Page 50 of The Bodies

FORTY-FIVE

Sitting behind the wheel of his late grandmother’s Honda, Max Carver pulls into a rest spot on one of the quieter roads through Jack-O’-Lantern Woods. His phone is ringing, and he knows who’s calling. When he answers, he activates the speaker.

‘Where are you?’ his father asks. ‘Where’d you go? Where’s the car?’

‘Slow down. What’s wrong? I’m in town, helping Tilly put up posters,’ Max says, staring through the windscreen at the trees.

Behind him, he hears muted rustling. It sounds like the thick plastic wrapped around Drew is settling after its bumpy ride here.

That is, unless some dark forest magic has reanimated her.

Checking the rear-view mirror, he sees that the tonneau cover is still pulled taut across the boot space.

There’s no bulge from a plastic-encased head.

‘Did you move the car?’ his father asks.

Max blinks, angles the mirror down. Across the Honda’s rear seats lies Tilly. Plastic ties secure her wrists and ankles. Her head wound has leaked a lot of blood – the seat fabric looks stained beyond repair.

Not that Max or his father could ever have contemplated keeping the car, once this was over. Not that he would have wanted to.

It’s so strange seeing her like this. These last few years, Tilly has become far more than a sister. She’s been his counsellor, his guide; in many ways she’s reinvented him.

She might not have shared his passion for medicine.

For Tilly, the innumerable ways a body can fail, and the more numerable ways, with knowledge and with skill, that it can be put back together, hold little interest. Despite her disregard of academia, he’d thought her wise in ways he will never be, sagacious beyond her years.

Tilly’s knowledge comes not from books or formal learning but seems entirely empirical, gained through close attention to those around her. In that, she’s similar to her mother.

For three years Tilly has enthralled him, bewitched him. How bizarre, then, that seeing her like this, bound and bleeding, seems to have dissolved the last threads of that enchantment. For the first time in weeks, he almost feels like he can think straight. Tragic that it might have come too late.

She’s not his sister. He mustn’t think of her like that. Tilly’s something else, something other . A cuckoo chick that hatched in what was left of his family’s nest. A threat to him and his father – although not the only threat, it seems.

Shaking his head, he tunes back in to his father’s voice. ‘What?’

‘ Did you move the car? ’

‘That’s what I thought you said. Why would I take it? What’re you talking about?’

‘It’s gone, Max. The car. It’s not there.’

More rustling, then a moan. Checking the rear-view mirror again, he sees that Tilly’s eyes are open.

She blinks, lifts her head from the seat, winces.

It takes her a moment to realize she’s bound, and a moment longer to realize where she is.

When her gaze shifts to the mirror and meets his own, he sees a panoply of emotions: shock, fury, disbelief – and, unmistakeably, fear.

He looks at her for as long as he dares.

Then he turns to his passenger beside him.