By the time George reached the edge of the village he was feeling a little calmer.
He was halfway across the field by the railway line, however, when he saw Eileen and Ronnie heading toward him. They were hoisting their dog over the stile and he was fairly sure they had not noticed him. He crept into the depression by the hawthorn so that he was out of their line of sight.
The dog was barking.
He could not retrace his steps without being seen, and a bank of brambles prevented him crossing the railway line itself. His chest tightened.
His arm was still bleeding where he had bitten it.
The barking got louder.
He lay down and rolled into the shallow drainage ditch where the grass dipped before going under the fence. His coat was green. If he lay still they might not find him.
It was snug in the ditch, and surprisingly comfortable. Interesting, too, to find himself looking at nature from so close up, something he had not done since he was a small boy. There must have been forty or fifty species of plants within his reach. And he knew the names of none. Except the nettles. Assuming they were nettles. And the cow parsley. Assuming it was cow parsley.
Six years ago Katie had given him a book token for Christmas (a lazy present, but an improvement on those ridiculous Swedish wineglasses you hung round your neck on a string). He had used it to buy the Reader’s Digest Book of British Flora and Fauna with the intention of learning the names of trees at the very least. The only fact he could now recall from the book was that a colony of wallabies were living wild in the Cotswolds.
He realized that he did not have to walk somewhere to escape the wedding. Indeed, walking was more likely to attract attention. Better simply to lie here, or somewhere farther into the undergrowth. He could emerge at night.
Then Eileen was saying, “George?” and it occurred to him that if he did not move she might simply go away.
But she did not go away. She said his name again, then screamed when he failed to respond. “Ronnie. Come over here.”
George rolled over to prove that he was still alive.
Eileen asked George what had happened. George explained that he had been out for a walk and twisted his ankle.
Ronnie helped him to his feet and George pretended to limp and it was bearable for a few minutes because although the ditch was comforting the idea of spending the next ten hours alone was not. And, to be honest, he was rather relieved to find himself in the company of other human beings.
But Eileen and Ronnie were taking him back to the house and that was not good, and as they got progressively closer he felt as if someone were lowering a black bin liner over his head.
He very nearly ran when they reached the main road. He did not care whether the dog was trained to attack. He did not care about the embarrassment of a hare-and-hounds race with Ronnie through the village (a race he would almost certainly win; there was so much adrenaline coursing through his system he could have outrun a zebra). It was simply the only option left.
Except that it was not.
There was another option, and it was so obvious that he could not believe he had forgotten it. He would take the Valium. He would take all the Valium, as soon as he returned to the house.
But what if someone had thrown the bottle away? What if someone had flushed the pills down the toilet? Or hidden them to prevent them being swallowed accidentally by a child?
He broke into a run.
“George,” shouted Ronnie. “Your ankle.”
He had absolutely no idea what the man was talking about.