Chapter 68 Elin

68

Elin

Parque Nacional, Portugal, October 2021

Isaac's outside when she arrives back at the Airstream, sitting by the fire pit, staring at his phone clasped in his hand.

‘Nearly about to call a search party,' he jokes as she crosses the decking, but his smile fades as he takes in her expression. ‘What's wrong?'

‘Something's happened,' Elin says heavily, casting a look towards the other Airstream, just visible between the trees. ‘Probably best we go inside.'

Isaac's features are stiff, tight, as if he can't quite take in what she's told him. ‘I don't know what to say.'

Elin nods, trying to hold her emotion in, but she feels her lip trembling.

Leaning over, Isaac pulls her towards him for a hug. ‘If it makes you feel any better, he got me too. I genuinely thought we were mates.'

Hearing the pain in his voice, for the first time, it properly hits her that it's not just one deception, but two. Steed had betrayed both of them. She feels another hot surge of anger: Steed knew Isaac was vulnerable after what happened to Laure. Knew that and did it anyway.

‘He's lied to both of us,' Elin replies as they pull apart.

There's a sombre feeling as they talk it over again, in detail, Isaac asking the same questions she's tormented herself with and more of his own.

How long do you think he'd been planning it? What exactly did he want by bringing them out here?

As the conversation eventually exhausts itself, they slip into an uneasy silence.

‘So where do we go from here?' Isaac says finally. ‘With Steed, I mean? You going to tell anyone?'

‘I don't know … haven't really got that far.' Deciding whether to report him or not was something she hadn't even begun to grapple with. It would be career defining for Steed in every sense of the word, and she's not sure she's ready to make that call. ‘It's going to be something I need to think about properly.'

‘And Kier, how are you feeling about that?'

Elin knew the conversation was going to come around to this point, and she's still feeling her way around an answer. ‘I'm not sure.' She glances out through the window to see that the light in the other Airstream is on, the dim outline of a figure moving around inside. ‘What do you think?'

Isaac hesitates, frowning slightly, the lines deepening around his eyes.

‘To be honest,' he says, ‘I don't know if it's going to be something anyone else can decide for you. Sometimes I reckon it's better not to think about how you'd feel about doing something, but to work out how you'd feel if you didn't. Hard as it is to go there, you need to work out whether you'd be happy leaving it here, after everything we've found out about Kier, the camp…'

Elin sits for a minute, thinking over what he's said, the raw reality of it.

Walking away now. Leaving Kier's story without any real resolution .

Isaac lightly places a hand on her arm. ‘It's not a question you've got to answer now. I don't think either of us can. Probably best we sleep on it and then—'

‘Not sure I need to,' she interrupts. ‘I'm pretty certain I'm going to feel exactly the same tomorrow. Part of me wants to get the hell out of here, but how can I leave it like this, when I might be part of why Kier came here? Why something's happened to her? What Steed said was exaggerated, yes, but there's truth in it. I didn't get back to her when I should have.' Her voice pitches higher. ‘I missed something.'

‘Hold on,' Isaac says slowly. ‘That's because you weren't well, and Steed said himself he didn't think that's the reason Kier came out here. He reckons that's because of him.'

‘But's that's the whole point. I wasn't well so I shouldn't have been working, should have held up the white flag, taken the career break sooner.' It was a decision she always feared would one day come back to haunt her.

‘So at the time, you knew you weren't yourself?'

‘Yeah … but I carried on. It was pride, that drive I've always congratulated myself on, that made me keep going. I didn't want to admit to myself I was out of control.'

‘I don't think many people can. You want to believe you've got it altogether.'

‘But for most people, it doesn't have consequences. In the job I do, you have a responsibility.' Elin shakes her head. ‘You know, before this, I thought I was making progress with the whole getting to know myself thing, but this proves the opposite. Not just this, but leaning on Steed like I did, when he was thinking god knows what behind my back.' She blinks. ‘What kind of an idiot doesn't see what's staring her right in the face?'

‘A human one,' Isaac says softly. ‘And you are making progress. What you just said, acknowledging you should have taken the career break sooner, that's brave. Admitting your flaws.' He shrugs. ‘Just because something's hard to do, doesn't mean it isn't progress.'

Elin's quiet for a minute, mulling over what he's said. Catching his gaze, she gives him a half smile. ‘Getting wise in your old age. '

‘Maybe.' Isaac's eyes shift past her, towards the trees. ‘Look, I've been thinking as we've been talking. I want to go and speak to Penn.' Grimacing, he corrects himself. ‘Steed. There are things, from my side, that I want to ask him before we can make any kind of decision about where we go from here. I need to be sure he's not going to cause us—'

Isaac doesn't finish his sentence but Elin knows where he was going with it, the real reason he wants to talk to Steed.

He wants to be sure he's not going to cause them any problems. That Steed meant what he said about exactly why he brought them out here.

Isaac rubs a hand over the back of his head. ‘Before I go, just so I'm clear, the one thing I think we're both agreed on is that if we do decide to continue with this, there's no way Steed can be a part of it, is there?'

‘No.' She swallows hard. ‘There's no way we can police what he does, whether he's planning to stick around or not, but I don't want anything to do with him.'

Her mind is still churning it over as Isaac gets ready to leave.

Elin knows she should do as he says – sleep on it – before she makes a final decision, but she can't stop thinking about Bridie flushing as she mentioned the clearing, and the fine coating of ash caught in the fabric of her boot.