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ONE

Monday, 2 September

Joby hated that his dad had dragged him out of bed to help on the farm. He didn’t want to become a farmer. He hated driving a tractor as much as the early mornings. More importantly, he loved music, and songwriting was everything to him. His dad glanced across the yard at him, eyebrows raised as Joby chewed on a long piece of grass. ‘Get on with it. The fence won’t fix itself.’ His dad lowered his brows and smiled, telling Joby that he wasn’t being too serious.

He held a hand up and exhaled slowly through puffed cheeks. ‘Whatever, old man,’ Joby replied. His dad waved and began trudging back towards the barn.

Hoisting his tool bag off the ground, Joby loaded it onto the back seats of their muddy Land Rover. Gerty, their sheep dog, jumped on top of it, wagging her tail. ‘I guess you can come too.’

It was a good job they didn’t have sheep or any other animals, because Gerty was absolutely useless, but she was cute and Joby loved that she wanted to come along. He put the four-wheel drive into gear and it hopped down the mud path, all the way over to the barley and wheat fields. They would soon be harvesting the beets, which Joby didn’t mind. He got out of the car. It was easier to walk the rest of the way with all the trees ahead. He liked the walk through the woodland. It gave him the chance to work on his lyrics.

‘Gerty,’ he called, as he opened the back door and flung the tool bag across his shoulder.

Yesterday afternoon, his dad had been livid. It wasn’t the first time a careless driver had taken the bend at the edge of their land too fast and crashed through their fence, and it wouldn’t be the last. Joby wished they didn’t have to keep fixing it, but if they didn’t, the fly-tippers would soon pass the word along and their land would look like the local tip. There was still a lot of junk left from the last episode, and he had yet to finish loading it into the boot to take to their skip.

He escaped the morning sun under the trees. Snatching a long, gnarly stick from the mossy ground, he threw it as far as he could. Gerty ran after it, her tail wagging. She dutifully brought it back and he threw it again.

The sunshine cast dappled light across the woodland floor. A few trees had started to turn from green-leaved to an array of oranges with tinges of red. The large oak he walked under had always been his favourite. He remembered when he and his mates used to have a tyre swing attached to it and would spend hours there having fun. He thought back to those times in the hope he’d come up with some new lyrics. A faint melody came into his head, which he hummed.

No, the song and tune sounded naff, but then again, people liked that kind of thing. Look at all the mush over love and nostalgia – it sells, and that’s what he wanted.

He stopped and closed his eyes.

The scent of wood and grass tickled his senses, and the warmth, the birdsong… it was all too cliché. He needed to dig deeper, but his mind wasn’t really producing anything today. Maybe he needed to get angry at the world, the injustice of everything, and throw in some real angry emotion.

He knew why he was struggling – Gerty was nudging him. He opened his eyes and patted her on the head. ‘Maybe I should write my next song about you.’

She barked.

He continued to walk as he let his mind wander into the ever-growing song in his head. It was something , and something was better than nothing. He needed some inspiration. He’d smoked some weed with Dodge a few days ago, hoping it would help, but all it did was make him sick.

He sighed and continued lugging his tool bag towards the fence, trudging over the stile as Gerty lay on her belly and shuffled under it.

That’s when he saw a car blocking the entrance.

Stepping back, he hid behind a tree. There was a man at the wheel. He knew the man hadn’t broken the fence as it was already broken and there was no sign of any damage to the bumper of his car. He was leaning back in the driver’s seat, but slightly hunched at an angle. Maybe he was ill and had pulled over? It looked like he was having a nap.

Joby wondered what he should do. Was it okay to tap on the window and ask the guy to back out and park on the road? He took a deep breath. Of course it was. The man was trespassing.

Gerty darted out from behind the bush and began jumping up at the passenger door. ‘Gerty, get back here now ,’ Joby said in a loud whisper. He pulled his phone out, wondering if he should ask his dad to deal with the man. Joby hated any kind of confrontation, unlike his dad who would literally die to defend his land.

‘ Ow !’ A blackberry thorn caught his hand and blood began to seep down his arm. He wiped it on his jeans. He was being a wimp. His dad would have no problem asking the man to back out of their land; his mother wouldn’t either, even his grandad wouldn’t. Joby had to deal with it.

The man in the car didn’t look threatening; he hadn’t even moved. He was probably ill and just needed a bit of sympathy before Joby asked him to move on.

Feeling more reassured after giving himself a pep talk, Joby stepped out of the brambles and crept towards the car. Gerty jumped up at the car, sniffing, her front paws on the passenger door.

Joby bent over to look through the passenger window. He tapped lightly so he didn’t alarm the man, but the man didn’t respond. Using the back of his sleeve, he wiped the dust from the window. The man’s lips and face were reddish, and a trail of vomit had stained his shirt. Joby recoiled.

On the back seat of the car, he could see an empty vodka bottle. He took a deep breath and forced himself to look again and bang on the window.

‘Mister, are you okay?’

Maybe he’d stopped to drink the vodka and then hadn’t wanted to drink and drive? Joby had passed out and vomited on himself when he drank the huge bottle of Dodge’s dad’s home brew. He remembered being really embarrassed. He never wanted anyone to know, but Dodge had shared it with everyone at school and all the other kids pretended to heave before laughing whenever they saw him. That was ages ago and he forgave Dodge soon after.

‘Mister? Hey, wake up!’ He knocked again, then he walked around the car in the hope that one of the doors might be unlocked. Maybe he could give the man a little shake. He had a bottle of water in his tool bag. If he gave it to him, it might help the man sober up. Gerty yelped and tilted her black and white furry head to the side as she waited at the foot of the car bonnet.

Joby gasped as he spotted the hose that had been slid into the slightly open passenger window. It led to the man’s exhaust.

No! They’d had a talk about mental health at school, and male suicide was a huge issue. The engine was turned off. Maybe the man turned it off and was okay. Or maybe his fuel had run out.

He went to pull the door open, but it was locked.

‘Wake up!’

Joby stumbled back. The man was dead: he couldn’t see the rise or fall of his chest.

‘Think, think…’ He did a first aid course last year. He needed to check the man’s pulse.

After checking all the doors and finding them locked, he glanced around and saw a huge stone. He prised it out of the mud and slammed it as hard as he could against the back-seat window, smashing it and reaching in to unlock the door.

The stench hit him instantly.

That was no normal stench.

He leaned over the passenger seat and dry-heaved as he reached over and unlocked the driver’s door. As he stepped back out, he filled his lungs with crisp, clean air before opening the driver’s door. He placed two fingers on the man’s wrist, then his neck.

There was no sign of a pulse.

Joby grabbed his phone and called the police. That’s when he saw the bloodied sheet in the passenger footwell and the almost illegible note in the centre console, that faded at the end into a scribbled mess.

Save her and tell her I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt her. I only ever wanted to love her, but I failed.