Page 42 of 59 Minutes

MRS DABB

The siren still cries in the distance, but the fog is lifting whip-quick now.

It has left a trace smell of burning, a motor smell that you don’t get as much these days.

Rubber and steel, diesel even, smearing slick rainbows on the silver tarmac.

The fog picks up nearby fragrances, amplifies and spreads them.

Normally its sweetened with gorse, but right now it smells as sour and man-made as everything else happening today.

She reaches the brow of the hill and takes a sudden breath at the sight. Down there, in the dark blanket of fields, sits a small cluster of lights, all alone.

What must it have been like to grow up there? Cut off, banded together, and fed from birth with stories of family glory. All tooled up with weapons they didn’t need, looking for a fight they’d been bred for. It was only going to end one way.

As she starts to speed down the hill towards it, a helicopter swings into view along the horizon, blades chuntering as it sweeps its searchlight across the fields. She sucks in a breath and tries to block out the sound, the vibrations shaking her skull as it zooms directly over the car and away.

It used to be a working farm but it is skeletal now, large outbuildings reduced to shells, the moon peeping through their patchy roofs.

There are no crops in the overgrown fields.

Weeds sway tall in the wind with no animals to stomp and chew them.

As her car slides quietly closer, she can see a pole flying a bright ‘Lest We Forget’ poppy flag next to the main farmhouse, the only building that seems relatively intact.

It was Remembrance Day on Monday. But every day is Remembrance Day for her.

When she was last here, the pole was hung with a huge flapping Devon Militia emblem hand-painted by one of the wing nut cousins.

She had ducked under it on the morning walk of shame and flinched when it touched her.

Oblivious to her distaste, he’d proudly explained the origins.

All of his family were members of the militia.

Well, all of the male relatives. What the fuck am I doing here , she’d thought, even as she was making her escape.

A security light flickers on now as she pulls off the lane and into the overgrown farmyard. Is anyone looking out for her? A sudden thought, is this a trap?

The air outside the car smells stagnant, years of agricultural smells baked into the stones and still leaking back out long after they stopped farming.

There are no visible vehicles here but there were loads when she first saw this place. Working trucks, vans, old Land Rover Defenders stripped down, their bones picked for parts. Where are all the vehicles?

The security light is still blazing, there’s nowhere for her to hide and time is marching. She has no choice but to walk into this wasps’ nest.

‘Bunny?’ she shouts, rushing towards the crumbling farmhouse. The dusty windows are shoddily blocked up from the inside, but an electric glow sketches the edge of each frame. She bangs on the glass, hard as she dares, but nothing happens and so she moves towards the wooden front door, fist raised.