“What are you doing?” shouts Demeter.
“Just coming to help you,” I say soothingly. “You know, you should be careful around swamps. You should never hurry.”
“But you told me to hurry!” Demeter explodes. “You said, ‘Hurry!’ ”
“Never mind. We’ll soon get you back to your yurt. Come on,” I beckon.
“I’m stuck,” Demeter repeats, giving me an accusing look. “My feet have sunk into the mud.”
“Just lift up your leg.” I mime pulling a leg out of a swamp, and Demeter copies—but as she wrenches her leg out, her wellie is missing.
“Shit!” she says, flailing her arms again. “My boot! Where’s my boot?”
Oh for God’s sake.
“I’ll get it,” I say, feeling like a mother with a three-year-old. I wade into the swamp, reach Demeter, and feel around in the mud for the boot. Demeter is meanwhile standing on one leg, clinging to my arm. “Here.” I fish out the missing wellie. “Shall we go?”
I turn toward the bank, but Demeter doesn’t turn with me.
“Why did you tell me to hurry?” she asks in even, ominous tones. “Did you want me to fall in?”
I feel a tiny spasm of alarm, which I quell. She can’t prove anything.
“Of course not! Why would I want that?”
“I don’t know,” says Demeter in the same ominous way. “But it’s weird, isn’t it? And you know what else? I feel like I know you from somewhere.”
She scrutinizes my face and I bow my head hastily under my baseball cap.
“Well, that’s ridiculous.” I give a hasty laugh. “I’m a Zummerzet girl. Never been to Lunnon town in my life. I don’t even know where Chiswick is.”
“Why did you say ‘Chiswick’?” snaps Demeter.
At once I curse myself. Shit. Idiot. I’m losing concentration.
“Didn’t you say you work in Chiswick?” I answer as lightly as I can. “Summat like that?”
“No, I never mentioned it.” Demeter holds my wrist so tight that it hurts. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Katie!” I try to wriggle out of her grasp. “Now, let’s go and have a nice slap-up cream tea…or cake…jam tarts….”
“You’re hiding something.” Demeter gives me an angry wrench and I lose my footing.
“Aargh!” I land in the swamp and feel mud slapping onto my face. Oh my God, this is gross. I scramble into a sitting position, wipe my eyes, and glare at Demeter. All my self-control has gone. I feel as if my kite string has snapped; the kite is soaring away.
“Don’t you dare do that!” I slap swamp mud at her.
“Well, don’t you fucking dare!” Demeter slaps mud back at me. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but—”
“I’m not up to anything!”
I crawl to the side of the swamp and dip my head in the fresh water of the adjoining pond, trying to calm my adrenaline rush. OK. Regroup. This was not the plan. I have to keep it together. This may be Demeter, but she’s a guest too. I cannot be having a mud fight with her. I mean, it really wouldn’t sound good on TripAdvisor.
Although—who’s to believe her word against mine? You know. If it came to it.
Feeling steadier, I lift my head from the fresh water. My face is clean, all traces of mud gone. My baseball cap’s disappeared somewhere, but never mind. I pull my dripping hair back and scrunch it into a knot. Right. Back to my professional tour-leader act.
“OK.” I turn to Demeter. “Well. I think we should finish the nature walk there. I do apologize for any—”
“Wait,” she says, her voice suddenly quivering. “Wait right there. Cath.”
My stomach does a loop the loop of terror.
“No, Cat.” Demeter corrects herself, her eyes like gimlets. “Cat. Isn’t it?”
“Who’s Cat?” I manage to keep in control of my voice.
“Don’t give me that!” Demeter sounds so incandescent, I almost feel my skin shrivel. “Cat Brenner. It’s you, isn’t it? I can see it now.”
I’ve wrecked my disguise, I realize with a sickening thud. The hat and the makeup and the curly hair. All gone. How could I have been so stupid?
For a few petrified seconds, my mind gallops around my options. Deny…run away…other…
“OK, it’s me,” I say at last, trying to sound nonchalant. “I changed my nickname. Is that against the law?”
A crow flaps past, cawing, but neither of us moves. We’re both standing motionless in the swamp, covered in mud, staring at each other as though life is on pause. My blood is pulsing in terror, but I feel a strange relief too. At least now she’ll know. She’ll know.
Demeter has her swivelly-eyed, has-the-world-gone-mad look. She keeps peering at me, then frowning, then going all distant, as though she’s consulting her memory.
Things could go anywhere from here. Anywhere. I feel almost exhilarated.
“OK, I don’t understand,” says Demeter, and I can tell she’s trying to stay calm, with difficulty. “I don’t. I’m trying to understand, I’m trying to get my head round this, but I can’t. What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
“You engineered me into the swamp!” Demeter’s starting to sound agitated. “You told me to hurry so I would fall in. Do you have something against me?”