t let myself go closer than 5 feet from the edge, I could see we had gone a lot higher than I had thought.
    ‘Aren’t you going to lock it?’ Nicole said as I put the keys into my pocket. ‘It isn’t our car, after all.’
    ‘If anyone is stupid enough to steal it, they can have it,’ I replied, remembering that Dom had said exactly the same thing to me when I left Cambridge. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
    So we continued round that bend, only to see another one a few hundred metres ahead, beyond which we couldn’t see. We continued walking until we reached that, to find yet another stretch of road that led around a corner. Nicole was beginning to accept that this wasn’t likely to be where anyone but a mad hermit would live, or possibly a buzzard or two, but having come this far, we were curious to find out where the road