Killing Woods by Lucy Christopher Page B

letters: Sixteen years old . . . running to Shepherd . . . he could relive his flashbacks . . .
    It’s too much.
    So I pick up Dad’s shirt, bury my face in it. When Dad used to come off tour he’d smell like sweat and rum and another place’s washing powder. Before we sent him off again he’d smell like us and Darkwood. But this shirt just smells of dust; of cold; of something forgotten. I glance towards my window – curtains open on the woods as always. It’s time to go back, and not just to the Leap like yesterday.
    I get dressed in jeans and a jumper. In the kitchen I write a note for Mum: Going to school early for a project, back normal time . I even ring the school and tell them I’m unwell. They buy it, course they do. It’s misty and crisp-cold outside our house, winter creeping nearer. I like the bite of it, the way it feels as if my body could snap as I walk the garden path. In the lane I look towards Joe’s house, but no one else, anywhere, is awake, not even him. At the wooden gate, I breathe out and see my breath hesitate too.
    â€˜It could be anyone,’ I remind myself. ‘Someone else who killed her.’
    Damon had been so certain yesterday that it wasn’t: everyone thinks your dad’s guilty . . . it’s obvious . . . he’s a monster . . .
    I try to focus on the dull thud of my trainers on the path, and on the beech leaves that look like gold sovereigns or foil chocolate coins: try to see their beauty. But like yesterday, I’m still checking for shadows too. I take the pathway that only Dad and I would know as one; it’s more overgrown than I ever remember. Once I would’verun down it, coat flapping as I leapt tree roots and branches, calling to Dad. Today I’m quiet. It’s not long until I reach the thicket of hawthorn, sculpted like a perfect natural hedge. Beyond it, in that small clearing, I see the slightly raised bit of ground with the leaves and brambles covering it: Dad’s bunker. The only way anyone would know it was here is if they were really, truly looking and if they knew what to look for, but we’d happened upon it by fluke. I get a memory of Dad crouched and whispering: this is our place – a secret just for us . Surely, he would never have brought Ashlee Parker here. It’s another reason why the murder charge doesn’t make sense.
    I follow the hawthorn around until I find the small opening. The day we’d found this bunker was the day after Dad had signed up for another deployment out of Darkwood Barracks. Three years ago, four? We’d been walking in the woods to celebrate not having to move house and town, and everything, again. Dad’s eyes had gone wide when he’d seen the edge of the rusted metal lid and realised what was underneath.
    â€˜A bunker?’ He’d moved quickly towards it.
    I’d started to ask what a bunker was, then realised it myself from the things Dad had told me from being in the army: a shelter, somewhere to hide from enemies, a place to fight from. ‘Like they have in a war?’ I’d asked.
    â€˜I reckon this one’s just from the threat of war.’
    Today I’m expecting the hawthorn hedge to be torn open with police tape flapping across, but it all looks the same as always. I guess the police approached the bunkerfrom the direction that Ashlee came from that night, on that small animal track the other side. Twigs claw at me as I push through the hawthorn and into the clearing. There is still blue and white police tape half buried in the mud, one end flicking like a snake’s tail. It feels colder and quieter here now, full of ghosts: one ghost . I walk across the clearing very slowly, kick at some of the ashes still in the fire pit. Once, Dad would have crouched here with the copper kettle he used to boil water.
    â€˜Tea?’ he’d have said.
    But that was in the early days of finding this bunker, back when things