THERE'S A GIRL IN THE OUTWOODS - Ray Robinson

Illustration by Conor Fenner-Toora // https://www.conorfenner-toora.com/

The night lay quiet, the dark pressing in. The air in the abandoned mill smelled of rot, of machinery gone soft with time. She spoke aloud just to hear herself, the sound of her own voice giving her comfort.

Somewhere near three in the morning she heard it. A grunt. Too close. Then a sound like an old man coughing.

She sat up, her back to the cold stone wall, blinking into the dark. The wind moved through the rafters, and she remembered where she was, what she was. Just fear, she thought. She won’t spend another night bent to it.

Again, the cries rose in the trees beyond. Closer now.

Her tablet was dead. No music to drown it out. Tomorrow she would have to go down into town, charge it, mingle with the townsfolk. The thought left her restless.

She had never feared the night, had never thought of it as something to be endured. There was something clean about it, something whole. But tonight was different.

The crunch of pine needles underfoot.

She reached for the headlamp, the hunting catapult, and a pair of ball bearings. Made her way to the window, moving her head from side to side to send the beam slashing through the trees, half-expecting to see a shape, a silhouette, something worse.

Then: eyes, low to the ground, caught in the light. Amber eyes set in a narrow face, weasel-like, a stripe of white cutting from snout to stub tail. The badger sniffed the air and slipped back into the dark.

She let go of the breath she’d been holding. Settled down again in her sleeping bag. When she woke, the light had changed. The birds outside in full voice, a hundred of them tuning their instruments at once. A house martin cut through the shafts of dust-heavy light above her, gone before she could track it. She rubbed her eyes.

Ayla was seventeen, all knees and shoulders, skin pale and freckled. Pink spikes of hair under her cap. One eye blue-green, the other the colour of wet sand, and slit like a cat’s.

She pulled her coat around her and blew warmth into her fists. Slugs and snails moved slow across the dew-slick ground, leaving silver trails on the fabric of her sleeping bag.

May was nearly gone, the month bleeding into warmer days.

She climbed out and got ready. She pulled on her hoodie, tugged the cap low over her eyes, stepped out of the mill. The woods were waking, the trees unfurling green again. Bluebells underfoot, the pong of wild garlic. She walked the escarpment, breaking strands of web strung with dew. Through the trees lay the rooftops of the town below, mossy and green, chimney smoke curling, steady in the morning air. A rider on a chestnut horse passed through the lane, the animal slick with sweat. The rider slapped its flank.

“Good lad.”

Ayla watched them go, then followed the holloway down into town, headphones on but silent, pretending the beat.

She went to the Ladies, stripped, changed her tampon, and cleaned herself as best she could. Secured the money belt around her waist. Took a roll of toilet paper and stuffed it into her bag.

The café was warm, close. She stood in line. Behind her, an old couple bickering in the quiet way of long-married people.

She kept her head down. Kept her distance. Wondered if they could smell it on her. The otherness. The nowhere she had come from, the nowhere she was going.

“Cappuccino, please.”

“Sprinkles?”

She nodded. “And a Special Full English.”

“Tomatoes or beans?”

“Beans.”

“You take a seat. I’ll bring it over.”

She took a chair near a wall socket and recharged her iPad. Poured sugar into the coffee, stirred slow.

The prospect of the Outwoods pulled at her, a weight in her gut. She could stay there a while longer, maybe. Maybe not.

Last night’s dream came back to her. The same one as always. Details from her family living room. Her father’s crab-shell ashtray on the coffee table, cigarette smoke heavy in the room. And the sheep in the field outside, their bleats like questions.

Sheep: “There.”

Ayla: “Where?”

Sheep: “There!”

Ayla: (laughing) “Where?”

The time before the car crash. Before her world turned to wreckage.

Later, she moved through the market. Bought some brown hair dye and red sunglasses. Popped in her earbuds, let music fill her head. The world bright and shining. Just another girl, another face in the crowd.

She thought about the payphone, the numbers she still knew by heart. Thought about dialling. Thought about what it would mean.

But she had rules.

No social media.

Cash only.

Public Wi-Fi.

No contact.

She kept walking.

Five weeks in the Outwoods. Five weeks, days running thin as wire. Everything was going to be OK. She was going to make it. It’ll be November before you know it. Eighteen years old, you’ll be free.

Later, she heard the voices in the woods, low and laughing. She crouched, watching. Three boys and a girl, near her age. They’d built a fire though the afternoon was mild. Smoke curled thin and pale into the branches above.

She remembered another summer. Getting her silver Duke of Edinburgh Award. A minibus to Bassenthwaite, a week of abseiling, orienteering, mountain climbing and raft building. Nights in damp cabins with the river outside, the sound of water on rocks. She’d woken one morning to birdsong so loud she thought she’d died and gone to heaven.

The teenagers passed something between them. A canister. A plastic bag. She felt it then. Not fear. Something else. Something old. She pictured herself stepping from the trees, a hand raised in greeting. They’d invite her over, offer her the bag. Getting high with the boys’ dirty hands inside her clothes.

One of the boys turned, staring into the trees as if he’d heard her thoughts. Rain thickened on the roof. Soon they would come inside. Her time was up.

She grabbed her pack and moved through the dark looms, silent. At the dry-stone wall, she paused. South, the land sloped to the meadow and the old man’s cottage. North, the moors spread out against the sky. She adjusted her cap, scratched her scalp.

She left the track, cursing as she startled a bird from the heather. Below the gorse-line, she noticed a tortoiseshell cat watching her from the tall grass. She crouched. “Here, kitty.” The cat twitched its tail once and disappeared.

The old man was in his garden, splitting wood. His trousers high at the waist, suspenders straining. He worked slow but steady, muscles shifting in his arms, sweat damp on his vest. Every so often he’d pause and run a hand through his white hair.

A raven wheeled overhead, vast against the sky. When she looked back, the old man was gone.

She dug in her pack for food. Found the last of the apples, a Snickers bar, a bottle with a mouthful of water. As she bit into an apple, she realised—her underwear was still in the carrier bag beside the old loom. Shit. She thought about going back into town. Knickers. More food. And maybe returning to the mill after.

An engine sputtered. The old man on his quad, flat cap low, a bag strapped to the back. He shifted gears, rolled down the road. She waited until the sound had gone and only the wind remained. Then she stood and surveyed the land. Empty Yorkshire wilderness.

She unrolled her sleeping bag in the warm grass, stretched out, headphones on. Closed her eyes.

Evening. She’d seen him earlier, through the kitchen window. Watching his own reflection. The upstairs lights glowed orange. Must be heading to bed early.

She moved through the blackthorn, silent. Down the garden path, past plastic tubs, and an old door used as a fence. She pressed against the window frame, peered in. The kitchen was a total mess.

Back up the path to the shed. She stepped inside and slung the pack from her shoulders. The headlamp clicked on, and something coiled round her leg. Just the cat she’d seen on the moor. It purred, pressing its face into her shin.

She shone the light about. A workbench. Pegboards studded with tools. A tarp in the corner. Ladders hung from the ceiling. Cobwebbed seed trays. Wind moved against the shed’s roof, an eerie music.

She unfolded a sun lounger, sat down. Pulled the sleeping bag over her legs. The cat leapt into her lap. She ran a hand through its fur, scratched behind its ears. It blinked up at her, slit-eyes luminous.

“We’re sisters,” she whispered.

She shut off the lamp and pulled the headphones over her ears. The cat’s breath steady against her wrist. She closed her eyes. Sleep took her fast.

Morning. She waited till she heard the old man leave, the quad bike whining down the track, and then she checked the back door. Unlocked. She stepped inside and the stink of the place came on her sudden and full, something like wet dog and bad food and something deeper, older. The silence pressed against her until she made out the sound of the clocks: like insects moving.

From the hallway she could see into the front room. Browns and golds and a sickly orange jumbled together.

She stood at the foot of the stairs, listening.

Just in case: “Hello?”

Nothing.

In the kitchen she glanced around. A Welsh dresser stacked with crockery, a wooden creel hanging from the ceiling, a filthy striped towel draped over it like something skinned. She opened the fridge. Inside, a plastic tub. She peeled back the lid and sniffed. Stew. She opened a can of Coke and drank deep and let out a burp, then spooned some of the stew into a bowl and microwaved it.

As she ate, she saw a photo on the mantel: a boy holding a rainbow trout.

When she was done, she washed the bowl, took a swig from a half-empty bottle of wine, and packed some food into her bag.

Upstairs she opened a door.

A boy’s room, dust thick in the air. Time capsule.

Next door was the old man’s room. Tattersall quilt and heavy furniture, a faint smell of earth. She ran a hand over the bedspread and thought of sinking into it, thought better of it. On the sideboard, a black-and-white photo of a young man and a woman standing on some beach. The man, handsome in his suit and cloth cap. The woman, pretty but sad looking.

She went through the drawers. Found underwear too big for her but good enough. And a lumberjack shirt and a worn T-shirt. In the bathroom she stared at the tub. Imagined the heat, the weight of water.

Then a sound. A vibration. A vehicle.

She went to the window. The road into town was empty. The sound came off the moor, a low thrumming. Then the rattle of a cattle grid. A Land Rover, caked in mud, heading into town.

She shouldered her bag, stepped out of the cottage, crossing through the tall meadow grass without looking back.

The next afternoon she was in the old man’s house again. This time she ran the bath. Left the window open to listen for the quad bike’s return. When the tub was half full, she stripped and lowered herself in. The heat swarmed her, pulling her under, and a soft breeze ran through the window. She sighed, closed her eyes…

Sand shifting under her bare feet. The wild black sea. Her mother’s voice on the wind, frayed, calling her home.

A sound. She held her breath.

No. Nothing.

She pulled the plug and watched the water spiral away. Dried herself, dressed. Wiped the tub clean with the towel and hung it back up. In the old man’s room, she caught her reflection in the wardrobe mirror.

The pink hair, it has to go.

Then she left.

She woke in the shed, blinking against the dark. Rubbed at her face.

Sometimes, half-awake, she cried without knowing why. But this time she lay still, chasing the last threads of the dream. Her father’s smell, of cigarettes and sweat. The yellow of his fingertips, the shine of his scalp.

Light from the window lay broken on the floor, cutting through boards warped and rotting, weeds poking through.

Three nights now she’d slept here.

She closed her eyes again, reaching back… In the dream her mother’s voice was calling, “Shake your tail. Shift your bum,” and Ayla would laugh and respond, “Shift your tail. Shake your bum.”

She wanted to go back.

If only…

The wipers couldn’t keep up with the rain. Her father hunched over the wheel, drunk and speeding towards the hospital. Her mother singing through the contractions. Her brother playing his Nintendo, head down. Between them on the back seat, a colouring book, an iPod.

The crash came hard and fast.

Four dead. Her mother, Chrissy. Her father, Reb. Her brother, Josh. And the unborn sister who never got a name.

Her mother was still alive when they cut them loose. Her voice distant, calm, like something from a fever dream. Josh looked asleep. No marks on him at all.

Ayla saw herself, small, ten years old, walking behind the social workers down a hospital corridor. Wanting to go home. But there was no home anymore.

A grandmother in a nursing home, lost to the maze of her own mind. An uncle who wanted no part of her. The council filed the papers.

A car ride, a foster home. The back seat cold. The social workers talking in the front, voices bright, too bright. Their words didn’t reach her.

Stopped at a service station. Coffee. Chips.

“Eat something, Ayla.”

“No.”

Another car ride. The new house smelled like apple pie. The woman was obese and always out of breath. Three days.

Then another house.

Then another.

Then another.

There was nothing left of her old life. The version of herself before the crash was locked in the past. She couldn’t get back to her. Couldn’t walk into her old home and find her parents and Josh on the couch, looking up at her and saying, “Where the hell have you been?”

School was a joke. Teachers whispering, kids staring. They sent her to grief counselling, said it would help.

“Sorry, Ayla.”

They were always apologising.

More placements. More foster families. Each one worse than the last, falling apart in a matter of weeks.

Enough’s enough. Come get her.

So, they sent her to the Unit. A place of locked doors and hard faces. Kids who didn’t trust each other. She learned the system. The quiet staff. The mean ones. The ones who didn’t care. And Sara, the one girl in the Unit she could talk to. The only friend she had. They insulted each other like it was a game. The crueller, the better.

Then Sara got fostered.

Two awkward emails. Then nothing.

Ayla stopped running away, started following the rules. Eating dinner with the others. Trips into town. Movie nights on Wednesdays. It was something close to peace.

Then meeting Chantelle and her brother, Ryan, in town. Nights spent drinking cheap cider, running wild in the dark.

Ryan’s hands on her, the feel of him.

Twenty-five. He knew what he was doing.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said.

“Trust me,” he said.

She thought she loved him. Thought she’d do anything for him.

Then Ryan led to all of this.

She stretched in the sleeping bag, fingers grazing the money belt at her waist. Listened for the cat shifting in the dark.

She wondered what the old man was doing right now.

She unzippered her pack and took out the photograph. Edges soft, the paper creased and worn. Her father laughing, his eyes vanishing into his face like a pair of bellybuttons. She had one of those eyes: the sandy-coloured left one. The right belonged to her mother. “Periwinkle,” her mother called it.

She used to talk to them, the people in the photo. But lately, whenever she looked, her mind wandered elsewhere. To a small room with a bunk bed against the wall. A window looking out over fields of wheat. Her foster mum, Margaret, moving downstairs, the clatter of cups. She sat at that window for hours watching the clouds scroll past, wishing she had died in the car crash too. Take Josh’s place.

That afternoon she sat in the meadow again with the sun heavy on her shoulders. When the heat got the better of her she returned to the shade at the back of the shed and sat a while. After a time, the old man’s quad bike started up and rumbled into the distance.

She grabbed the bin bag and let herself in. The house dark and still as a tomb. Went straight to the bathroom. She put the plug in and dumped her dirty clothes into the rising bathwater. Poured in some of the travel wash and worked it through with her hands. She shut the taps off and peeled her top over her head and stood in front of the cracked mirror.

Her hair had been so fierce, the pink so electric in the light. Now it had gone dull, the roots coming in dark. But it was too obvious. A giveaway. She pulled on the gloves and draped a towel round her shoulders and worked the dye through the strands, following the instructions. Midsection first. Then the back. Then the front. She set the timer on her tablet and stripped her clothes from the water and rinsed and wrung them out. Let the bath drain away.

In the kitchen she ate what she could find. A few slices of ham. A corner of cheese. A pickled onion from a jar. The rain came brief and hard against the window. She stood listening, eyes closed. When it passed, the sun returned and laid bars across the floor.

She moved slow through the house, touching things. She had done this before, in other houses. Quiet hours in new foster homes, learning the landscape. She opened drawers, pressed her fingers to the seams of folded shirts. A woman had lived here once, her ghost in the perfume bottles, in the hairbrush with its threads of silver, in the dresses hung like shed skins.

She took a shirt from the wardrobe and held it to her face. Orange plaid, pearl snaps. It smelled of the old man. She tied it around her waist and stood before the photographs in the room, studying them. Later she went down to the kitchen and looked again at the picture on the mantel, the boy staring back at her.

The timer went off. She climbed the stairs and knelt at the tub and ran the taps. Took up the plastic jug and rinsed the dye from her hair. Dried it. In the mirror, the girl who looked back was the girl from that other life. A girl to be forgotten.

She cleaned up the bathroom, put the stained towel in her bin bag. On the landing she saw the binoculars and slung them round her neck. Took a beer from the fridge and stepped into the bright and waiting heat of the afternoon.

The sky swarmed with birds and insects. She climbed the moor, the bin bag over her shoulder, stopped once to rest and turned the binoculars towards the distant Outwoods. The place she had called home just a week ago. Then she pressed on.

The land changed, the moorland ribbed and broken, brown as old tweed, streaked with pale slashes of limestone. She spread her damp clothes to dry across the rocks and sat with her back against a boulder and cracked open the beer. Knew the bones of the moor had once belonged to the sea. She pictured it: the tide rushing in around her, her body some slow and drifting thing.

The beer worked through her blood. She lay back, let the sun press down, the sound of insects droning, the hiss of wind in the grass, the pulse in her ears softly counting time…

She is at her old living room window again, looking out to sea, the waves capped white, rolling into the evening light. Behind her, Mum is on the settee, snoring, the fire crackling in the grate. The simple peace of it.

She blinked awake, the sound of her mother’s breath lingering in her ears.

Late afternoon, Ted stepped into the house. In the kitchen, a noise, something clattering. Maybe the fox was in again. But the back door stood wide open and through it he saw what he thought was a boy, slight and quick, slipping away through the tall grass.

Ted stepped out onto the stone path.

“What you after?”

No answer. The boy gone to ground in the meadow, lost among long stems shifting in the breeze.

“You keep away from here, you hear me?”

Silence.

“I catch you again I’ll call the police.”

He shut the door hard and turned through the rooms. Nothing gone that he could see. Not much to steal anyway. A man lives alone long enough, he starts living light. But up on the landing he stopped. The old binoculars. Gone. He turned back to the window and there in the field the boy sat watching, cap low over dark eyes, waiting. Ted watched back, long into the dusk.

At midnight he looked again. Nothing moved in the moonlit grass. But then the shed, a low sliver of light slipping through the warped boards, a thin seam where the fascia had come loose. He stood at the window a long time. Old tools in there, rusted mostly, little use to anyone. He watched till the light went out.

Come morning, he stood at the kitchen window awhile, thinking. Then he walked out to the shed, opened the door, and stepped into the gloom.

A figure sat in the old sun lounger, still and small, watching him with a hard gaze, wrapped in his old sleeping bag. For a moment he thought it was a boy and then it wasn’t. A teenage girl, her face pale beneath freckles, her cheeks colouring when she looked away.

He saw now she was wearing one of his old shirts, the sleeves rolled up over tiny wrists. Her eyes on him again, odd-coloured, one dark, one light. Something in them made him turn and walk out without a word.

He left the kitchen door wide open. Pulled eggs from the fridge, bacon. Poured oil into the skillet, struck a match to the burner. As the smell filled the kitchen, he stood watching the doorway, watching her out there by the shed, shifting her feet, her hands buried in the shirt cuffs.

A young lass, he thought.

He shook his head, dropped bread in the toaster. Set a plate out, silverware. Poured milk. Turned the eggs and bacon with the flat of the knife. His hands on the skillet handle looked older than he remembered.

The toaster popped and he buttered the slices. Laid it all out on the small table. Took the ketchup from the cupboard, salt, pepper. A place set for someone else. He scraped the skillet clean, set it in the sink, let the water run.

Through the window she stood at the edge of the garden, kicking at weeds. A headphone in one ear, half-listening, half-watching. That look on her face. Like Ted was the one didn’t belong.

She could smell it by now, had to. He wiped his hands, turned to the door.

“I need to go out,” he said. “Come in. Eat.”

He grabbed his coat from the peg, felt for his wallet, his keys. Then he was out the door.

She waited. The sound of the quad receded into the distance and then she stepped into the house. A plate sat waiting for her on a small table by the window. She ate looking out at the land beyond the house, the shed and meadow and the dark moor beyond. When she was done, she cleaned the dishes and dried them and put them away. Wiped down the counters. Then she went into the meadow and gathered wildflowers and put them in a jar on the sill. A small thing. A quiet thing.

The next day she was still there. He had not called the police. Had not run her off. When he left, she went into the house again. The air stale, a place left to itself too long. She opened all the windows and stood listening to the wind move through the rooms. Then she made a start.

She washed the dishes and wiped the dust from the counters. Mopped the kitchen and the bathroom. Emptied the bins.

She found his bedroom and stood in the doorway a long moment before stepping inside. The bed unmade. The smell of old wool and sleep.

She lifted a brush from the table and pulled a single silver hair from it, held it to the light. Then she opened a drawer and touched his things. Socks, vests, soft and worn, folded neat.

That evening there was a knock at the shed door. She opened it to find him standing there. He handed her a Co-op bag.

“Just summat to keep you going. Bit of bait and some goodies.”

That accent—like he was from another time.

She peered inside the bag, nodded. “Thank you.”

“I see you cleaned the place,” he said. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Sorry.”

“Please don’t go in without invitation.”

He looked at her then, proper. “I can only guess why you’re here and I won’t ask. But won’t someone be worried about you? Isn’t someone missing you?”

“No.”

“No one?”

“No one.”

“Your folks won’t be worried?”

“I just found myself here,” she said. “I was in the old mill. Then some kids turned up.”

He looked away, as if something in the room had caught his attention. Scratched at his neck. “I see.”

She could tell he wasn’t a bad man. Something about him made her want to tell the truth. About Margaret. Ryan. The money she’d stolen.

“I won’t stay long,” she said. “Couple of days. That OK?”

He twisted his mouth. “I don’t know.”

She waited.

He blinked and ran a hand through his ashen hair. “You warm enough? Is there owt you need?”

“No. Thanks.”

“You can use the outside loo. And there’s a tap next to the shed.”

“Thanks.”

He nodded and turned to leave.

“I won’t stay much longer,” she said. “Just a few more days.”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Can I have my binoculars back?”

She rummaged in her pack and handed them over. “Sorry.”

He examined them, turned them over in his hands. “What’s your name?”

Pause. “Ayla.”

“I’m Ted. Where you from?”

She blinked at him.

He said, “There’s a twang in your voice.”

“Cumbria.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

She said, “I’m from here originally,” regretting it instantly.

“What’s your family name?”

She looked away.

“OK,” he said, and left without another word.

She knew she had to work out her next move. Knew it was only a matter of time.

But Ted was good to her over the next few days. Better than anyone had been in years. He left food where she’d find it. Blankets by the shed. A pair of old walking boots she guessed used to belong to his wife.

But kindness, she knew, was never free.

That evening the light burned late in Ted’s kitchen. Unusual. He turned in early most nights. She moved quiet through the damp grass, boots noiseless in the dark, and peered through the window.

He sat at the table, a sheet of paper before him. A face staring back from the page: her own. Missing Person. She felt her breath stall in her throat. The photo was from the lake trip last year. Her gut twisted. But where had he got it from? In town? Had others seen?

She saw herself in the back of a cop car, the wheels of the inevitable turning.

She did not sleep. When morning came, she waited. Ted usually made his trip into town at the same time every day, but the quad bike stayed put with the tarp draped over it in the back garden.

She peered out, watching.

Then the sound of an engine. A car pulled up. A man and a woman stepped out, the wind worrying their hair and the hems of their coats. Detectives? Social workers? She pressed back against the wood of the shed, breath shallow, watching them disappear inside.

Time’s up.

She stuffed her belongings into her pack and ran into the meadow.

Later, she paused on the far side of a tumbledown wall. The moor spread out like a spill of dark gold around her, endless. She tugged her cap lower. The rain was coming in, the cold creeping at her collar.

North, she decided.

That afternoon, a voice echoed through the Outwoods. Ted’s voice, low and urgent, threading through the trees.

“Ayla? Ayla? It’s OK. It’s not what you think.”

Something buried in his voice, some deep ache.

He had called like this before. A father calling for a son lost on the moor.

But, just like his son, Ayla was miles gone.

---

Ray Robinson is a short-story writer, novelist, and screenwriter. His debut novel Electricity was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. The screen adaptation of Electricity premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and won Best Screenplay at the National Film Awards in 2015. His other novels are The Man Without (2008), Forgetting Zoë (2010), Jawbone Lake (2013) and The Mating Habits of Stags (2019). Forgetting Zoë was a winner of the inaugural Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize and The Mating Habits of Stags was shortlisted for the Portico Prize.