The Split - Sharon Bolton Page 0,18

of despair sweeps through her. She’d been so sure she’d left the madness behind in Cambridge and yet just the sight of him has brought it all back.

Are those footsteps outside, crunching over gravel? They are heavy, regular and seem to be getting closer, and yet a large bird hopping around could make a similar sound. Outside, the day darkens as storm clouds move in front of the sun. In the provision store, Felicity’s breath is visible in the cold air. She backs away, with no idea whether or not there is another way out of the store, only knowing she has to get away from the footsteps that are tracking her down. Her rucksack slams into the counter and she jumps, spinning herself over it and dodging behind one of the few shelving units that are still upright.

The black silhouette that would prove her worst fears doesn’t materialise.

Unable to take her eyes away from the door, she backs further into the store, only to hear the sound of something moving in the shadows behind her. Impossible. He cannot be approaching from outside and be in the store with her at the same time. All the same, she is definitely not alone. In the darkness, something slithers. There is a clattering sound. She has no idea which way to turn.

Her foot backs up against a fallen shelf unit and she loses balance. Something strikes her head. She lands hard and dust surrounds her. She hears the sound of something sliding closer and then all light leaves the store.

Ten, nine, eight, I hope you’re in a good hiding place, Felicity.

This is a dream. It has to be. It is exactly the same as all the others. She crouches in the darkness, naked and terrified, and somewhere outside the man she dreads plays a grotesque parody of hide and seek.

Seven, six …

She presses herself against the rough wall of the cupboard beneath the stairs. No, no, she is in the provision store at Husvik, a dreadful enough place, but not the one that haunts her nightmares. She really has to wake up now.

Five, four, three – oh, my, this is exciting!

She can’t scream. Screaming makes him worse. It always hurts more if she screams.

Two, one, coming ready or not. Are you ready, sweetheart, because you can bet your ass I’m coming.

Felicity screams, long and loud and the sound brings her back to herself. Pain in the back of her skull tells her she may have blacked out for a few minutes. Outside the store, a flurry of gulls takes to the air. Spotting a broken stretch of pipework she grabs it and gets to her feet.

She remembers the sounds she heard from inside the store and spins on the spot. The shadows remain still, but is that heavy, laboured breathing she can hear?

Outside, the wind keens its lonely path around the chimneys.

The doorway is empty. The footsteps have gone. She waits for that cruel, teasing voice to call out her name again. Nothing. He isn’t here. He can’t be here. Everything is fine. She’ll make her way to the manager’s villa, find somewhere en route to hide her stuff, and then sit it out. When the Snow Queen has gone, she’ll return to King Edward Point, with a story about how an oncoming storm and problems with the RIB engine forced her to take shelter for several days. She’ll apologise for any alarm and then she’ll get on with her work. There are no more cruise ships due until spring and private yachts never come in winter.

She’ll be safe. Her troubled mind will heal itself again, and no one will know that anything was wrong.

She pulls herself up onto the counter, is about to swing her legs over and down the other side, when a great lumbering beast, nearly four metres long and weighing well over a ton, looms out of the shadows with a great, throaty roar. She feels the elephant seal’s huge snout against her thigh a second before it bites.

15

Freddie

In May 1915, at the height of the South Georgia winter, British explorer Ernest Shackleton landed his open boat along with a handful of crew at Haakon Bay on the north-west coast of the island. Exhausted, half-starved and frostbitten, Shackleton and two of his men began the first confirmed land crossing of South Georgia’s interior.

Their twenty-mile hike took them into the history books. With no map, they improvised a route across uncharted terrain, hammering nails into the soles of their