The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

by their thickness – and she was able to stand up to her ankles with her feet still remaining dry. It was a luxury she suddenly appreciated.

She stood there for several minutes, feeling the water pressure pushing against her planted feet, staring into space. Her mind kept asking her the same question, over and over: what was she doing here? It was complete madness to be out here, doing this, much less with him. She’d acted so impulsively and been so determined to save this child, as if it could make up for the one she’d failed when she knew nothing could bring Lucy back. If only she’d not been so rash, she could have taken time to think it through – Rory would have had a chance to talk her out of it, or he could have joined her too if she had just given him time to sleep off his hangover . . .

She allowed her mind to ponder, for a moment, how that would have played: her, Rory and Alex, out here together. She gave a shudder. She’d never even told Rory about him – why bother? Alex wasn’t relevant to her anymore; he had been in her life for all of four months, ten years ago, but she wouldn’t have been able to hide her contempt of him any better with Rory present than she could now when they were alone. She could only imagine how awkward it would have been with the three of them.

She stretched her neck, feeling the stiffness already gathering from the trials of supporting Jed earlier, and then carrying the pack. She wanted to sit and rest for a while – or a week. She’d been on the move all day, from the moment she’d left Jed’s village, pretty much, and she already knew she wasn’t going to be able to relax in her hammock with him on the other side of the tarp. A large boulder sat hulking in the shallows upstream and she waded over to it, setting the buckets down and bringing her heels in to her bottom, resting her chin in her hands, her elbows on her knees. Why was she here? Why was she here?

Paco.

She thought of the boy – still sick, still lying on that mattress – and how, while her landscapes had changed so much over the past twenty-four hours, he still stared at the same patch of ceiling from the same corner of the room. Just the endless monotony of it must make him despair. He had been sick and starving now for seven months, lying there all that time. It was hard to conceive – and even harder to forget.

Her resolve hardened. Why was she here? She was here for Paco. And not just him, Jed too. Like it or not, Alex had been right – she owed it to him to see through what she had promised to do. She just needed to keep a calm head. Too much time today had been lost, but all things being well from here on in, she and Alex would get to Alto Uren tomorrow evening. Then, if they made a really early start the morning after and pushed through, they could get back to the microlight and maybe even get to Jed’s village late the same night. If she pushed hard, Paco’s situation could finally change just two days from now – and she could rid Alex Carter from her life again. Just forty-eight hours, that was all she had to endure. She could get through that for a sick child.

She heard the buzz of insects start up suddenly and realized the sun was setting quickly now; the intense colours had dimmed too, and there would be only a few more minutes before dark. It would be even darker among the trees, of course, and she needed to get the water back, she needed to help Alex get a fire going for some light . . .

She got up from the rock and filled the buckets, turning back towards the trees, stopping as she regarded them afresh. She stared. Now that she looked at it from this perspective, from the river . . . she couldn’t see exactly where she’d stepped out. There wasn’t much to distinguish one tangle of branches from another.

How many steps had she taken through the water to the boulder? Fifteen? Or perhaps twenty? And they’d been big, right, as she waded through . . .? She walked upstream for a count of ten. She frowned as she turned and tried to remember the exact view garnered as she’d first emerged from the trees, but on the opposite side of the river, there was nothing especially significant about this stretch – no caves, toppled trees, rapids . . . She swallowed as she realized she had mindlessly headed in the direction of the river – following the sounds – without ever thinking to notice any distinguishing features of where they’d set up camp either.

How would she find her way back? As soon as she stepped into the trees again, even if she was only ten feet upstream from where she’d emerged, she could easily bypass their camp and take herself further with every step, heading deeper and deeper into the jungle, into the night.

She stood motionless, a bucket in each hand, as she looked back at the immensity of the jungle. She felt both frightened and stupid. How could she have been so . . . distracted? This wasn’t Hyde Park—

‘Hey.’

She turned with a start to see Alex stepping into the river, ten metres upstream of where she stood. He crouched down and washed water over his face, the droplets refracting the dying light of the day.

‘Hey,’ she mumbled back. Had he been watching her? Had he seen her dawning panic as she stared, frozen, into the treeline? She had an unwelcome feeling the answer was yes – that he’d come to check on her when she hadn’t returned immediately, that it had occurred to him that she might do something so stupid as walk blindly through the jungle without