The Wolf Border (45 page)

Lawrence got away from work as soon as he could, called upon once again in her hour of need. She had not liked leaving Charlie with the childminder at first, nor enjoyed the series of hotels, the hours spent apart, late evenings when her son would already be bathed and asleep in the travel cot when she came in, but it could have been worse. She'd felt like she was on the run, too – the cottage in the Lakes half packed up, promissory messages left for her boyfriend.

By the time her brother arrived, the situation was looking
less bleak, she was feeling optimistic, and the pack was in the Highland corridor. She did not want to lumber Lawrence with childcare duties, though she knew that's why he'd come. Instead, she'd urged him into the tiny four-seater with her, introduced him to Rob, the Hebridean pilot, with whom she had developed a silent rapport over the weeks, not noticing her brother's pallor, until he confessed.

Fuck it, Rachel. I'm usually high when I get on a plane.

Oh, God! I'm sorry, Lawrence, she said. Do you want to go back to the hotel?

No, no way.

He got in. He clenched his knees and gripped the seat as they took off, and tried not to panic as the choppy air of the mountains rocked them, the plane dropped like a stone, then bucked upward. Rachel had put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

You're doing great.

Am I?

At reconnaissance altitude the view was spectacular, distracting him from his fear. Snow on the Grampians, rank after rank of hard white peaks stretching out, a serious version of the Cumbrian uplands, steel-blue tarns and lochs, trout and salmon burns. Here and there, tucked-away settlements, a miniature white palace with towers, the old Glencoe ski lift looping up and over to the runs, and the winding roads made famous by song.

The transmitters were still working; the telemetry signal started beeping ten minutes into the flight and they were quickly found, cutting through a narrow valley, strung one behind the other. Dark-backed and long-legged, their tails shaggy. The plane flew over, looped round, following their trajectory. She and Lawrence watched as the four wolves loped onto the outskirts of Rannoch, its
turf still bloody from autumn, as if battle-worn; the red bracken beginning to disappear under the first low-lying drifts. The pilot had looked over his shoulder and put his thumb up.

Fàilte, he'd said.

Thanks for assistance with research to the following: Andy Wightman, Land Matters – for helpful speculation about reintroduction and political scenarios north of the border. George Monbiot's book
Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding
was also informative and inspiring. Vicky Allison Hughes, formerly of The UK Wolf Conservation Trust, for all things wolf-related and the tour of the sanctuary near Reading.
Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation
, edited by L David Mech and Luigi Boitani, was vital reading. Stan Tomkiewicz, for advice about telemetry and transmitter implants. The Rosenwoods, Mike, Linda and Erik, for travels in Idaho. Olivia Pinkney, Deputy Chief Constable for Sussex Police, for procedural information and worst-case-scenario advice. Alan Bissett and Kirstin Innes, for some excellent introductions. Mairi MacPherson, for civil service and governmental information. Tony and Hilary Renkin, for their early recollections. Dr Frances Astley-Jones, for medical advice, and Dr Richard Thwaites, for psychology and Cumbrian advice. Anna Tristram, for linguistics. Stephen Brown, for architectural references.

Thanks for editorial feedback to the following: Lee Brackstone, Hannah Griffiths, Kate Nintzel, John Freeman and Ellah Allfrey. And for general literary discussions, aesthetic, poetic and metaphoric, to: Owen Sheers, Jarred McGinnis, Katja Sutela, Joanna Harma and Henna Silvennoinen.

Special thanks to Clare Conville and James Garvey, the fiercest of supporters.

SARAH HALL
was born in Cumbria in 1974. She is the author of
Haweswater
, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize. In 2004, her second novel,
The Electric Michelangelo
, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region) and the Prix Femina Étranger, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her third novel,
The Carhullan Army
, was published in 2007 and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award.
The Carhullan Army
was listed as one of
The Times
100 Best Books of the Decade. Her fourth novel,
How to Paint a Dead Man
, was published in 2009 and was longlisted for the Man Booker prize and won the Portico Prize for Fiction 2010. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her first collection of short stories,
The Beautiful Indifference
, was published by HarperCollins in 2013.
The Beautiful Indifference
won the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor Award.

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Haweswater

The Electric Michelangelo

Daughters of the North

How to Paint a Dead Man

The Beautiful Indifference

COVER DESIGN BY JARROD TAYLOR

COVER PHOTOGRAPH © SERGEY BORISOV / ALAMY

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE WOLF BORDER
. Copyright © 2015 by Sarah Hall. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Faber & Faber Limited

FIRST U.S. EDITION

ISBN: 978-0-06-220847-7

EPub Edition June 2015 ISBN 9780062208491

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