The Blame Game
The Blame Game
C.J. Cooke
The gripping new thriller from the author of I KNOW MY NAMEHe said he’d do anything to protect her.She said she’d do anything to protect her family.And they both said they would forget what happened twenty-two years ago.But now it seems that there is someone who will stop at nothing to make them remember…Who is playing the blame game?
Copyright (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © C. J. Cooke 2019
Jacket design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Jacket photographs © Stephanie Frey / Arcangel Images (envelope); Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) (extra texture).
C. J. Cooke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008237561
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008237578
Version: 2019-01-21
Dedication (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
for Willow
Epigraph (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.
Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
Contents
Cover (#u5cdd7115-2081-51a5-992a-f4dcdfee39ed)
Title Page (#u3a3710e9-cfd9-50fa-bf94-026bb87c1441)
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
1. Helen
2. Helen
3. Michael
4. Helen
5. Michael
6. Helen
7. Michael
8. Helen
9. Michael
10. Helen
11. Michael
12. Michael
13. Helen
14. Reuben
15. Helen
16. Helen
17. Helen
18. Michael
19. Helen
20. Helen
21. Michael
22. Helen
23. Reuben
Part Two
24. Helen
25. Reuben
26. Michael
27. Helen
28. Michael
29. Michael
30. Helen
31. Reuben
32. Michael
33. Helen
34. Helen
35. Helen
36. Helen
37. Michael
38. Helen
39. Michael
40. Michael
41. Helen
Part Three
42. Helen
43. Reuben
44. Helen
45. Helen
46. Helen
47. Reuben
48. Helen
49. Helen
50. Reuben
51. Michael
52. Helen
Part Four
53. Michael
54. Helen
Acknowledgements
A Q&A with C. J. Cooke
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by C. J. Cooke
About the Publisher
K. Haden
Haden, Morris & Laurence Law Practice
4 Martin Place
London, EN9 1AS
25th June 2006
Michael King
101 Oxford Lane
Cardiff
CF10 1FY
Sir,
We write again regarding the death of Luke Aucoin. The time to meet about this tragedy is long overdue. Please do not delay in writing to us at the above address to arrange a meeting.
Sincerely,
K. Haden
K. Haden
Haden, Morris & Laurence Law Practice
4 Martin Place
London, EN9 1AS
25th June 2010
Michael King
101 Oxford Lane
Cardiff
CF10 1FY
Sir,
We write again on behalf of our clients regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.
We request that you contact us immediately to avoid further consequences.
Sincerely,
K. Haden
28th January 2017
MURDERER
PART ONE (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
1 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Helen (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
30th August 2017
I think I might be dead.
The scene in front of me looks like sea fret creeping over wasteland, closing in like a fist. A smell, too – sewage and sweat. There’s a flickering light, like someone bringing a torch towards the mist, and it grows so bright that I realise it’s my eyelids beginning to creak open, like two slabs of concrete breaking apart. Wake up! I shout in my head. Wake up!
Painful brightness. I can make out a ceiling with yellow stains and broken plasterboard, and a ceiling fan that spins limply. I try to lift my head. It takes enormous effort just to raise it an inch, as though an anvil is strapped to it. Where am I? My denim shorts and T-shirt are torn and caked in mud. I’m on a bed wearing one sandal. My other foot is twice its normal size, the blue nail polish that Saskia applied to my toes peeking through dried blood. I wiggle my toes, then my fingers.
I can feel my limbs. Good.
A nurse is busy replacing something at the foot of the bed. A urine drainage bag. A sharp tug at my side alerts me to the fact that the bag belongs to me.
‘Excuse me?’ I say. My voice is hoarse, no more than a croak.
The foreign chatter elsewhere in the room makes me think that the nurse might not speak English.
‘Sorry, but …? Excuse me? Can you tell me why I’m here?’
Even now, when I’ve no clue where I am or why, I’m apologising. Michael always said I apologise too much. I apologised all the way through both labours for screaming the place down.
A man arrives and consults with the nurse, both of them giving me worried looks as I try to sit up. He’s a doctor in plain clothes: a black polo shirt and jeans, a stethoscope and lanyard announcing his purpose. To my left is a window with a ripped insect net, and for some reason I want to go to it. I need to find something, or someone. ‘You must be careful,’ the doctor warns me in a thick Belizean accent. ‘Your head is very damaged.’
I reach a hand to my head and feel the padding of a dressing on my left temple. The skin around my left eye feels swollen and sore to the touch. I remember now. I remember what I was searching for.
‘Do you know where my children are?’ I ask him, the realisation that they’re nowhere to be seen making my heartbeat start to gallop.
The room lists like we’re rolling on high seas. The doctor insists that I lie down but I’m nauseous with fear. Where are Saskia and Reuben? Why aren’t they here?
‘This is you?’ The doctor holds a shape in front of me. My passport. I stare at it through tears. My face stares back blankly and my name is there. Helen Rachel Pengilly.
‘Yes. Look, I have two children, a son and daughter. Where are they?’
The doctor gives the nurse another deep look instead of answering me. Please don’t say they’re dead, I beg you. Don’t say it.
I begin to hyperventilate, my heart clanging like an alarm in my ears. And right as blackness reaches up to claim me, a sharp odour tugs me back into the room. Smelling salts. A cup of water materialises in front of me. The water’s got bits of dirt in it. Someone tells me to drink, and I do, because instinct tells me that perhaps if I obey they’ll tell me Saskia and Reuben are alive. Give me arsenic, a pint of oil. I’ll drink it. Just say they’re OK.
Another nurse brings a rickety wheelchair. She and the doctor help me off the bed and manoeuvre the drip-stand as I lower, my muscles trembling, on to the roasting hot seat-pad. Then we squeak through the ward towards a narrow, dimly lit corridor.
2 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Helen (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
16th August 2017
It’s paradise here. Picture a narrow curve of white sand that arcs into the twinkling Caribbean. Six beach huts stood on stilts at a comfortable distance from one another along the strip, each with its own patch of ivory sand and acidic-blue ocean. No one around for about twenty miles, with the exception of the other two groups of people staying in the beach huts. A group of five from Mexico – I can’t tell if they’re family or just friends; their English is minimal and my Spanish is limited to ‘hello and ‘thanks’ – and at the very far end, the McAdam family from Alabama. Michael was suspicious of them at first when the husband asked a lot of questions about us, and I felt that familiar sting of panic, voices arguing in my head. ‘We’ll keep to ourselves,’ Michael announced cheerily as we made our way back to our hut, but I knew what he meant, and for one horrible afternoon I was wrenched back over two decades, into another century and another skin.
I make coffee and clear away the bowls left on the kitchen table. Saskia and Reuben are playing on the beach outside, their laughter drifting through the warm air. I pull two boxes of pills marked Cilest and Citalopram from my handbag and pop one of each out of the blister packs, knocking them back with a chug of water at the sink. Usually a glimpse of sunlight is enough to turn me into a lobster but my reflection shows I’ve caught my first actual tan in I don’t know how long, a deep bronze that knocks years off my face. Bright golden streaks have started to flash amongst my natural blonde, concealing the grey strands that have started to show. The sadness in my eyes, though – that’s always there.
We’ve been running for twenty-two years and I’m tired. I want to stop, lay down roots. It’s not in my make-up to live a peripatetic existence but we’ve had eight different addresses in Scotland, England, Wales, and even Northern Ireland. We tried to move to Australia but in the end it was too difficult to get visas. We don’t vote, don’t have social media accounts. Most of the time, we’re as normal as any other family. We’re content. Four years ago we made the huge decision not to rent any more and bought our first home, a pretty cottage in Northumberland. We have a dog and a guinea pig and Saskia and Reuben are thriving at their schools. But every now and then, I’m reminded of Luke. My first love. Especially at moments like this, when I’m happy and I remember I have no right to be.
Luke is dead because of me.
I’m putting on my sarong when Saskia comes screaming into the beach hut.
‘Mum, you have to come and see,’ she shouts, both hands splayed in front of her like a mime navigating invisible glass. When I don’t move she wraps her hands around my arm and yanks me with surprising force to my feet.
‘Starfish!’ she yells, skipping down the steps to the beach. ‘Careful,’ Michael says as we kneel on the sand to inspect them. A dozen orange starfish, bigger than Michael’s hand, studded with intricate patterns. He scoops one up, but instead of staying flat it begins to squirm.
Saskia bounces on the balls of her feet and points at something in the water. ‘Look! Right there!’ Reuben and I get to our feet and look out at the silky jade-green water. About twenty feet ahead is a pod of dolphins arcing through the waves, sunlight bouncing off their silvery backs. We all gasp. None of us have ever seen a dolphin in real life.
Saskia is weepy with excitement. ‘I have to go swim with them, Mum! Please, please, please!’
‘Here,’ Michael says, squatting in front of her. ‘Climb on.’
She jumps on his back and Michael quickly wades out to them while I hold my breath. Michael is capable, a strong swimmer. Dolphins are amazing creatures but the water is deep and there are endless dangers out there.
They’ll be fine, don’t spoil it.
I can’t watch. I busy myself by helping Reuben with his sand sculpture until Michael and Saskia emerge from the waves laughing and the dolphins have moved further down the bay.
We’ve been here two weeks, and by ‘here’ I mean the coast of Belize. Our original plan was to spend the school holidays travelling around Mexico. At Mexico City we joined a tour bus to the Yucatán via some jaw-dropping (and knee-wrecking) sights, such as the pyramids at the City of the Gods, where Reuben delighted in telling Saskia about mass human sacrifices. We saw the soaring white peak of the Popocatépetl volcano, the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque, the pretty pastel-coloured streets of Campeche, and finally Cancún.
Reuben has adapted to the foreign setting more easily than I expected. The tour group was mostly older couples, so the bus was quiet and the air conditioning during long journeys helped to keep him comfortable. We had a problem at first with the lack of pizza – which is all he will eat – but we learned to improvise with tortillas laid flat and covered with salsa and cheese.
We went to Mexico for Reuben’s benefit. At least, that’s what we told everyone, including each other. Reuben did a stunning Year 9 project on the Mayans, involving a hand-crafted scale model Mayan temple and a 3D digital sketch that he projected on to black card surrounding the temple. We’d no idea he was capable of something like that and Michael said we should reward him. A trip to the real Chichén Itzá seemed the perfect way to do this, and as we’d not had a proper family holiday in a long time we figured a bit of a splurge was well overdue. But I also sensed that Michael was on edge, eager to run again. We’ve lived in Northumberland for four years now. Far longer than any other place.
When we arrived at Chichén Itzá Reuben sat in the tour bus for a long time, his face turned to the grey pyramid visible through the trees. Michael, Saskia and I all held our breaths, wondering whether he was going to start screaming or banging his head off the window.
‘Should I do the feet thing?’ Michael asked me nervously. The ‘feet thing’ is how we calm Reuben when he gets really worked up. I discovered it by accident when he was just a baby, and it grew out of the nights that I bathed him and then laid him on his mat to dry his little body. He’d lift his feet up towards my lips and I’d grab his ankles and blurt on the soles of his feet. It tickled him, made him laugh. As he got older and more sensitive to sound and chaos we tried everything to calm him. One night, when he’d worn himself out from screaming and lay down in bed on top of my legs, I ran my fingers up and down his shins. He started to calm down, then lifted his bare feet to my lips. I blurted them. He stopped crying altogether.
Ever since then, we do ‘the feet thing’ when he seems to be building up to a paroxysm – kissing a teenager’s smelly size tens and stroking his hairy shins somehow doesn’t have the same appeal as when he was a baby, but whatever works.
‘I think he’s OK,’ I told Michael, studying Reuben, reading the air around him. The trick is to approach him as you might approach a wild horse. No questions, no fuss – even when he strips naked in public places. We’d somehow convinced him to wear shorts in Mexico and he complied (we made sure to buy blue shorts), but he was still ignoring Michael at that point. I tried to tell myself that this was progress. After the thing between Michael and Josh’s dad, Reuben had gone ballistic, crying, screaming, smashing up his bedroom. I managed to get him to stop being so violent, but he withdrew and wouldn’t speak. Instead, he took to writing ‘Dad’ on his iPad and then vigorously crossing it out, signalling that Michael was dead to him.
At Chichén Itzá, though, I hoped that we could put everything behind us. Reuben looked from me to the pyramid – El Castillo – as though he couldn’t quite believe it was real; that he was here. I glanced at Michael, signalling that now was his chance to make amends. He turned around in the driver’s seat and grinned at Reuben.
‘We’re here, son. We’re actually at Chichén Itzá.’
Reuben kept his head turned away. Definitely not a sign that he wanted his feet to be stroked.
‘Do you want to climb to the top with me, Reuben?’ Michael asked gently.
He reached out to take Reuben’s hand, but Reuben sprang up from his seat and raced up the bus aisle, his long limbs moving in fast strides towards the clearing.
‘I’ll go,’ I said, and I reached down for my bag and followed after. Once I caught up with him I put my arm around his waist. We fell into step. He’s already six foot, even though he’s only fourteen. I wish he wasn’t so tall. It would make the sight of him clambering on to my knee for a cuddle or breaking down in tears when we’re out in public far less likely to draw stares.
‘You OK, sweetheart?’
He nodded but kept his head down. I handed him his iPad and followed at a comfortable distance while he raced off and began to film the site. We spent the day with the rest of the tour group exploring, giving Reuben hourly countdowns, as promised, so that he could anticipate leaving and manage his feelings of sadness a little better. Even so, when we got back into the bus at dusk I saw that his lip was trembling, and my heart broke for him.
We headed to the hotel at Cancún, and that’s where things started to go wrong. It was just too busy. Reuben’s noise-cancelling headphones usually keep him calm but the crowds and heat were overwhelming for him. Saskia and I were worn out by the searing temperatures and squabbling couples amongst our tour group too, and the guide seemed intent on traipsing around tourist-tat stalls instead of taking us to more ancient ruins. At one point Saskia lost her teddy, Jack-Jack, in a market and we had to spend an entire day trawling through souvenirs to find it. She’s had Jack-Jack since birth – a gift from my sister, Jeannie – and wouldn’t be consoled until we found him.
Luckily, we did, but we were all agreed – noise and crowds weren’t for us. So Michael went online and changed our booking to a small resort in Belize, within driving distance of a Mayan site even bigger than Chichén Itzá. Reuben was elated. We hired a car, broke free of the tour group and drove to this place.
I go back inside and pull laundry out of the washing machine, then take it out to the side garden to hang on the line. Michael comes into the garden, soaking wet from his swim. He’s in the best shape of his life, his arms broad and sculpted from deadlifts, his legs strong and muscular from cycling most nights to counter long days at the bookshop. His deep tan suits him, though I’m not sure about the beard he’s grown. He likes to say he’s ‘an auld git’ (he’s forty-one) but to me, he’s never looked better.
‘Where’s Saskia?’ I say, looking past him at the tide that has begun to creep up the beach, devouring Reuben’s sand sculpture.
He slicks his dark wet hair off his face. ‘Oh, I just left her to swim on her own.’
‘You what?’ I take a step forward and scan the part of the beach further to the left. In a moment, Sas comes into view, wrapping a strand of seaweed around her waist to make a mermaid tutu.
‘Honestly, Helen,’ Michael says, grinning. ‘You think I’d leave her to swim out in open water on her own?’
I slap his arm lightly for winding me up. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past you.’
‘Ouch,’ he says, flinching at my slap. ‘Oh, I found something in this shed here. Come have a look.’
He steps towards the plastic bunker that I’d assumed was the cistern and flings open the doors to reveal a storage cupboard chock-full of beach boards, wet suits, snorkels, windsurfing sails, inflatables, rockpool nets, and surfboards. He takes out a rolled up piece of thick cotton and inspects it.
‘Doesn’t look very waterproof. What do you think it’s for?’
We unravel it, each taking an end, until it’s clear that it’s a hammock. Michael nods at the palm trees behind me and suggests I tie one end to the fattest trunk while he fastens the other to a tree about eight foot in the opposite direction. Both trunks conveniently have metal hooks where other guests have secured the hammock.
‘Climb in,’ he says once we’ve set it up. I shake my head. I worry that I’m too heavy for it. I haven’t weighed myself in almost a year but last time I did – under protest – I was thirteen stone, an unfortunate side effect of long-term antidepressant use. I’m five foot nine so can carry it, but most of the weight has settled around my waist.
‘This is the life,’ Michael says, climbing into the hammock. Then, when he spots me tidying up the storage cupboard: ‘Helen. Get. In.’
The hammock stretches as I lie beside him, almost touching the ground, but it holds.
‘See?’ Michael says, slipping an arm under my neck and holding me close to his wet skin. For a moment there is nothing but the rustle of palm trees and Saskia’s singing on the back of the wind. I try to resist sitting up to check she’s OK and that Reuben is still on his iPad on the deck.
‘That’s better,’ Michael says, kissing the top of my head. He has his hands clasped around me and I can feel his chest rise and fall with breaths that grow gradually slower and deeper. How long has it been since we lay like this? It feels nice.
‘Maybe we should move out here,’ he says.
‘Definitely.’
‘Serious. You could home-school the kids.’
‘Mmmm, way to sell it to me. And what would you do? Build a book shack?’
‘Not a bad idea. I could be our designated hunter-gatherer. I reckon I’d make a good Caribbean Bear Grylls. I’ve got the beard for it, now.’
‘Bear Grylls doesn’t have a beard, idiot.’
‘Robinson Crusoe, then.’
I stroke the side of his foot with my toe. ‘I wish we could.’
‘Why can’t we?’
‘Blimey, if we’d the money, I’d move out here in a shot.’
‘Cheaper to live out here than England. We could make money by taking tourists out on boat trips.’
‘Stop winding me up,’ I say.
‘I’m not winding you up …’
‘Neither of us speak a word of Spanish, Michael.’
‘Buenos días. Adiós, per favor. See? Practically fluent.’
‘You wally.’
‘Anyway, they speak Kriol here.’
‘We don’t speak that either …’
‘Belize is a British colony. We probably wouldn’t even need a visa.’
‘What about our house? And, you know, my job?’
‘You’re always whinging about how much you hate teaching.’
I feel a bit hurt by this. I enjoy teaching and I care deeply about my pupils … but no, this was not my dream. I sort of fell into it, and once I realised that the hours suited family life it was a no-brainer. I could argue that Michael’s book shop is the same – not his dream, but a reasonable attempt at fulfilment that pays the bills and fits around our children’s lifestyles.
‘A holiday is one thing, living here is another,’ I say, and I remind him of the conversation we had with the tour operator about Central America. Got to be careful out there. Lots of dangers in the rainforest. Jaguars, snakes, pumas aplenty.
‘What do you think I’m here for?’ he says. ‘I’m your protector.’
I roll my eyes. ‘I’d like to see you try and walk away from your bookshop. Even if it is burnt to a crisp.’
The words are out before I’ve a chance to haul them back into my mouth and lock them into the box of unmentionable things. The bookshop. We’ve not spoken about it the whole time we’ve been on holiday. Not a single mention of the fire that gutted Michael’s beautiful bookshop which he has single-handedly built up from scratch to become one of the best independents in the region. A three-storey Mecca for bookworms, the jewel of our town, now in ruins: black, cooked. For one awful moment I’m wrenched back into that night when we saw the flames dancing high into the night sky.
The phone woke us in the middle of the night. It was Mr Dickinson who owned the pet store a few shops along. He’d spotted smoke from the street, then drove down to check his own shop. He said he was about to call the fire brigade, but he wanted to let us know, too. We raced down there, both of us betting on a manageable fire, one that we could tackle ourselves with a couple of fire extinguishers that Michael had tossed into the boot of the car. When we arrived, smoke was already curling out from beneath the front door, orange flames dancing in the first-floor windows. Michael started to unlock the front door but I grabbed his arm.
‘Don’t go in,’ I said. He ignored me and pushed open the door, determined to damp down the flames. I watched, helpless, as he ran inside with the fire extinguishers and took to the stairs. Thick black smoke was funnelling down the stairs and beating across the ground floor, and I could hear the crackling sounds of the fire upstairs destroying the new café, chewing up the beautiful sofas and coffee tables that had only recently been installed. Sirens of fire engines screamed in the distance. I covered my mouth with my hand and tried not to breathe in the smoke, but with every second that went by it seemed to grow thicker, and my lungs ached for fresh air. I couldn’t call out to Michael. He was still on the first floor, and to my horror I could see flames at the top of the stairs.
Just when I thought I would have to go up there to drag Michael out he appeared, an armful of books pressed to his chest, struggling to breathe. He stumbled down the stairs, dropping the books and falling into my arms.
The shop was destroyed, our livelihood annihilated. Some kind stranger set up a JustGiving fund and within a few weeks we had raised eleven thousand pounds. Possibly enough money to recoup some stock, pay some creditors. But there’s the mortgage, the loss of income … The insurance company are still determining the cause of the fire.
The mood has dipped. I try to think of something to say that will swing it back again to the blissed-out vibe we’d enjoyed here since our arrival. It strikes me why we’ve avoided talking about the fire out here: the contrast between this heavenly place and drab, icicled Northumberland make it feel as though we’ve stepped into another realm. There are no reminders here. But silence doesn’t lie. We both know we have to go back and face it all.
‘I should have installed CCTV,’ he says in a low voice. ‘Everyone said to do it and I got lazy.’
‘There’s no guarantee that cameras would have picked up anything,’ I say, recalling how we sat in shock at the fire station, covered head to toe in black soot like two Victorian chimney sweeps. The deputy station chief educated us brusquely about the many causes of accidental blazes: sunlight bouncing off a mirror and hitting newspaper reduced a sixteenth century Scottish castle to embers. Hair straighteners left too close to a notebook on a teenager’s dressing table took out a row of houses. Our fire could have been down to a faulty storage heater or a loose wire.
‘They’d have caught who started the fire,’ Michael cuts in, swinging his legs over the side of the hammock to sit upright. I reach forward and stroke his back.
I recall with a shudder the police calling both of us in for separate interviews. They asked whether someone had a grudge against us. If we had upset a customer or laid off an employee. Just weeks before I’d persuaded Michael to sack one of our part-timers, Matilda. She doesn’t do anything, I protested. You’re barely paying yourself a salary as it is. The bookshop isn’t a charity for lazy eighteen-year-olds who sit around all day reading Tolkien.
Michael pointed out that she was Arnold’s daughter, and Arnold had been the first to help him out when he set up the shop, but I won in the end. Matilda was sketchy about her whereabouts at the time of the fire – her parents confirmed she’d been out of the house, and it turned out she’d been with a boy. But for a horrible few days it seemed that perhaps Matilda could have been responsible for the blaze.
‘We never ruled out arson,’ Michael says when I remind him that Matilda was found to be innocent. ‘Until the investigation closes, every possibility is on the table.’
‘Maybe it was a group of kids messing around,’ I say to his back. I desperately want him to lie back down with me, to recapture the idyllic mood.
‘We both know kids didn’t start that fire, Helen,’ Michael snaps, getting out of the hammock.
‘Michael?’
I’m taken aback by the sharpness of his tone. As I watch him head back into the hut I sense he’s exhausted, worn thin by worry. But I wish we could discuss this. Every time we start to talk about something that cuts deep he just walks away.
3 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Michael (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
28th August 2017
We’ve got a mutiny on our hands right now.
‘Pleeease can we stay here, Dad?’ Saskia howls in the kitchen as I make breakfast. This morning our butler (yes, an actual butler – I feel like a Kardashian) dropped off our food parcel, containing waffles (round, so we can tell Reuben they’re pizzas), maple syrup, coconuts, dragon fruit, freshly baked bread, eggs, salad, blueberry pancakes, pineapple, the most mouth-watering bacon I’ve ever tasted in my entire life, and a bottle of wine.
‘I’m sorry, my love,’ I say, hugging Sas to my side as I heat the waffles on the hob. She smells of sunlight and the ocean. ‘I’m afraid we can’t change our flight. We’ve got today and tomorrow and then we have to head off to Mexico City to fly home.’
‘But Daa-aad, I don’t want to go home. Jack-Jack doesn’t want to go, either.’
‘Hmmm,’ I say, tipping waffles on to a plate. ‘So, nobody wants to go home? What do you suggest we do then?’
She does the same thing as Helen when she thinks. Screws up her nose like there’s a bad smell. Face just her like mother’s, too. Same twinkling blue eyes that show every emotion and absorb every last detail. Same dimple in her left cheek and buttery curls to her shoulders.
‘Can’t we just buy a house here?’
‘You’d miss everyone, I think. So would Jack-Jack.’
She gives a dramatic sigh, seven going on seventeen. ‘Like who, exactly?’
‘Well, Amber and Holly would miss you. And I bet Oreo can’t wait to see you …’
‘But they could come here …’
‘What about your ballet recital?’ I ask. She has no answer to that and I know she’s excited for it. I set her plate of waffles on the coffee table and squat down to face as her as she begins to do a couple of ballet moves.
‘To tell you the truth, my love, I don’t want to go home either.’
She widens her eyes. ‘You don’t?’
I press my lips together, shake my head. ‘But don’t tell Mummy.’
‘Is it because you don’t like flying?’
‘Nope.’
‘Is it because you love this house and the sea and you’d like to live here?’
‘Exactly. I like spending my days on the beach instead of having to go to work. I’d like to do it for ever. Wouldn’t you?’
She nods eagerly, her face all lit up with hope. I wish I could give her everything. I wish I could make the world as perfect as she deserves it to be.
‘Here, come and help me put all this food away.’
She does a little ballet twirl across the floor, arms crooked like she’s holding an invisible beach ball between them, and looks into the box of food that I’m unloading.
‘Bacon?’ she says, holding up the packet like it’s a dead rat.
‘Not for you, love. Reuben and I will enjoy that.’
‘Bacon isn’t even nice, Daddy,’ Saskia says. She’s decided to become vegetarian, like Helen, so all I’ve heard about for the last three months is how meat is Satan. ‘I tried some once and it tasted not very nice. Plus, it’s from pigs and they’re more smarter than dogs and you wouldn’t eat our dog, would you?’
‘Hmmm. You know, if he tasted like bacon, I’d consider it.’
‘Daddy!’
I lean over and give her a kiss. She still kisses me on the lips, a quick peck with a big ‘mwah’ at the end, just as she did as a baby. When the day comes that she tells me she’s too old to kiss me anymore I think my heart will break.
‘Do the thing,’ she says when I plop one of the blueberry pancakes into a pan on the stove. ‘Do the flip, Dad. Do it!’
I wait until the pan is nice and hot before planting my feet wide, gripping the pan handle tightly and tossing the pancake as high as I can. It flips into the air, smacks the ceiling, then lands splat in the pan.
‘You did it, Dad!’ she squeals, high-fiving me. ‘Five points for Gryffindor!’
Reuben comes in through the front door, his dark hair and shorts dripping wet. I’m careful to be calm around him. No eye contact. I’m still in his bad books. He dumps a plastic bucket on the floor.
‘We can’t go home,’ he announces flatly.
‘Daddy pancaked the ceiling,’ Saskia says.
‘Five points for Gryffindor,’ Reuben says, deadpan. ‘Look what I found.’
Saskia peers into his bucket and squeals. I tell her to shush, she’ll upset Reuben, but his focus is on the baby turtle, its head no bigger than the tip of my thumb, its shell covered in zigzag patterns. It sweeps its flippers back and forth as though it wants to swim.
‘We should take it back to the water,’ I say as Saskia plucks it out of the bucket and cuddles it to her chest. ‘His mum must be looking for him.’
‘Like Finding Nemo?’ Saskia says.
‘That was a clown fish,’ Reuben replies.
‘Dude,’ I say, imitating the turtles in Finding Nemo. ‘What up, squirt?’
Reuben falls silent, and I freeze, expecting one of two reactions: he’ll either storm out of the room or he’ll slug me across the face. Reuben isn’t often violent but when he is it’s ugly, given that he has the strength and height of an adult. He looks like he’s thinking really hard about something. Maybe he’s trying to control his anger.
‘Righteous!’ he says suddenly, a big grin lighting up his face.
‘Curl away, my son,’ I say, suddenly glad that I watched Finding Nemo ten million times.
I raise my eyebrows at Helen who is standing there with her eyes like saucers and her jaw on the ground, stunned that Reuben has actually spoken to me. He’s deeply forgiving, full of love, but I could hardly expect him to react any other way after what happened at Josh’s birthday party.
I was only trying to protect him. That’s my job. My whole reason for existing.
I wake to find Helen sitting at the end of the bed wrapped in a yellow towel. She’s on the other side of the mosquito curtain but I can make out her gold hair, braided down her back, the web of the Celtic tattoo on her shoulder just visible in the dim light. I sit up quickly, amazed that I actually slept, and she tells me to relax, it’s OK, but I’m covered in sweat and my heart is racing. I was dreaming. Bright images pitch and mulch in my head like a soup. When Helen comes into focus I see her face is filled with worry.
‘Are you alright?’ she says. ‘Bad dreams again?’
I push my fingertips into my eyes, trying to blot out the disturbing images in my head. For years, the same dream. A door made of fire. I’m standing in front of it with the knowledge that I have to open it, because on the other side is paradise, a land of pure, endless happiness. Sometimes I’m alone. Sometimes I’m with Helen and the kids, and I have to take them through the door, but I worry about them getting hurt. I always wake in a sweat. Sleeping pills washed it away and now it’s back, as vivid as ever.
‘I went for a swim,’ she whispers. I take her hand, wondering what’s wrong. She looks shaken.
‘You OK?’
‘I saw something weird. It was probably nothing. I don’t know.’
‘You saw something weird where? Out in the water?’
She nods and holds a finger to her lips, urging me to keep my voice down. ‘In the beach hut next to ours. They had a telescope just like the one we have in the living room.’
A telescope? Ah yes, I remember. The scope on the tripod we moved into a corner so the kids wouldn’t knock it over. We presumed it was for spotting sharks and rays in the water outside.
‘And?’
‘It was pointed at our hut.’
‘What was?’
‘The telescope.’ She gives a shudder. ‘It was creepy …’
‘But … didn’t the butler say all the other huts were empty as of yesterday?’
She bites her lip. ‘That’s the other thing. When I looked in the window of one of the rooms the bed was unmade. There were clothes on the floor. It looked like someone was staying there.’
‘Maybe one of the groups stayed on? Or a late booking?’
‘But why would they point the telescope at our beach hut?’ She looks on the verge of tears now, terrified. ‘It felt like someone was watching us.’
I tell her I’ll check it out myself. But if I’m honest this has me worried. The fire at the bookshop was no accident, I know that, but I can’t say too much about it to Helen. We were being watched at home, before we left. I saw a guy watching the shop right before the fire. Same car outside every day for a week, and then he followed me home. Couldn’t say anything about this to the police, of course. They’d ask questions. Why would someone be watching you? It was the reason I pushed for us to go abroad for an extended holiday, to buy some time to think.
I can’t change what happened to Luke. I can’t stop them from hunting our family. But I can definitely work out a way to protect us.
I don’t go back to sleep. Nothing unusual about that, though tonight I’m wired, all my senses on high alert. I’ve learned to manage on about four hours a night, with the occasional catnap during the day to keep me going. Four nights a week I’ll set my alarm for 3am and get up to work out. Arms and abs on Mondays and Thursdays, a ten-mile run on Tuesdays and Fridays. Then I read, answer work emails, maybe tidy the house or go for a walk. We live near a beautiful tow path in England and at sunrise you see all kinds of wildlife: otters, foxes, hedgehogs. I’ve tried to persuade the kids to come out with me but they’re not morning people.
Here, though, the wildlife is something else. We’re about a mile from the rainforest but even so, I spot a monkey in one of the trees at the side of our hut. He helps himself to the coconuts, then spies a half-empty packet of crisps left out by one of the kids on the decking. I film it all on my mobile. He’s right in front of me, so close I can touch him. Completely unafraid. I set down my can of Coke to reach out and stroke him. Amazingly, he lets me, then reaches out and snatches my Coke before running off. Little git.
I put my hands in my pockets and take a walk up the bank to the road that links all the beach huts. The family from Alabama are gone, and good riddance. Too many questions about where we were from, why we were here. One of the kids screwed up her face at Reuben and said loudly, ‘Why are you so weird?’ Yeah, so she’s only a kid but the parents didn’t correct her, didn’t tell her gently not to be rude. They just laughed.
The road is clear of cars, meaning that there aren’t any guests in the huts. So why would Helen have seen clothes in one of the bedrooms? There’s nothing but rainforest for about twenty miles. Someone could have been dropped off at one of the huts, or the guests could have gone out for the day. Holiday season’s virtually over, though. That’s what Kyle said.
I walk on the sand, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. The moon is bright tonight, a long causeway of silver light tossed over a slate of ocean. I walk carefully around the hut and when I glance into the living room window I make out the shape of the telescope pointed not at the sea but towards our hut, just like Helen said. It could just be pointed at the north end of the bay, though. Hard to tell. The dolphins like that end of the bay so it’s feasible that they were watching the pod … The other windows are at the back of the hut, too dark to make out what’s inside. No lights on. The palm trees sway in the breeze and the sea sweeps forward and back, exhaling. No movement, no sign of anyone around.
After ten minutes or so I turn back.
The butler comes just after dawn. Helen and the kids are still sound asleep, so I press a finger to my lips as he passes over the food box for today.
‘I found pizza,’ he whispers. ‘For your son. I can’t promise that it won’t taste different but at least it’s the next best thing.’
‘That’s kind of you.’ I find a $10 note in my pocket and slip it to him. ‘Reuben will be thrilled.’
He grins, pockets the cash, then turns to leave, but I set down the box quickly and skip after him.
‘I don’t suppose you can tell me if someone has checked into that hut?’ I say, nodding at the one next to ours.
He thinks, shakes his head. ‘Just you and one other family staying for now.’
‘Another family? Which hut are they staying at?’
He turns and points down the bay. ‘The very last hut, right on the edge of the strand. Has there been some trouble?’
‘No, no. No trouble. Thanks anyway.’
Around eight I find Helen in the bathroom plaiting her hair and present her with breakfast on a tray and a kiss. Then I wake the kids. ‘Get dressed,’ I tell them. ‘It’s our sea safari today.’
‘Sea safari?’ Sas asks, her hair sticking out like she’s rammed her finger in a socket. She leaps out of bed and pulls off her nightie. ‘You’ll need to bring your poncho,’ I tell her.
‘Is it going to rain?’
‘No, but the dolphins might splash water over the boat. You know, when they jump through the water?’
She gives a squeal and wraps her arms around my waist.
‘Sooo excited, Daddy!’
The ride out to sea takes an hour on a twenty-foot sailing boat. I tell Reuben and Saskia to stay in the cabin downstairs where they can sit comfortably and eat snacks, though I have to promise that I’ll shout the second I spot anything with a fin.
After half an hour Helen comes out to join me. She rubs my back and lays her head against my shoulder.
‘You were up again all night, weren’t you?’ she says with a sigh.
‘No.’
‘Don’t lie …’
‘I just thought I heard something, that’s all.’
She leans back, maps my face with a look of concern. ‘You don’t have to worry about us, you know. I shouldn’t have said anything about the telescope. I was probably just being paranoid after …’
She trails off.
‘After what?’
She looks down. When she meets my gaze again there’s hardness in her eyes. And something else. Frustration.
‘I need to ask something,’ she says, folding her arms. ‘And I need you for once not to avoid the question.’
‘OK.’
She takes a deep breath, readies herself. ‘The day you attacked Josh’s dad …’
‘I didn’t attack him,’ I start to say. ‘It was a disagreement …’
She raises a hand, signalling that I’m to shut up. ‘When you attacked him, you said you were looking out for Reuben. I still don’t know what you meant by that.’
I don’t want to talk about this. I look around, searching for an exit, a distraction. Unless I’m prepared to swim back to land there’s nowhere for me to go. We’re at least fifteen miles from land and even I’m not that strong.
‘I was protecting him,’ I say at last.
‘Protecting him from what, exactly?’
‘Look, the birthday party wasn’t at a climbing centre,’ I say, anxious to close this up once and for all. ‘Josh’s dad was taking the boys climbing up the Simonside Hills …’
‘And?’
I’m starting to feel angry. What has this got to do with what happened at the birthday party? ‘And I could see Reuben was nervous about it. Look, I told you. It was wrong of Josh’s father to …’
‘To what?’
I look up, catch her eyes. She’s challenging me.
‘To … to put Reuben in a position where he had to choose between his friend and feeling safe.’
She screws up her face. ‘But why …’
‘… and trust me, I did everything to stop it from becoming a scene. You weren’t there. Reuben was freaking out, I could see it in his eyes. And the guy kept talking over him. Even made him start to gear up.’
I see her wince.
‘Josh’s dad wasn’t taking no for an answer. OK, so maybe slugging him was a bit over the mark but I did what I had to …’
She lifts her eyes to mine, an eyebrow cocked. ‘A little over the mark? You knocked him unconscious.’
‘It was an unlucky punch,’ I say, and I can feel a hot ripple of fire in my stomach. I try to swallow it down but it’s insistent. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. What more do you want?’
She looks hurt, which wasn’t my intention, so I reach out and put my hand on hers.
We stand together in mutually wounded silence. We want the same thing, but we go about it in completely different ways. I’m the head of the home, the bad cop. Helen’s still pissed off because it’s meant Reuben losing his one and only friend, Josh. Nice lad. Like Reuben, Josh is autistic. We’ve waited years for Reuben to make friends. Years without a single birthday party invitation or play date. Finally, he goes out and gets a pal and I wreck it all by busting his dad’s face.
But I did what I had to do. And everything has a price, doesn’t it?
And then, there they are, about ten feet from the boat. Whales, as long as buses. Helen spots them and runs to the cabin to alert the kids. By the time they emerge the captain has cut the engine. Sas squeals and jumps up and down at the sight of them while Reuben claps his hands and shouts ‘Magic!’ The captain tells me in concerned tones that humpbacks out here, especially at this time of year, is a bad sign. They could be sick or dying. Of course I don’t mention any of this to the kids. We are close enough to see the barnacles studding their backs, long white lines etched along their bellies, their mouths scissoring the water. A way out to sea another whale bursts out of the water, landing with a huge splash and the peace sign of his tail as he dives below.
‘Look how happy they are, Dad!’ Saskia shouts, and I agree with her, because sometimes love means telling lies.
‘Michael. Michael! Wake up!’
‘What? What’s wrong?’
I sit upright, my head buzzing. I can’t believe I fell asleep. The window squares off a lapis lazuli sky speckled with a million stars and a silvery moon. Helen is out of bed, bending over me as I pull back the sheet.
‘I think someone’s outside,’ she says. ‘I heard footsteps in the back garden and when I went to …’
I’m already up on my feet, pulling on a pair of shorts.
‘I thought it was an animal, at first,’ Helen says. ‘But I saw a man.’
‘How sure are you?’
She bites her lip. ‘Pretty sure.’
‘Stay here,’ I whisper quickly. ‘Keep everything locked behind me.’
In the kitchen I search quickly for something weapon-like – a baseball bat, ideally – but the cupboards yield only a rolling pin and a meat knife. I plumb for the latter and open the side door. Suddenly Helen is there, holding my arm, tears wobbling in her eyes.
‘Why don’t we phone Kyle?’ she says. ‘Or I can look for the tour operator …’
‘And what are they going to do? It’s two in the morning …’
‘I know, but … I shouldn’t … I shouldn’t have woken you …’
I peck her on the forehead. ‘Stay here. I won’t be long.’
I step outside and wait until I hear the click of the door locking behind me. The dark is impenetrable, the only light coming from the moon and the stars. The garden is swallowed by night. No Coke-thieving monkeys to be seen.
I hear a noise to my right. Quick, stealthy strides headed towards the road. I move towards the sound, squinting. I can’t see anything. The footsteps stop, and I hold my breath.
But then, movement on the hill that leads up to the road where our rental car is parked. It’s difficult to see, but I can just make out someone or something moving briskly up the bank.
‘Hey!’ I shout, and the figure moves quickly. My heart is racing. I hold the knife in front of me and go after him.
4 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Helen (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
30th August 2017
I’m wool-headed this morning after last night’s escapades. Not nearly as sexy as it sounds. I woke up to use the loo around two in the morning and heard noises outside. I went to check and saw a man moving around in the garden. At least, I think I did. I was so sure last night and now I’m not. I feel so guilty. I woke Michael and he went after him. He was gone for over an hour. The longest hour of my life. When I saw him coming in through the door I almost collapsed with relief. He was sweaty and out of breath, but not injured.
‘Did you find him?’ I said, my voice trembling. I found myself looking him over for signs of blood.
He set the torch back in the block on the kitchen bench. ‘No. It was too dark.’
‘Didn’t you take a knife? Where is it?’
He sank into a chair by the table and wiped his face. ‘Dropped it.’
I waited for something more – where he’d been, details of a confrontation with an intruder, a fight. A narrative of any sort to put all the questions whirring through my head to bed. Michael wouldn’t make eye contact.
‘But … you were gone for ages. I was out of my mind … I was absolutely beside myself, Michael. Did you catch up with him?’
He rubbed his eyes, stifled a yawn. ‘I followed him into the trees and then I turned back. I got a bit lost, though. Luckily I saw the lights from the bay through the trees and followed them home.’
I gasped. ‘You were in the rainforest?’
He was tired, keen to shrug off the memory of it. ‘It was pitch black. Couldn’t see a thing. One minute I was on the road and the next I was surrounded by trees and frigging monkeys.’
I studied his face. He looked amused by the memory of being surrounded by monkeys, not bothered at all by the fact that he went racing out after a suspected intruder.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, deciding that I had somehow got it all wrong. I’d let my paranoia get to me. ‘But … you really didn’t see who it was?’
He gulped back a glass of water. ‘That’s what I said.’
‘But who could it have been?’ I said. ‘Why would someone have been outside?’
‘Are you sure it was someone?’ Michael said, and I did a double take.
‘You saw him, Michael. You went after him …’
‘I was half asleep. I spent an hour walking in circles in the bloody jungle.’
And there it was again, the edge of guilt against my skin. I looked down, ashamed. ‘Sorry. I think we were both possibly being paranoid.’
‘Both of us?’ he sniped back.
I fell silent. I had been absolutely sure that I had seen a dark figure, a man moving through the garden and up the bank, but just then doubt slipped in, like a lie sliding inside a truth.
‘Let’s just go to bed,’ he said, rubbing his face. ‘We’ve got a long drive back to the airport tomorrow.’
No one is happy when we shut the door on the beach hut for the last time. Reuben has his headphones on but is clicking his fingers and stamping his feet in the way he does when he’s particularly stressed. Saskia is long-faced and holds Jack-Jack extra tight.
‘Maybe we can come back next year,’ Michael says cheerily, though I catch his eye and give a small shake of my head as if to say, let’s not make promises we can’t keep. I have no idea how we’ve afforded this trip, never mind how we could possibly afford round two in a year’s time. We’re still paying off Reuben’s iPad, for crying out loud.
We spend the first hour of the drive to the airport in a gloomy silence. In reflection of our mood it starts to rain, and before long it’s coming down in great sweeping chains. The air feels cooler, which is no bad thing. Grey cloud spreads out across the sky. It’s been blue skies and belting heat for six weeks straight. Saskia decides she needs to wee every four minutes, so we pull over for the dozenth time and let her go at the side of the road.
‘I’ll drive for a bit,’ I tell Michael as he heads back to the driver’s side. ‘You have a nap.’ I’m not completely comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road but I feel guilty at the dark circles under his eyes.
The kids settle down in the backseat, Saskia holding Jack-Jack tightly and looking mournfully out the window, Reuben plugged into his iPad. Michael folds his arms and leans his head against the window. I find a British radio channel and turn the volume just enough to hear. Enjoy the lack of traffic, I tell myself, forcing optimism. It’ll be bumper-to-bumper when you get back home.
About an hour into the journey a white van appears as we approach a bend, moving at high speed along the road towards us. Instinctively I press the brake as I reach the curve of the road. The van draws closer. It appears to be speeding up. Odd, I think. And dangerous. Why speed up on a bend, especially when the road is wet?
At the very last moment, the van veers sharply into our lane, two tyres lifting off the tarmac as it swerves and plunges straight into us.
There is no time to react.
An explosion of metal slamming into metal, the sound of tyres screeching like a wounded animal, the air slashed by screams. An airbag explodes in my face and the car careens wildly, glass shards whipping through the air.
5 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Michael (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
14th June 1995
The minute I finish my exams I get the cheapest flight I can out of Heathrow. Luke and Theo are already gone – their parents got them first class tickets. I buy the most sophisticated climbing equipment I can squeeze into my tatty rucksack: shorts, T-shirt, hiking pants, sleeping bag and dry bag, tent and stakes, crampons, stove, towel, light, cutlery, thermometer, thermos, Swiss Army knife, rain gear, balaclava, goggles, sandals, granola bars, noodle packets, Chapstick, headlamp, first aid kit, ice axe, carabiners, prusiks, harnesses, rope, flask, and my lucky bear claw.
I expected Chamonix to be a campsite. Instead the bus pulls up to a charming Alpine village with hotels, B&Bs, shops, restaurants with verandas and parasols, right in the crease of a mountain range. It’s pretty mind-blowing here, like being on another planet. All around me are unimaginably tall, jagged peaks, like the spine of a massive dinosaur. I stand in the middle of the street looking up at them, awe-struck. They’re so tall I suddenly feel scared. Ben Nevis didn’t look this big. That’s because it isn’t, you moron, I tell myself. Mont Blanc is fifteen frickin’ thousand feet tall. It takes me a moment to spot her, and then there she is: the almost-perfect triangle at the very top of the massif.
I dump my bags at the youth hostel and set about scavenging for grub.
I head into the pub and lo, Luke and Theo are standing right in front of me with a couple of beers. I can tell who’s who by the choice of outfit. Luke’s dressed like the eighties vomited all over him. Neon pink leggings, white leg-warmers, a Bon Jovi T-shirt and blue goggles over a black bandana. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s wearing a leopard-print thong. Theo’s dressed like he’s recruiting for the SAS: khaki everything, even the boots. A girl is with them. She must be Luke’s girlfriend, Helen.
When Theo catches sight of me he leaves the table and walks quickly towards me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and effectively spinning me the whole way around.
‘Hey,’ he says, nudging us to a table on the other side of the pub.
‘Theo, can you get off me,’ I say, breaking free. I glance over at Luke who is deliberately avoiding eye contact. ‘What’s all this about?’
He sighs, puts his hands on his hips. ‘Look, I know you had a problem with Luke’s girlfriend coming on this trip. I just want you to … stay calm, you know?’
‘I am calm. I’m as calm as a cucumber patch.’
He tilts his chin. ‘You being sarcastic?’
He hates it when I rip the piss out of him. ‘What are you, his bodyguard?’
I catch Luke glancing over to check out my reaction. Theo takes out a pack of cigarettes.
‘Smoke?’
I shake my head.
‘Go on, have one.’
I relent with a sigh. He lights it for me, sits down and invites me to join him. I won’t, so he stands.
I met Luke and Theo two years ago, when we starting a degree in Medieval Literature at Oxford University. They’re twins, both six foot two, blonde rugby-playing public schoolboys who scored straight As in their exams. Both on a full-ride scholarship. Not that they need it; their folks made a fortune in the tech boom in France. They’re identical twins but you can tell them apart. Theo wears glasses, has recently grown a Musketeer moustache, and his personal style is somewhere between misunderstood genius and Kurt Cobain, but even if you closed your eyes you’d pick them out by their voices. They’ve lived all over the world but spent most of their lives at boarding school in Cambridge, though Luke’s accent is still more Oz than Brit with the occasional French twist. Theo’s is perfected Norf Landan.
It’s their personalities that really set them apart. Luke’s an arrogant git but can be good fun when the mood takes him. Theo’s Luke’s shadow, a classic introvert. He prefers to sit in a corner with a beer and a book but he goes to the pub with us out of duty to Luke. He can be weird. He sees a psychiatrist every week. Luke says Theo’s Theo-ness is down to their time at boarding school in Melbourne. A soft-natured three-year-old crying for his mum makes easy prey for bullies and cruel teachers and I reckon he’s never shaken that complex.
And now it seems we’re bringing one of Luke’s groupies along. This Helen. It was only meant to be the three of us. I’ve never even met her. She lives in London and Luke only sees her at weekends. I’ve nothing against girlfriends, or girls for that matter. I’m sure girls can climb just as well as blokes. But she’s never climbed before, and I know exactly what’s happened: she’s one of these possessive types that can’t let Luke out of her sight. He tends to date girls who’re messed up and needy, the ones who only came to Oxford because their folks pressurised them, wanting to make good on years of private school fees, but who are starting to go slightly crazy from the pressure. His last girlfriend got him into cocaine. I’m no angel but I draw the line at the hard stuff. That, and I don’t have any money.
Anyway, the point is that this trip is no stroll in the park. It takes training, strength, stamina and experience – with a good dollop of common sense – to climb Mont Blanc, and if I’m honest even I feel a wee bit intimidated. People have died doing this climb. I’ve spent the last three months training to make sure I’m up to it. What if she has an accident, or freaks out? What if she decides halfway up that she wants to go home? It’ll wreck the trip. A once-in-a-lifetime trip that’s costing an absolute fortune. Luke and Theo’s folks are loaded, so they don’t care how much it costs. But for some of us this means living on beans and toast for the next six months.
I thought Luke was kidding when he first mentioned about a girl tagging along. When it seemed he was actually serious, I tried to get him to see sense. Gently, then with more muscle. Meaning that I plied him with vodka.
‘This new girlfriend,’ I said, once he’d knocked back the fifth glass. ‘The one who’s apparently coming with us to the Alps. Won’t she feel a little like a third wheel?’
‘Fourth wheel,’ Theo corrected.
‘Don’t get what you mean,’ Luke said, lighting a cigar and swearing when the match burnt his fingers.
‘Not exactly a girl’s thing, is it? A twelve-day peregrination up a mountain.’
Luke sniffed at this. Peregrination was his word. He’s such a snob when it comes to language. Why say ‘trek’ when you can say ‘peregrination’?
Luke took a drag on the cigar and blew a thick O of smoke in my direction. ‘Helen’s up for it,’ he said. ‘She’s into that kind of thing.’
‘There aren’t any showers in the Alps. Twelve days without washing, mate. Girls can be a bit funny about that kind of thing. You sure she’s up for that?’
Luke leaned into me until his nose almost touched mine.
‘Michael, my love, she’ll be fine with that.’
‘Can she actually climb?’ I said.
A grim look. ‘Can you?’
‘This isn’t a walk in the park, Luke. It’s the highest mountain in Europe.’
‘It’s the highest mountain in Europe,’ he parroted in a high-pitched voice. ‘She’s fitter than you are, mate. She’s a ballet dancer. Fit as butcher’s dogs, those girls.’
‘I’m sure Helen’ll love being compared to a dog,’ Theo said.
‘Dancing’s hardly climbing, Luke.’
‘What I mean is, she’s athletic …’
‘I’m not risking my neck with an amateur.’
He frowned. ‘So you’re saying you won’t go if she does?’
I took a long drink of my beer, enjoying watching him sweat, his eyes turning nervously to Theo. The thing is, we work very well together as a trio, particularly as Luke finds his twin boring and strange. He spends most of his time trying to palm Theo off on to someone else, occasionally paying other guys to take Theo out for a beer, but Theo prefers to be in Luke’s shadow. And I’ve a knack for getting on both Theo’s and Luke’s level, so I’ve assumed the role of go-between, a stepping stone for their disparate personalities. I’m able to bring out the best in Theo, thus making his constant presence (‘like a frickin’ tumour,’ Luke likes to say) bearable and occasionally pleasant.
‘Come on, Mikey,’ Luke said, backpedalling. ‘This is our epic adventure. It won’t be the same if you don’t come.’
I shrugged, gave him a look of sorry-but-that’s-how-it-is.
He leaned back in his chair, glanced at Theo. ‘We could ask Oliver if he’ll take Michael’s place.’
Theo nodded.
‘Oliver?’ I said. ‘Who’s Oliver?’
‘He’s in Theo’s Old Norse class. Said he’d like to come. He could take your place, Mike. You could maybe even sell your plane ticket to him …’
‘What?’ I said panicking. ‘No! I mean …’
Luke grinned. He knew he had me. He knew better than I did how much I wanted this climb.
‘We’d prefer you to go instead of Oliver, mate,’ Luke said, wrapping an arm around my neck and putting his cigar to my lips. ‘But if you’re a widdle bit afwaid of a girl …’
I shoved him off. ‘Alright,’ I said. ‘I’ll go. But on one condition. We stick to the walking trails. No climbing. No abseiling.’
‘Piss off,’ Luke said. ‘You’re suggesting we don’t actually climb the mountain? What would be the point in going?’
Luke raises his head as I make my way towards the table. He gives me a big cheesy grin and actually stands up to give me a big ‘come here, you’ bear hug which we both know is an attempt to butter me up. I was sure she wouldn’t come. Luke is all-or-nothing, always acting on impulse, so it was likely that his spur-of-the-moment decision to bring her along would be dropped as fast as it was raised.
‘This is Helen,’ Luke says. I grin at the girl beside him, who blushes and says hello. She’s tall, about five foot nine, blonde hair worn in a plait, skinny but not anorexic. A bit shy, and preppier than I expected, with a slender face and high cheekbones, a look of a librarian about her. ‘I’m Michael,’ I say, offering a hand as she seems the sort of girl who does handshakes. A surprisingly firm grip. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she says, and I try to force out the same response but can’t. She’s pretty, though, in a way I didn’t expect. She seems … normal.
‘Nice to meet you, too.’
The words stick in my throat. After all, I finished with Nina a month ago on the basis that I’d be heading off to the Alps for a fortnight and wanted to be free to do as I pleased. Nina might have mentioned that she wanted to see other people the night before but that isn’t the point. I made sacrifices, dammit.
‘I hope you don’t mind me gate-crashing your trip,’ Helen says, sliding her eyes to Luke who shakes his head as if to say, of course not. Git.
‘Yeah, not at all,’ I say, lying through my teeth. ‘The more the merrier, right?’
Later, we head outside for a practice climb up one of the crags ten minutes from the village. It’s the size of a skyscraper but still looks puny compared to the mountains. Seems we’re not alone in this idea, either – about a dozen other climbers are scaling the crag with us. An older couple from New York City, a bunch of tie-dyed, weed-smoking hippies from Portugal, and some plaid-wearing members of a Welsh photography club.
Helen looks visibly nervous about climbing this size of peak and I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from calling it out to Luke. If she can’t manage this, how’s she going to manage Mont Blanc? He spots it though, and subtly suggests we take the walking trail that winds around the side of the crag, avoiding the rocks. Theo finds a ledge about six hundred feet above the valley and we all take a breather, sitting on the big slab with our legs dangling. Luke produces a box of cigars from a pocket in his trousers and passes them round.
‘Mate,’ I say, my mood rising considerably. ‘You’re the best.’
‘There’s more,’ he says, unzipping another pocket.
‘What you got in there?’ Helen says, wiping her face. ‘A parachute so we can all just float back down instead of climbing?’
‘Even better, my love, even better,’ Luke says, pulling out a flask. ‘I’ve got … whisky.’
Helen doesn’t look thrilled but Theo and I are all over it, and in a handful of minutes Luke’s tapping the bottom for the last dregs. I lie back, my legs dangling over the edge, nothing but air between me and death six hundred feet below. The moon is a Cheshire cat’s smile in an inky, cloudless sky.
‘There she is,’ Luke says, leaning towards Helen and pointing at the whitest peak. ‘Mont Blanc. The imaginatively-monikered “white mountain”. Highest mountain in the world.’
‘Western Europe,’ Theo corrects.
‘Highest mountain in Western Europe,’ Luke says sourly.
We sit for a moment in the still warm air, looking over the silhouetted peaks towering above us and the lights of Chamonix below, the hostels and alpine huts glimmering and small as a gingerbread village. To the right I can make out movement, or what looks like a stream of ants hustling along a narrow trail. I take out my binoculars and there they are: hordes of climbers already setting off on the trail.
‘Feels like we’re going on a pilgrimage,’ I observe, stupidly.
‘You bring your rosary with you, then?’ Theo says.
I pass the binoculars to Luke and he glowers at the people heading off. ‘This isn’t a pilgrimage, it’s a traffic jam.’ He looks over the lights in Chamonix and I read his mind: we didn’t think there would be so many hostels. ‘Thought we’d be doing this alone,’ he says. ‘Just the four of us.’
‘Like the four horsemen of the apocalypse?’ Theo says.
‘You’re so competitive,’ Helen tells Luke, rubbing his arm.
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Luke says, kissing her hand.
‘It’s not like there’s someone at the top handing out awards for whoever arrives first,’ Helen laughs.
Theo shrugs. ‘You never know.’
‘The summit is its own reward,’ Luke says.
‘So you won’t be bothered if I get there first?’ Helen says, and I see Luke’s face fall.
‘Not at all.’ He breaks into a beaming grin, then slaps me and Theo on our backs before tilting his head to the sky.
‘I love you guys,’ he says, then adding: ‘and girl.’
‘Luke, babe, don’t take this the wrong way,’ Theo says. ‘But … I’m not snogging you. Don’t care what you give me. I draw a line at tongues. Pecking is fine, but snogging – no. I’m your brother and it’s wrong.’
Helen laughs out loud while Luke and I lie on our backs sending loops of smoke drifting into the night air. I don’t say it, and this is a rare feeling for me, but right now there is simply nowhere else I’d rather be.
6 (#ulink_f31c2774-e437-53d5-a5b7-83b7df5202b4)
Helen (#ulink_f31c2774-e437-53d5-a5b7-83b7df5202b4)
30th August 2017
‘Mum!’
Reuben is running down the hospital corridor towards me, his arms spread wide. He presses his face to my chest and I give a loud cry of relief. There’s a nasty bruise above his right eyebrow, some cuts and dried blood on his forehead, his T-shirt smeared in blood, but otherwise he seems fine. I start to sob – relief or fear, I can’t tell – and he starts to cry, too.
‘Can we go home now, Mum?’ he says, trying to climb on to my knee. ‘I want to go home, OK? Let’s go home.’
‘OK,’ I whisper weakly, wiping tears off my face. ‘We can go home. I promise.’
I tell him as gently as I can not to sit on my lap and hold his hand tightly. The nurse says something that I make out as an urge to keep going, so I tell Reuben to stand and we’re off again, the nurse pushing my wheelchair briskly along the corridor as Reuben staggers alongside me with both hands holding one of mine.
When we turn into a side room I see a figure lying on the bed. Strips of white tape run across his nose, chin, forehead and cheeks, holding a series of tubes and valves leading from his mouth to a monitor by his side.
Slowly I’m skewered by the realisation that this bloodied, unconscious figure is Michael. It’s a realisation that seems to stop time. Trembling, I move closer. A bloodied ear, a small patch of his beard, two blood-encrusted nostrils and a pattern of dried blood on his shin.
‘Why’s Dad not waking up?’ Reuben says behind me. ‘Wake him up, Mum! Wake him!’ His cries wrench at my heart. I try to console him but I grow more and more upset by his distress.
A doctor comes into the room and introduces himself as Dr Atilio. ‘This is your husband?’ he asks me.
I’m gasping for air and my heart is racing. I’m in the grip of a major panic attack.
‘He was awake when the soldiers brought you here,’ I hear the doctor say, though he sounds distant, far away, as though I’m underwater. ‘He is falling in and out of consciousness.’
It’s only when I see Reuben from the corner of my eye and remember that he’s in the room that I somehow find the strength to stop and hold myself together. I hear myself tell Reuben it’s alright, everything is OK, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’m chanting the words over and over to help regulate my heart rate. The nurse moves me close enough to take Michael’s hand. It is limp and covered in dried blood.
I can’t believe this is happening. I can barely breathe. My thoughts whirr and strain to find answers, solutions. I remember with a hard punch to my chest the sight of Saskia on the ground in front of the car.
‘Where is my daughter?’ I shout frantically. ‘Her name … Her name is Saskia. Saskia Pengilly. She’s seven years old, she … she has blonde hair, she was wearing a stripy T-shirt …’
‘We will take you to her,’ the doctor says, and they wheel me abruptly out of Michael’s room towards another ward further along the hallway.
The sight of Saskia on the bed is like a fist slammed into my face. She’s hooked up to machines, there are blood stains on her pink cotton dress, her small, limp hands are bruised and painfully gashed. It is unbearable.
I start to shake, a strangled scream escaping from my open mouth. Even when Reuben starts slapping his head I can’t stop. A nurse appears at my side, pulls the waistband of my shorts down below my hip and sticks a needle in my backside.
Blackness.
‘The lady, she come here for see you.’
A nurse is leaning over me and adjusting a tube in my arm. The room is swaying. Another woman comes into focus. Slim, young. Bobbed black hair, red lipstick. Wide smile. A suit.
‘I’m Vanessa Shoman,’ she says, stretching out a hand. ‘I’m from the British High Commission. The doctor told me that your family had a car accident.’
The knowledge of why I’m here hits me like a wrecking ball. An invisible force sweeping me off my feet and landing me somewhere else in time, outside my own body. Horrifying fragments of the crash flash painfully across my eyes. I wrap my arms around my legs and howl in the space between my knees. I remember crawling on all fours to reach Saskia. She was lying on the ground, about ten feet ahead of the mangled hire car. I remember it was raining and there was glass everywhere. Saskia wouldn’t move. I was screaming for her to wake up.
‘My daughter,’ I tell Vanessa through gulping sobs. ‘She’s seriously injured. I … I don’t know if she’s going to survive.’
I can hardly bring myself to say the words aloud. I can’t stop crying. Reuben is sitting back in his chair, knees to his chest. He looks stricken at the state of me but I’m too helpless to comfort him.
Vanessa rubs my back sympathetically and explains her role as an officer of the High Commission is to help people like me. She assures me she will contact my family and help us get home, but none of it brings any comfort. She tells me we are in a hospital just outside of San Alvaro, one of Belize’s poorest towns. She says the hospitals in this region are understaffed, underfunded, but that a neurosurgeon is coming from Belize City today or tomorrow for Michael and Saskia.
My memories are an explosion of particles that I have to knit together, atom by atom. I remember coming to in the modernist sculpture that used to be the car. I remember Michael slumped like a beanbag in the seat beside me, his right shoulder twisted at an unnatural angle. I was certain he was dead.
What happened after that? How did we get to the hospital?
Vanessa tells me an army truck full of soldiers came across us after the crash. The soldiers dragged Michael and Reuben out of the car, dumped us in their truck and brought us all to the hospital.
‘You were lucky,’ she says. ‘It’s a very remote part of Belize. No towns or villages for many miles. You could have been there a long time before someone found you. Maybe even days.’
She tells me that the soldiers managed to salvage some luggage from our rental car. The bag containing our passports and money is in Michael’s room, but we had other suitcases containing clothes, toys, souvenirs, our mobile phones. Irrelevant, of course, but Vanessa mentions that we were also lucky that the army managed to save them.
‘Save them?’ I say weakly. ‘From what?’
‘From the police. They steal all the time. How many bags had you in total?’
‘I think we had four,’ I say.
She writes this down. ‘How much money did you have in cash?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Any gadgets? Laptops, smartphones?’
I bite my lip. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Credit cards?’
‘I think … maybe AMEX and Mastercard.’
Why does this matter? I don’t care about money. I care about my family.
‘We will check that these are still there. If not, we’ll attempt to cancel the cards for you. But the other bags I don’t think we will ever see again.’
Vanessa folds away her notebook, her information retracted. She pulls another packet of tissues from her bag and passes them to me.
‘You poor thing,’ she says, watching me dissolve into gulping sobs. ‘But it’s good you’re awake. The police will want to get a statement from you as soon as possible.’
Reuben is huddled on the bed next to me. The lights go out, plunging the hospital into darkness. Somehow the darkness makes the sense of loneliness and disorientation ten times worse. I feel trapped in a nightmare. My heart starts to race again. I press my fists against my eyes and weep from my core. It feels like I’ve been torn apart.
I wish Michael was here to tell me that everything is OK. I wish someone could promise me that Saskia is going to make it through. I can’t believe this has happened. I hate myself for being less injured than she is. I would give anything, absolutely anything, to trade places with her.
Earlier I caught my reflection in a broken mirror in the bathroom and had to look twice to check it was me. The left side of my face is yellow and puffed up so badly that my left eye is a mere slit in my face. My hair is pinked with blood and under the dressing on the side of my head is a painful gash. I think my collarbone and wrist are broken. My right ankle might be broken too. I can barely put any pressure on my feet and every movement feels like I’ve torn dozens of muscles.
But I’m alive. We all are. I have to cling to that. It could so, so easily have been otherwise.
Vanessa said that the army brought us here. As I sit up in the darkness I remember a pair of heavy black shoes next to my face as I came to by the car. My image was blurry but I definitely saw them. A ripped denim hem, like jeans. A crunch of glass underfoot.
Michael was unconscious. He was wearing flipflops, not boots. The soldiers would have been wearing fatigues, not jeans. I think the van driver came to inspect the damage to our vehicle after the crash. He was unharmed enough to walk. I’d identify his shoes if I saw them again. Black lace-ups, a scuff on the right toe.
But he didn’t call the police. Vanessa said the army came across us by chance. The driver had left the scene of the crash long before then. I try to imagine him looking over our mangled car, our bodies covered in glass and blood. How could he have looked at Saskia on the ground like that and just raced off without calling anyone? How heartless would you have to be to leave her like that?
I know I saw someone outside the beach hut the other night. Michael questioned me and yes, it was dark but I know I did. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. Dark hair. Short – about five foot eight – with black fuzzy hair. Dark-skinned, stocky. I didn’t see his face.
And the telescope at the other hut that was pointed at ours. It freaked me out. I only stopped to catch my breath on the pier. Curiosity got the better of me so I went for a look around. I knew no one was staying there. But when I glanced inside the window I saw one of the bedrooms with clothes on the floor, the sheets kicked back off the bed as though someone had been sleeping there.
‘I need a story,’ Reuben says. ‘Tell me a story.’
‘I don’t have any books, love,’ I say weakly. ‘I don’t think the hospital has any either.’
‘Tell me a story, Mum. I want a story. Tell me a story.’
I make him turn away from me so he won’t see the tears running down my face. Then, in low whispers, I tell him the story of Angelina Ballerina. It’s the only story I can recall because Saskia makes me read it to her all the time.
When he falls asleep I try to will myself to stand. My legs feel like jelly and I want to throw up from the pain but finally I’m able to pull myself upright. I need to go and check on Saskia. I want to make sure she’s OK. I’m stricken by the thought that, if someone has struck our car deliberately, they won’t stop there.
I try and will my body to do what I so desperately need it to do, but it won’t. I used to be able to push through all kinds of muscle damage and foot injuries, but now I have no strength left and feel dangerously woozy. I sink back down beside Reuben and fall into darkness.
I dream of Saskia coming into our bed for a cuddle.
Morning, Mummy. Can I snuggle with you?
In the dream she curls up next to me and watches Netflix on an iPad while I read. Michael appears in the doorway with a tray laden with cereal bowls, toast, coffee, and a babyccino for Saskia. We stay there until it’s time to take Reuben swimming and Saskia to ballet. The warmth of the blankets, her feet against my calves, her forehead against my lips, butter-soft, and her little fingers laced between mine, both of us wearing sky-blue nail polish flecked with glitter.
Mummy, please stay a little longer. I love our mornings.
7 (#ulink_ae91826e-8f10-5d49-b993-433e4214bfe9)
Michael (#ulink_ae91826e-8f10-5d49-b993-433e4214bfe9)
31st August 2017
I can hear someone screaming. No, not screaming. A mechanical whine, a machine somewhere that whirs.
I open my eyes and immediately bright light squared off by a window blinds me. My eyes adjust and I see I’m in a room with a small rectangular window to my right. Plaster is peeling off the wall beneath the windowsill. I can hear shouting down the hall. All a bit Mad Max in here. A white sheet is drawn across my legs. My T-shirt and jeans are covered in dirt and blood stains. There’s dried blood all over my arms. I feel like someone’s beaten me with a metal bar.
My mind flicks through reasons that I might be in hospital like a slot machine spinning its three wheels printed with cherries and bells. Three sevens line up, and I remember.
The crash.
It comes to me in vivid, broken flashes. The sound of the car whipping round. I was sure I’d died. I was sure we’d all died. Did we hit a tree? I remember the car coming to rest virtually upside down. Helen was shaking like she was having a fit, her teeth chattering. I told her it was OK, that everything was OK. Her breathing slowed. After a few moments I managed to make out something she said.
He just came out of nowhere.
A tear slid down her cheek.
Who? I said. Who came out of nowhere?
The van. He just slammed into us.
I told her I loved her.
I love you too. I’m so scared, Michael.
I thought those were the last words I’d ever hear.
I think back to last night, when I chased after the guy who’d been trespassing outside our beach hut. I didn’t want to make much of it to Helen but when I got to the top of the bank I saw someone running towards a white van that was parked about a hundred yards away from the hut. I shouted, ‘hey!’, and this guy turns and looks at me, holding his hands at either side of his shoulders as if to say ‘what?’
I stopped dead in my tracks and gave a gasp. He looked exactly like Luke. Same sandy-blonde hair, same build, same face. I felt all the blood drain from my face.
‘Luke?’ I called out. ‘What are you doing here? Luke?’
He took a few steps towards the van, then jumped in and took off, the tyres kicking up white stones. I was so stunned at the sight of him that I didn’t react, at first. Then I started to run after him, thinking that if I could get the registration plate I could report him. He sped off down the path and took a right. There was no way I was going to catch up with him so I cut through the trees. Daft, on hindsight, but I was in a daze. Luke is dead. It could have been Theo. But why here? And why now?
I’m lucky to have made it out. The rainforest is fifty miles thick. One wrong turn and I’d have been in deep kimchi.
The bleep of the heart monitor tugs me back into the present.
I sit up and try to speak but my mouth feels full of cotton wool. I think back to the fire at the bookshop. The bookshop wasn’t just my pride and joy. It was an offering, an act of supplication to Luke. And they burned it down.
We’re not safe here. They won’t stop until we’re all dead.
8 (#ulink_fda062c4-fde8-591d-afac-4cfacce15480)
Helen (#ulink_fda062c4-fde8-591d-afac-4cfacce15480)
31st August 2017
I’m woken by a man and woman removing my drip. Both are in plain clothes, the man dressed so casually that I jump when I see him standing so close. Jeans and a colourful Hawaiian shirt with a rosary around his neck. He speaks to me in Kriol.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ I tell him. He starts to gesture with his hand but I don’t understand it. After a few minutes of confusion the nurse says ‘X-ray’ and I realise they want to take me for one.
‘Yes. Yes, X-ray,’ I say, nodding. They bring in a wheelchair, tell me to take off my clothes to be gowned. I’m so hot and filmed in blood and dirt that I virtually have to peel them off, which takes a while. Every movement makes me yelp in pain. When Reuben starts to follow after the wheelchair they shake their head and I try to explain that he has to come with me, but they won’t hear of it. I look around desperately for Vanessa.
‘My son … my son’s autistic,’ I say, stumbling over my words. ‘He has to come with me because I’m afraid someone will hurt him. Please …’ The nurse rubs my arm and tries to tell me it’s OK, he is safe here in a hospital, and then they ignore me completely and wheel me down the corridor while Reuben stands in the ward, dumbfounded.
I’m crying and shaking all over when they wheel me into the X-ray room, weakened by fear and shock. The radiographer – a woman about my age, slim, concerned – speaks good English and asks me what’s wrong.
‘We were in a car accident,’ I say, and I’m trembling so badly I can hardly get the words out. ‘I’m afraid someone is going to come into the hospital and hurt us.’
She bends down in front of me and listens.
‘Who do you think will hurt you?’
‘A man,’ I say, gulping back air as though I’m drowning. ‘He was wearing black boots. He crashed into us on purpose … he’s going to come here, I know it!’
She takes my hand and I manage to take a breath. ‘Is there security at the hospital?’
She frowns. ‘Not really. But the police should help. If you had a car accident they will want to find who did this.’
This is comforting enough to help me stop shaking. ‘The police,’ I say. ‘The woman from the British High Commission said they would want a statement but they’ve not come to see me yet.’
She smiles reassuringly.
‘They will be here very soon. It is not a big police force so they may be busy. But they will help. If someone is trying to hurt you, the police will protect you.’
I lie on a cold metal table as she pulls the machine over my collarbone, then my legs and arms.
In my mind’s eye I see myself standing in our ground floor flat in Sheffield. Reuben is in his high-chair in the room behind me shouting and throwing beans across the room. The postman pushes a pile of letters through the letter box and Reuben screams at the sound.
Most of the letters are bills, but there’s a padded envelope sent on by our landlady, Lleucu, from our loft flat in Cardiff. Amongst the letters is a cream-coloured bonded envelope with ‘Haden, Morris & Laurence’ emblazoned in navy lettering across the back. It looks important, so I open it first.
K. Haden
Haden, Morris & Laurence Law Practice
4 Martin Place
London, EN9 1AS
25th June 2004
Michael King
101 Oxford Lane
Cardiff
CF10 1FY
Sir,
We request your correspondence in receipt of this letter to the address above.
Our clients desire a meeting with you regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.
The time to meet about this tragedy is long overdue. Please do not delay in writing to us at the above address to arrange a meeting.
Sincerely,
K. Haden
The letter drifts from my hand to the ground. Reuben continues to shout in the background. I feel like someone’s run through me with a sword. Slowly I sink to the ground and pick the letter up again. Five words scream off the page.
The death of Luke Aucoin.
Those words chill me to the bone, turn my guts to mush. At one point I believed Luke was the love of my life. And yet I caused his death.
I turn and look at Reuben. My first thought is: they’ll take him from me. I will lose him if I face this.
So, I hid the letter. And I persuaded Michael that it was time to move again.
I thought it would all go away.
The voices in my head remind me that there have been dozens of occasions in the past where something has gone wrong and I’ve connected it to these letters. When we lived in Belfast our cat Phoebe died. The vet said it was poison. I worked myself into a complete state, certain it was deliberate, payback for Luke, until a neighbour approached us and apologetically explained that he’d left out rat poison in the back garden and had spotted Phoebe near the tray on the day that she died. And the miscarriage I had a few years before Saskia came along … for about year afterwards I was trapped in the silent torture of being convinced that Luke’s family had done it. I even had the scenario in my head. We were living in London at the time and I took the tube to and from work every day. I was seventeen weeks’ pregnant. The first cramps started about ten minutes after I got off the tube. It would be easy to inject me with something that would start early labour. A light prick that I’d probably never notice.
It’s difficult to explain paranoia. Saying something like that aloud – though I never did, not to anyone – makes it sound ridiculous. But the suspicion was like a monolith in my head, impossible to budge. We buried our little girl in the hospital graveyard, named her Hester. And when the voices of suspicion finally died down, a new one set in: Hester’s loss was karma for Luke.
Other mishaps were similarly difficult to assign to chance: a slashed car tyre, the night I was followed home in Kent, a few week of silent phone calls at three in the morning, two bouts of severe food poisoning. On hindsight it’s unlikely any of these were related to what happened to Luke, but at the time I was sure they were, and I carried that knowledge like a knife lodged in my chest. I could tell no one, not even Michael. My hair would fall out in handfuls and the smallest thing felt physically impossible. Cooking a meal, meeting up with friends … I felt incapacitated, barely able to look after myself, never mind my children. Life stalled and sputtered, but somehow hobbled on.
There is a point when fear is no longer a protective instinct, and it becomes sabotage.
No, I tell myself resolutely through tears. The crash has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with what happened to Luke.
I’m trying hard to convince myself, to drown out the other voices. But they’re too loud for me to silence. They shout in my head like a Greek chorus.
But what if it is? You’re alone in the hospital, completely vulnerable. If they want to come and finish you off they only have to walk through the doors.
When I return to the ward – with the news that my wrist is broken – I breathe a sigh of relief that Reuben is there, hugging a flat rectangular object with a blue rubber casing to his chest. His iPad. The glass is cracked in one corner but otherwise it seems OK. I ask him if he’s OK, and he nods, but then tells me that a man came up to him and asked him where I was.
‘Who was it?’ I say. ‘Was he a doctor? A nurse?’
He shrugs and moves his eyes around the room. He seems agitated, but of course he has every reason to be and I can’t read him.
‘Did the man say why he wanted me?’
‘My headphones are gone,’ he says.
‘How did you get the iPad?’
‘A nurse,’ he says, but doesn’t explain further.
I nod and study his face for clues. This is probably as much information as I’m going to get from him about the man who came. I look around the ward – it’s unusually quiet, all the visitors gone and the patients asleep. Just the sound of the traffic outside and the ceiling fan.
‘Let’s go check on Saskia,’ I say, and he wheels me quickly down the hall to her room. When I see her there in the bed it’s a bizarre mixture of relief and renewed grief that hits me hard.
I take her little hand in mine, staggered by the confirmation by each of my senses that this is happening. Crescent moons of blood and dirt under her nails. Her closed eyes and the frightening chasm between each bleep of her pulse.
Night falls and every time I hear footsteps coming up the hallway I seize up with blunt, raw fear. The ward I’m in is right at the far end of the wing and there is no exit without going up the hallway, so if anyone came to get Reuben and me, we have nowhere to run. The hospital is like something straight out of a zombie movie – there is one bathroom that I’ve spotted and it was crawling with insects, no loo paper, and brown water pouring from the taps. No catering, very little drinking water. Both Reuben and I are weak from hunger. I’ve asked to be moved but the nurses either don’t understand me or feign ignorance. Vanessa hasn’t appeared and I’m worried that she won’t return. She said a neurosurgeon was coming to see Saskia – why isn’t he here?
There is no phone I can use and I don’t have my mobile. Worst of all, they won’t let me sleep in Saskia’s room. Reuben and I take up too much space and the nurses need to be able to access her – it took half an hour of interpretive gestures for me to work out that this was the reason – but it’s utter rubbish, because we only get seen once a day. I’m trying to be brave for Reuben’s sake. He keeps saying, ‘What’s wrong, Mum? What’s wrong?’ and I have to tell him I’m fine, that everything is fine.
But it’s a lie.
9 (#ulink_b38ba555-d038-5f2b-b79a-cd14733bcce9)
Michael (#ulink_b38ba555-d038-5f2b-b79a-cd14733bcce9)
31st August 2017
My head hurts like a meteor has landed on it. Someone’s knocking against the windowpane, a thunk thunk that seems to fall into rhythm with the banging in my head. I get up to see who’s knocking and find it’s an insect of some sort, the size of a small bird, trying to get outside. With a gasp of pain I yank the tube out of my arm and struggle forward to let the bugger out. He has a stinger about three inches long but he’s more scared of me than I am of him.
I sit on the side of the bed and discover I’m wearing a snot-green hospital gown, tied at the waist and neck like a weird apron. Nothing underneath. Who undressed me? I’m in what seems to be a hospital, albeit a pretty nasty one. It looks like a building site. Smells like one, too. My back aches like I’ve fallen off a mountain. I’m covered in cuts and bruises. My first thought is that I’m here because of the fire, and my mind spins back to being trapped inside the shop, black smoke swirling. The sensation of my lungs being crushed.
And then the sight of Luke at the beach hut. His hands out at either side in a half-shrug, as if to say, what did you expect? With a shiver I wonder if I saw a ghost. A more rational explanation is that I was half-asleep, or that the trespasser bore an uncanny resemblance to Luke. But it could have been Theo.
There’s a black rucksack on the floor next to the bed. I pull it towards me and begin hunting through it. Not much in here. Someone’s already been through it. Of course they have. I know I put Helen’s passport in here, the kids’. All three are gone.
I remember putting my passport in the secret pocket at the back. It’s still there, along with my wallet, a notepad, pen, and my mobile phone. The battery’s dead. Damn it.
My checked shirt is rolled up in there, too. I pull off my bloodied T-shirt and use it to wipe my armpits and neck, throw on the clean checked shirt. I see my shoes on the floor by the door.
I see a nurse walking down the corridor and my impulse is to call out to her, tell her to contact our next of kin and tell them what’s happened. But neither Helen nor I have parents, or any close relatives.
I sit back against the cold bars of the bed, weighed down by the knowledge that we have no one to call for help.
This is my family. I have to do it. There is no one else.
10 (#ulink_0bf1c168-7554-5270-9f74-be11d5d88df4)
Helen (#ulink_0bf1c168-7554-5270-9f74-be11d5d88df4)
1st September 2017
I fight sleep for as long as I can, listening out for sounds of movement in the hallway. I have the distinct feeling of being watched. Not just a feeling – a gut-wrenching certainty. All the hairs on my body stand on end despite the crushing heat, my senses on high alert and my heart fluttering in my chest. I’m in excruciating pain and physically helpless against whoever is in the shadows, watching us. None of the nurses on the ward tonight understand me and no one helps. We are completely alone.
The white van coming towards us is a vivid, garish splinter in my mind, and my foot jerks, puppet-like, at an imaginary brake pedal every time I think of it. Over and over, this circular reaction, my body reacting to a memory that’s stuck in the pipework of my mind.
When my body finally caves in to exhaustion I dive deep into dreams and surface again with a gasp into that same terrible realisation of where I am, and why.
I dream of the fire at the bookstore, black clouds of smoke billowing out of the windows of the shop, ferociously hot. Michael and I at the end of the street helplessly watching on as fire fighters roll out long hoses and blast the flames with jets of water. In the dream, though, it is the beach hut that’s ablaze, not the shop. A figure running away from the scene, up the bank into darkness. I try to get Michael’s attention.
Look! Do you think he was the one who caused the fire?
Michael’s comment floats to the surface of my dreams.
Kids didn’t start the fire, Helen.
There is a tone in his voice that I can’t work out. When I wake, it continues to echo in my ears, making the slow transition from dream to memory.
A little after eight in the morning I hear voices down the hall: an ambulance is here to take Saskia to the hospital in Belize City. To my relief, they say that both Reuben and I can go, though for one terrifying moment I feel I’m abandoning Michael. He would want me to go.
But right as the nurses are helping me into the ambulance, Vanessa pulls up alongside us in her car. ‘The police have requested that you go to the station right now to make a statement about the collision,’ she says emphatically.
I tell her that Saskia is going for surgery right at this moment but she holds up her hands.
‘It’s not my call,’ she says. ‘The police have the last say. And they require you to go to them right away.’
It’s a heart-breaking decision to have to make, but Vanessa insists I have no choice. She says I have a legal obligation to give information on the crash and that it has to happen right away.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she says. ‘But this is out of my hands.’
I watch on, tears rolling down my face, as the ambulance pulls away with my daughter inside. It feels like someone is pulling off one of my limbs and dragging it down the street, out of sight. My instincts divide me, one shouting that at least Saskia will be safe in Belize City and the other shouting, Are you nuts? You’ve just let them take her away! You have no idea that they’re even real doctors!
At least the police will protect us. I’ll tell them about the trespasser, about the van driver who got out after the crash and looked over us without helping.
And perhaps they’ll assign Saskia a police escort to ensure she’s safe.
The police station is about half a mile outside the town of San Alvaro, which appears to be no more than a row of wooden shacks selling fruit, vegetables, and handmade rugs and clothing at the side of a dirt road. Children running naked in the streets. Stray dogs everywhere, their ribs protruding like comb teeth through patchy fur.
Inside the station, we are summoned to a small room at the end of the corridor. Vanessa pushes me in the wheelchair and a couple of police officers stop chatting at the front desk when they see us. Vanessa addresses them cheerfully in Kriol, but they don’t respond, their eyes fixed on me and Reuben, who is clicking his fingers and being extremely brave in this hostile and foreign place.
‘So, tell me what happened,’ Superintendent Caliz says once Vanessa, Reuben and I are sitting down by his desk in the small room. His eyes are hidden behind darkened lenses, the corners of his mouth turned down in a deep frown. A pot belly stretching out his beige uniform, badges on the breast pocket. Photographs behind his desk show him being decorated for service in the police over many decades. He flicks his eyes across Reuben who has his attention fully on the row of glass bottles by the window, filtering sunlight across the floor in a kaleidoscope of colours.
I notice that Superintendent Caliz has no pen in hand to transcribe the interview, no tape recorder. I glance at Vanessa and tell him everything that I can recall: the trip to Mexico, our fortnight at the beach hut, the trespasser running up the bank. Then, my heart in my mouth, I tell him about the crash, recounting it with tears streaming down my face. I have to tell him this so he understands why the van driver standing at the scene of the crash, watching us, was so cruel. Recounting this feels like I’m right back on the ground again beside Saskia, praying for our lives.
‘I feel afraid,’ I say, trying to be as clear as possible in my use of language so he doesn’t miss a thing. ‘I feel worried that this man is going to come back and hurt us again.’
Superintendent Caliz purses his lips, nods. ‘You were all wearing seatbelts?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say, confused.
‘Why your little girl go out the window?’ He makes a motion with his hand. It takes a second for me to realise he’s demonstrating Saskia being catapulted out of the windscreen of the car.
‘We were wearing seatbelts,’ I say, but my mind turns to the last time we pulled over to let Saskia go to the loo. Did I clip her seatbelt in? She was capable of doing it herself and I usually left her to it, but the rental car was old, a 1999 hatchback with tight, irritating seatbelts that she complained about. Guilt rivets me as I think that I didn’t check it. If I had, she might not be in coma.
‘You were driving, yes?’ he says.
I nod. ‘Yes.’
‘Why your husband not drive?’
‘The other vehicle drove straight into us,’ I say in a brittle voice. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered who was driving. He swerved into our lane, right at the last minute …’
He leans forward across the desk, his hands clasped, and gives me a murky look. ‘You buy drugs here in Belize?’
‘Drugs?’
Superintendent Caliz addresses Vanessa in Kriol. She falters, confused.
‘We were told that someone has been arrested,’ Vanessa interrupts, addressing him. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I had thought the police of all people would want to help, that the Superintendent would see the situation for what it is and offer to protect us. Michael lies unconscious in the hospital. Saskia is seventy miles away, in a hospital surrounded by strangers. Reuben and I are completely alone.
‘What’s he saying?’ I ask, and she hesitates before answering me.
‘They’ve arrested the driver of the van that crashed into your car,’ she says slowly.
I take a deep breath. ‘Good.’
But she shakes her head, as though I’ve misunderstood. ‘He is saying the crash was deliberate. The driver says he was paid to do this.’
A noise escapes my mouth. Every suspicion I’ve had has been correct, all my instincts ringing true. Someone was watching us. Someone wants us dead.
‘So, you’re completely sure,’ Vanessa asks me again. ‘No drugs purchased in Mexico. No reason for anyone to try and harm your family.’
‘This has nothing to do with drugs!’ I shout, the strength of my anger surprising everyone in the room, including me. ‘I told you! Someone was watching us at the beach hut and the next day a man crashed into our car. You say you’ve arrested him. Who paid him to crash into our car?’
Superintendent Caliz leans back in his chair, laces his fingers together and barks something in Kriol.
Vanessa processes whatever information he has shared before tilting her head to mine, her brow folded in confusion.
‘What is your husband’s name?’ she asks.
‘Michael,’ I say, confused. ‘Why?’
‘Michael Pengilly?’
‘Yes, Michael. Why? What has that got to do with the man who crashed into us?’
My voice rises again in desperation. She repeats this to Superintendent Caliz, then listens intently as he replies in Kriol. The air is suddenly loud with suspicion and menace. I had expected to feel safe here but instead I feel in even more danger than I did at the hospital.
Vanessa fixes me with a dark stare. She chooses her words carefully. ‘The van driver claims your husband paid him to crash into your car to kill you all and make it look like an accident.’
Her words are like a black hole, sucking me into it cell by cell, until all that’s left of me is a scream.
11 (#ulink_668e0990-9b4d-5652-8158-2cd6df321a90)
Michael (#ulink_668e0990-9b4d-5652-8158-2cd6df321a90)
1st September 2017
It’s a shock to the system to be in a car again, right after the crash. I break into a cold sweat as we move through the streets, pushing through crowds of people – donkeys, too, and I swear some guy had an orangutan back there – and then a flood of cars that veer all over the place. The driver tells me there are no road lanes in this town. Looks like there are barely any roads either, at least not of the tarmac variety, despite the fact that there appears to be a car-to-human ratio of eleven-to-one. Dust rises from the tyres, making it impossible to see or breathe. Like driving through a sandstorm. The driver smokes weed, has some funky music playing loudly. He tries to strike up a conversation, asks if I’m a medical student at the hospital. I say yes and try to conceal the lie in my voice.
There’s a white phone charger trailing into the back seat over a couple of Coke cans. It’s a match for my phone. I say, ‘Can I use this?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he says. I plug in my phone and within minutes the screen flashes white. I scroll through my photographs, past videos taken by Reuben. I click on one of them and find it’s of the bookstore, pre-fire. The sight of it pierces me. His face appears large on the screen as he props the phone against the leg of a table, plucks a book off the shelf and then sits on the floor, cross-legged, filming himself reading. A pair of legs appears next to him after a few minutes. I watch as he glances up at whoever’s standing there, then goes back to reading. It must be a customer. She’s carrying a Sainsbury’s shopping bag. She steps over him, like he’s part of the furniture, then turns to him and snaps, ‘Why are you just sitting there in the middle of the floor? Can’t you see people are trying to get past?’
Reuben lifts his head and stares at her blankly before returning to his book.
‘So rude,’ the woman says off-screen, and instantly I feel an old urge to shout, He’s not rude, he’s autistic! Helen and I once said we ought to have that emblazoned on T-shirts and wear them whenever we went out as a family. One day Saskia came home from school and said her teacher had said she was very artistic. Saskia was quick to correct the teacher. ‘I told her that doesn’t mean I’m rude and ignorant, Mummy. Artistic people are just as polite as neuro-typical people. Isn’t that right?’
We had a laugh at that one.
I scroll through his other videos, one of him playing Minecraft, another of him drawing. I know Reuben is an amazing boy. Despite society’s obsession with status, personas, the endless barrage of visual culture, we still place a ludicrous amount of trust in what we see. On the outside my boy isn’t normal, and that’s still a problem. Helen and I vowed a long time ago that we would fight for our children to feel at home in this dying, messed-up world, to find their place in it. We would protect them.
And that’s precisely what I intend to do now.
I scroll through my gallery to find the photographs I took of the letters. Helen doesn’t know I opened them, but she knows we were receiving them. Why hide them from me? Every year, a new letter. And always on the date of Luke’s death to make a point. As if I could ever forget.
I took photographs of the letters in case she got rid of them. And I needed time to think about what the letters said, about why she didn’t tell me about them. There are many secrets in our marriage, but they pale in comparison to squirrelling away letters that contain so much threat. Helen’s forever accusing me of avoiding confrontation, and yet she was the one keeping these from me. Why? What has she got to hide?
I start to panic when I can’t find the images. There are photos of Reuben wearing a snorkel mask for the first time, giving a big thumbs up. Pictures of Saskia pirouetting in her Trolls swimsuit, her face all lit up when she spotted the dolphins. I try to flick past them as fast as I can but something in my chest gives and I have to look away so as not to start sobbing.
Finally, I pull up an image of one of the letters and zoom in on the cream page.
Sir,
We write again on behalf of our clients regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.
Our records show that you signed for our previous letter. We request that you contact us immediately to avoid further consequences.
Sincerely,
K. Haden
A wave of anger rolls over me as I read the words ‘further consequences’.
‘Where to, man?’ the taxi driver asks.
‘The airport,’ I tell him. ‘Make it quick.’
12 (#ulink_e2d44ba1-621e-5d75-ae95-6288c4fc8840)
Michael (#ulink_e2d44ba1-621e-5d75-ae95-6288c4fc8840)
16th June 1995
It’s decided: we’ll spend the next three nights in Chamonix learning stuff like what to do in an avalanche (‘Duck?’ Theo offers), crevasse rescue (‘It’s called chucking a rope down there, mate,’ Luke says), and belay techniques, or in other words, we’ll be drinking our body weights in vodka and singing German folk songs, with some token ice pick swinging in between.
This morning we’re joining a crowd of fifteen other climbers led by a mountain guide named Sebastian who is taking us up the Aiguilles Rouges for some mixed climbing techniques. This part of the Alps reminds me of Ben Nevis in Scotland, or the Lake District – a palette of earthy brown and velvety green, with gentle rises and pockets of snow in the nooks of distant peaks. Mountains stretch as far as the eye can see, no sign of human life anywhere. Just our little group swallowed up in the mountains.
It’s a warm sunny day without much of a breeze, but Sebastian has us all geared up as if we’re approaching the summit – helmets, crampons, ice picks, the lot. Still, I get to watch the sun rise over the mountains, a rich, yolky light breaking over the crystalline towers, bright rays the length of motorways pouring across the valley. It’s pretty awesome. Enough to make me feel more at ease around Helen.
‘Where did you meet Luke and Theo?’ she asks me amiably, once we’ve settled into our stride. ‘I mean, I know you all go to Oxford but did you know each other before?’
‘Nah. We’re all on the University rowing team,’ I tell her. ‘Ugly here got us all into climbing. Didn’t you, Luke? We did Ben Nevis last year.’
He grins. ‘Dragged you and Theo kicking and screaming up Ben Nevis, more like.’
‘We’re doing Kilimanjaro next. Then Everest,’ I tell her, and she looks impressed.
‘Wow, Everest,’ she says, glancing at Luke, who clearly hasn’t mentioned any of this to her. ‘I don’t think I’ll be going on that trip!’
Oh, are you sure? I want to say in a voice dripping with sarcasm. What a pity.
‘Come on, you lot!’ a voice shouts. The guide, Sebastian. He’s made the group stop on a massive rock ledge overlooking a sapphire lake. We take off our helmets and rucksacks and start to set up the stove, but Sebastian shouts at us again.
‘This is not the lunch stop,’ he says. ‘First, we learn how not to die. Second, we eat. OK?’
Sounds fair.
Helen stands close to the front of the group, watching Sebastian as he demonstrates how to make a top managed belay site.
‘If you need to lower into a gorge, you need to set up an anchor,’ he says, looping a figure eight of rope around a tree by the edge. ‘You clove hitch yourself into the shelf which enables protection at the edge. My belay device clips into the masterpoint. I need two lockers on the masterpoint – use a small carabiner for this to redirect the brake strand, OK?’ He holds up a carabiner and links it to the shelf. I take a peek over the edge. Quite a distance to the bottom.
‘Now, for a demonstration. Who will be my volunteer?’
A nervous laugh ripples among the crowd.
‘You,’ Sebastian says, gesturing for me to step forward.
‘What, me?’ I say, glancing around.
‘We’re going to cover what happens in the event of an arête shearing your rope, OK?’
Luke laughs and shoves me forward. One of the more outspoken blokes in the crowd – the South African fella with purple dreads – raises a hand. ‘An arête? What is this?’
‘An arête is a knife-edged ridge,’ Seb says. ‘If your rope is rubbing back and forth on this, what do you think will happen?’
‘It’ll break,’ everyone murmurs.
He holds up a worn piece of rope and demonstrates. ‘Snap!’ He turns to me and gestures at me to lower down off the side of the cliff. I’m not feeling overly confident about this right now. Still, I hook myself to the rope and try not to look too terrified as I lower down, eyeing the rope fearfully as it tightens around the tree. He lowers me down about twenty feet – which feels like a hundred feet – when suddenly I feel the rope go slack. My feet slip against the smooth rock and I scramble wildly to find something to hold on to. There’s a chink in the rock face and I dig my fingers into it, my heart thumping like there’s a box of frogs in my chest.
A few moments later, Sebastian shouts at me to climb back up. The rope tightens and I scramble back up there like Spiderman.
Everyone applauds and I try not to faint.
‘So, you see,’ Sebastian informs the group. ‘It’s important you know how to make a secure anchor when descending, but even more important is making sure your rope doesn’t run over any sharp edges. If you find yourself in a no-fall zone, the number one rule is …?’
‘Don’t fall!’ everyone shouts.
Back in Chamonix, Luke announces at the bar that he’s paid for us all to sleep in one of the dorms – we’d been camping outside but he says it’s a better idea to stay indoors. ‘Call it insurance,’ he says. ‘We don’t want somebody forgetting to stub out their cigarette because they’re too drunk to think straight. We might all end up without any gear.’ We both turn to Theo, who says, ‘What?’
‘Don’t play innocent,’ Luke says, shuffling a deck of cards. ‘You know you almost set the house on fire last weekend. Every time you get drunk you set your cigarette on the edge of the sofa or on the frigging mattress.’
‘Don’t remember,’ Theo says with a shrug.
‘Don’t remember?’ Luke laughs. ‘The corner of the sofa was on fire, mate. It was starting to climb up your trouser leg. I grabbed a glass of water that turned out to be vodka, almost chucked it over you. You can imagine how that would have gone.’
‘You going to deal or what?’ Theo says, a fag bobbing between his lips, nodding at the pack of cards in Luke’s hands. He begins to deal.
‘What are we playing?’ I ask.
‘What are we drinking?’
‘Gin.’
‘Gin rummy, then.’
‘Why not poker?’ Theo asks.
‘Fine, poker.’
‘Where’s Helen?’ I say. ‘Isn’t she joining us?’
Luke deals. ‘She’s reading. Doesn’t want to impose.’
The gin has warmed me up, broken down my hostilities. ‘Mate, I don’t mind if she wants to come.’
Luke gives me a dark stare. ‘I don’t know what drug you’re taking but it’s making lies fall out of your mouth.’
‘I’m serious. Where is she? Invite her down here.’
Luke shakes his head. ‘She won’t come. She’s got an early start with one of the trainers on the slopes.’
‘She’s training?’ Theo says.
‘Yeah. She doesn’t want to rely on me when we’re doing the tough parts. She’s independent, mate.’
I sit with that for a moment. A sense of guilt has crept in, my words about her being a leech and a millstone starting to nip at my conscience. I figured that she was Luke’s trophy girlfriend, but with every hour that I spend in her company I find all my assumptions being scratched away. She seems hard-working, independent, and pleasant to be around. Even better is that so far Luke has been on top form, joking around and insisting on paying for everything. I’m putting it all down to Helen being here.
I stare at my cards. Not a great hand. My high card’s the queen of hearts.
‘You seem really into this chick,’ I tell Luke, only realising once I’ve said it how childish it sounds.
‘Thanks, mate. She’s my girlfriend so it’s probably a good thing that I’m into her. If you know what I mean.’
‘How long you been … you know …?’
‘Seven months.’
‘A long time to keep her away from your best mate,’ I say. I think about mildly accusing him of either lying or being possessive but think better about it.
He shrugs. ‘She lives in London. And when she’s in Oxford we don’t exactly want any extra company, if you know what I mean.’
Theo and I share a look. ‘So, we probably shouldn’t bring up any of the one-night stands you’ve had in that time?’ Theo adds.
‘Not unless you want me to mention the essay I helped you write for Comparative Literature last term. The Dean might not like that so much.’
I play my queen of hearts. Luke sets down a queen of spades and an ace.
He wins.
The next day the three of us are badly hungover. Luke and Theo say they’ll give the training a miss, but I spot Helen, all geared up in a fluorescent pink shell suit heading off to the practice slopes with the rest of the climbers.
‘Hey! Helen! Good morning!’ I say, waving like an idiot.
She turns to the sound of her name. Sees me, waves. ‘Hi, Michael. Have a good night?’
I nod and slap my forehead. ‘Paying for it now, though.’
Another smile.
I am restless all day. Even when I join another climbing group with some French dudes who are eager to practise rope skills I feel distracted, my thoughts spiralling off in all directions.
13 (#ulink_8a652564-452c-590d-b5a5-481530170eec)
Helen (#ulink_8a652564-452c-590d-b5a5-481530170eec)
1st September 2017
I’m at the British High Commission, sitting in a leather chair opposite Vanessa’s desk. I’m too numb for tears. I’m paralysed with fear and blind confusion at what has just happened. The walls seem to move in and out, exhaling. I don’t trust anyone.
I watch Vanessa on the phone to her superiors asking for advice. At least, that’s what she tells me she’s doing but for all I know she’s part of this. For all I know she’s involved in the crash.
I want to go back to the hospital and find Michael and tell him what’s happened. I need to leave, call someone, beg for help. Inside I’m floundering like someone tossed into the middle of the ocean without so much as a life jacket. When Vanessa looks up I ask if I can use one of the other phones to call my friend, Camilla, back in England, but she simply nods and holds up a finger, distracted by the person she’s speaking to. My breath comes in short, quick bursts. I move in and out of my body, into the past and the future.
The shrill sound of Vanessa’s mobile knocks me back into the room. She sets the handset of the landline down and answers, then hands her phone to me quickly. It is Alfredo, the neurosurgeon, and suddenly I’m plunged seventy miles north, in the hospital with Saskia.
‘We have done extensive scanning of Saskia’s brain,’ he says. ‘We can see a number of contusions on the frontal lobe and signs of a diffuse axonal. What I cannot see just now is whether there is any bleeding or swelling in the brain.’
‘Will she be OK?’ I ask tearfully.
He gives a sigh, and my heart plummets. ‘There’s a possibility that the pressure will increase and slow blood flow to the brain. If this happens, something called cerebral hypoxia and ischaemia can occur. It means that the brain can begin to protrude through the skull, which we certainly do not want.’
I feel turned inside out by this news. My mind races with questions. Will she survive this? Will she walk again? Speak again? What are the long-term effects?
‘What can you do to help her?’ I say weakly.
Another grave sigh. ‘She will need an operation to insert an ICP bolt to monitor pressure in the brain cavity.’
There’s a long silence, and I realise he is asking for my permission to perform this operation. To put a bolt in my daughter’s head.
‘Yes,’ I hear myself say, though instantly I feel terrified, flooded with doubt. Is this the right thing? Did I just agree? Can I trust him?
He tells me that the next twenty-four hours are absolutely critical for her survival.
‘Yes, please do whatever it takes,’ I tell him, apologising as I break into sobs. I tell him I will do anything, absolutely anything for her. I will sell my body, rob a bank, plunder a city. I will give her my organs. I will give her my life.
‘You must leave this to me,’ he says, and I realise with terrifying helplessness that Saskia’s fate – her survival – is entirely out of my hands.
‘Can you take me to Michael, please?’ I ask Vanessa as she wheels me through the hospital doors. I’m so weakened with worry about Saskia that I feel sick, and although I am desperate to see Michael I have no idea how to tell him about the van driver’s accusation. How will he take it? How will he cope with news of Saskia and this accusation?
As we turn towards the corridor linking to his room I hear a man’s voice bark, ‘Helen? Helen Pengilly?’
The man is white, broad-shouldered and sandy-haired, the sleeves of a white linen shirt rolled up to his elbows, his hands in fists by his sides. He seems restless, as though he’s searching for someone.
It is Theo.
I give a sharp, high-pitched scream.
‘What’s wrong?’ Vanessa shouts. I turn all the way around in the wheelchair and pull on her clothes, yelling at her to get me out of here.
‘Oh my Lord, Helen!’
A woman’s voice. My vision blurred with tears, I make out another blurry figure racing up the corridor towards me. A slim woman, early thirties, short red hair, a black cotton dress and yellow sandals. Her face is wet and streaked black with running mascara. My heart pounds in my throat as Theo walks briskly towards me, but with each step he reveals himself as someone else entirely. It’s not Theo after all. For a moment everything turns black and I’m gasping for breath.
Moments later my younger sister, Jeannie, is on her knees in front of me, her arms reaching around and pulling me into a painful embrace. I can smell her, feel her lips on my cheeks.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she says, fumbling to take my hand in hers. ‘I just can’t believe what’s happened, Helen, I can’t! It’s so awful!’
She reaches up and pushes a strand of hair out of my eyes, then cups my face. I burst into tears and she pulls me into another embrace.
When she pulls back she seems to be looking at the man behind her with a frightened expression.
‘This is my boyfriend, Shane,’ she says quickly. ‘Shane, my sister Helen.’
‘How do you do?’
I flinch as he looks at me, half-expecting him to turn into Theo again. My heart is still doing somersaults in my chest in case I’m mistaken. But he remains Shane – handsome, mid-forties, surprisingly anodyne, at least compared to Jeannie’s usual class of boyfriend – and offers a hand, as though we’re meeting in a café or bistro instead of a ramshackle hospital halfway around the world. He shakes Vanessa’s hand and pulls a banknote out of his pocket, handing it to her, before stepping in to take over the job of pushing my wheelchair.
‘Vanessa’s from the British High Commission,’ I say.
‘Oh, apologies,’ he says as she looks down with confusion at the twenty-pound note in her hand. ‘Shane Goodwin, how do you do? You guys do a terrific job.’
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C.J. Cooke
The gripping new thriller from the author of I KNOW MY NAMEHe said he’d do anything to protect her.She said she’d do anything to protect her family.And they both said they would forget what happened twenty-two years ago.But now it seems that there is someone who will stop at nothing to make them remember…Who is playing the blame game?
Copyright (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © C. J. Cooke 2019
Jacket design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Jacket photographs © Stephanie Frey / Arcangel Images (envelope); Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) (extra texture).
C. J. Cooke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008237561
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008237578
Version: 2019-01-21
Dedication (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
for Willow
Epigraph (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.
Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
Contents
Cover (#u5cdd7115-2081-51a5-992a-f4dcdfee39ed)
Title Page (#u3a3710e9-cfd9-50fa-bf94-026bb87c1441)
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
1. Helen
2. Helen
3. Michael
4. Helen
5. Michael
6. Helen
7. Michael
8. Helen
9. Michael
10. Helen
11. Michael
12. Michael
13. Helen
14. Reuben
15. Helen
16. Helen
17. Helen
18. Michael
19. Helen
20. Helen
21. Michael
22. Helen
23. Reuben
Part Two
24. Helen
25. Reuben
26. Michael
27. Helen
28. Michael
29. Michael
30. Helen
31. Reuben
32. Michael
33. Helen
34. Helen
35. Helen
36. Helen
37. Michael
38. Helen
39. Michael
40. Michael
41. Helen
Part Three
42. Helen
43. Reuben
44. Helen
45. Helen
46. Helen
47. Reuben
48. Helen
49. Helen
50. Reuben
51. Michael
52. Helen
Part Four
53. Michael
54. Helen
Acknowledgements
A Q&A with C. J. Cooke
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by C. J. Cooke
About the Publisher
K. Haden
Haden, Morris & Laurence Law Practice
4 Martin Place
London, EN9 1AS
25th June 2006
Michael King
101 Oxford Lane
Cardiff
CF10 1FY
Sir,
We write again regarding the death of Luke Aucoin. The time to meet about this tragedy is long overdue. Please do not delay in writing to us at the above address to arrange a meeting.
Sincerely,
K. Haden
K. Haden
Haden, Morris & Laurence Law Practice
4 Martin Place
London, EN9 1AS
25th June 2010
Michael King
101 Oxford Lane
Cardiff
CF10 1FY
Sir,
We write again on behalf of our clients regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.
We request that you contact us immediately to avoid further consequences.
Sincerely,
K. Haden
28th January 2017
MURDERER
PART ONE (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
1 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Helen (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
30th August 2017
I think I might be dead.
The scene in front of me looks like sea fret creeping over wasteland, closing in like a fist. A smell, too – sewage and sweat. There’s a flickering light, like someone bringing a torch towards the mist, and it grows so bright that I realise it’s my eyelids beginning to creak open, like two slabs of concrete breaking apart. Wake up! I shout in my head. Wake up!
Painful brightness. I can make out a ceiling with yellow stains and broken plasterboard, and a ceiling fan that spins limply. I try to lift my head. It takes enormous effort just to raise it an inch, as though an anvil is strapped to it. Where am I? My denim shorts and T-shirt are torn and caked in mud. I’m on a bed wearing one sandal. My other foot is twice its normal size, the blue nail polish that Saskia applied to my toes peeking through dried blood. I wiggle my toes, then my fingers.
I can feel my limbs. Good.
A nurse is busy replacing something at the foot of the bed. A urine drainage bag. A sharp tug at my side alerts me to the fact that the bag belongs to me.
‘Excuse me?’ I say. My voice is hoarse, no more than a croak.
The foreign chatter elsewhere in the room makes me think that the nurse might not speak English.
‘Sorry, but …? Excuse me? Can you tell me why I’m here?’
Even now, when I’ve no clue where I am or why, I’m apologising. Michael always said I apologise too much. I apologised all the way through both labours for screaming the place down.
A man arrives and consults with the nurse, both of them giving me worried looks as I try to sit up. He’s a doctor in plain clothes: a black polo shirt and jeans, a stethoscope and lanyard announcing his purpose. To my left is a window with a ripped insect net, and for some reason I want to go to it. I need to find something, or someone. ‘You must be careful,’ the doctor warns me in a thick Belizean accent. ‘Your head is very damaged.’
I reach a hand to my head and feel the padding of a dressing on my left temple. The skin around my left eye feels swollen and sore to the touch. I remember now. I remember what I was searching for.
‘Do you know where my children are?’ I ask him, the realisation that they’re nowhere to be seen making my heartbeat start to gallop.
The room lists like we’re rolling on high seas. The doctor insists that I lie down but I’m nauseous with fear. Where are Saskia and Reuben? Why aren’t they here?
‘This is you?’ The doctor holds a shape in front of me. My passport. I stare at it through tears. My face stares back blankly and my name is there. Helen Rachel Pengilly.
‘Yes. Look, I have two children, a son and daughter. Where are they?’
The doctor gives the nurse another deep look instead of answering me. Please don’t say they’re dead, I beg you. Don’t say it.
I begin to hyperventilate, my heart clanging like an alarm in my ears. And right as blackness reaches up to claim me, a sharp odour tugs me back into the room. Smelling salts. A cup of water materialises in front of me. The water’s got bits of dirt in it. Someone tells me to drink, and I do, because instinct tells me that perhaps if I obey they’ll tell me Saskia and Reuben are alive. Give me arsenic, a pint of oil. I’ll drink it. Just say they’re OK.
Another nurse brings a rickety wheelchair. She and the doctor help me off the bed and manoeuvre the drip-stand as I lower, my muscles trembling, on to the roasting hot seat-pad. Then we squeak through the ward towards a narrow, dimly lit corridor.
2 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Helen (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
16th August 2017
It’s paradise here. Picture a narrow curve of white sand that arcs into the twinkling Caribbean. Six beach huts stood on stilts at a comfortable distance from one another along the strip, each with its own patch of ivory sand and acidic-blue ocean. No one around for about twenty miles, with the exception of the other two groups of people staying in the beach huts. A group of five from Mexico – I can’t tell if they’re family or just friends; their English is minimal and my Spanish is limited to ‘hello and ‘thanks’ – and at the very far end, the McAdam family from Alabama. Michael was suspicious of them at first when the husband asked a lot of questions about us, and I felt that familiar sting of panic, voices arguing in my head. ‘We’ll keep to ourselves,’ Michael announced cheerily as we made our way back to our hut, but I knew what he meant, and for one horrible afternoon I was wrenched back over two decades, into another century and another skin.
I make coffee and clear away the bowls left on the kitchen table. Saskia and Reuben are playing on the beach outside, their laughter drifting through the warm air. I pull two boxes of pills marked Cilest and Citalopram from my handbag and pop one of each out of the blister packs, knocking them back with a chug of water at the sink. Usually a glimpse of sunlight is enough to turn me into a lobster but my reflection shows I’ve caught my first actual tan in I don’t know how long, a deep bronze that knocks years off my face. Bright golden streaks have started to flash amongst my natural blonde, concealing the grey strands that have started to show. The sadness in my eyes, though – that’s always there.
We’ve been running for twenty-two years and I’m tired. I want to stop, lay down roots. It’s not in my make-up to live a peripatetic existence but we’ve had eight different addresses in Scotland, England, Wales, and even Northern Ireland. We tried to move to Australia but in the end it was too difficult to get visas. We don’t vote, don’t have social media accounts. Most of the time, we’re as normal as any other family. We’re content. Four years ago we made the huge decision not to rent any more and bought our first home, a pretty cottage in Northumberland. We have a dog and a guinea pig and Saskia and Reuben are thriving at their schools. But every now and then, I’m reminded of Luke. My first love. Especially at moments like this, when I’m happy and I remember I have no right to be.
Luke is dead because of me.
I’m putting on my sarong when Saskia comes screaming into the beach hut.
‘Mum, you have to come and see,’ she shouts, both hands splayed in front of her like a mime navigating invisible glass. When I don’t move she wraps her hands around my arm and yanks me with surprising force to my feet.
‘Starfish!’ she yells, skipping down the steps to the beach. ‘Careful,’ Michael says as we kneel on the sand to inspect them. A dozen orange starfish, bigger than Michael’s hand, studded with intricate patterns. He scoops one up, but instead of staying flat it begins to squirm.
Saskia bounces on the balls of her feet and points at something in the water. ‘Look! Right there!’ Reuben and I get to our feet and look out at the silky jade-green water. About twenty feet ahead is a pod of dolphins arcing through the waves, sunlight bouncing off their silvery backs. We all gasp. None of us have ever seen a dolphin in real life.
Saskia is weepy with excitement. ‘I have to go swim with them, Mum! Please, please, please!’
‘Here,’ Michael says, squatting in front of her. ‘Climb on.’
She jumps on his back and Michael quickly wades out to them while I hold my breath. Michael is capable, a strong swimmer. Dolphins are amazing creatures but the water is deep and there are endless dangers out there.
They’ll be fine, don’t spoil it.
I can’t watch. I busy myself by helping Reuben with his sand sculpture until Michael and Saskia emerge from the waves laughing and the dolphins have moved further down the bay.
We’ve been here two weeks, and by ‘here’ I mean the coast of Belize. Our original plan was to spend the school holidays travelling around Mexico. At Mexico City we joined a tour bus to the Yucatán via some jaw-dropping (and knee-wrecking) sights, such as the pyramids at the City of the Gods, where Reuben delighted in telling Saskia about mass human sacrifices. We saw the soaring white peak of the Popocatépetl volcano, the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque, the pretty pastel-coloured streets of Campeche, and finally Cancún.
Reuben has adapted to the foreign setting more easily than I expected. The tour group was mostly older couples, so the bus was quiet and the air conditioning during long journeys helped to keep him comfortable. We had a problem at first with the lack of pizza – which is all he will eat – but we learned to improvise with tortillas laid flat and covered with salsa and cheese.
We went to Mexico for Reuben’s benefit. At least, that’s what we told everyone, including each other. Reuben did a stunning Year 9 project on the Mayans, involving a hand-crafted scale model Mayan temple and a 3D digital sketch that he projected on to black card surrounding the temple. We’d no idea he was capable of something like that and Michael said we should reward him. A trip to the real Chichén Itzá seemed the perfect way to do this, and as we’d not had a proper family holiday in a long time we figured a bit of a splurge was well overdue. But I also sensed that Michael was on edge, eager to run again. We’ve lived in Northumberland for four years now. Far longer than any other place.
When we arrived at Chichén Itzá Reuben sat in the tour bus for a long time, his face turned to the grey pyramid visible through the trees. Michael, Saskia and I all held our breaths, wondering whether he was going to start screaming or banging his head off the window.
‘Should I do the feet thing?’ Michael asked me nervously. The ‘feet thing’ is how we calm Reuben when he gets really worked up. I discovered it by accident when he was just a baby, and it grew out of the nights that I bathed him and then laid him on his mat to dry his little body. He’d lift his feet up towards my lips and I’d grab his ankles and blurt on the soles of his feet. It tickled him, made him laugh. As he got older and more sensitive to sound and chaos we tried everything to calm him. One night, when he’d worn himself out from screaming and lay down in bed on top of my legs, I ran my fingers up and down his shins. He started to calm down, then lifted his bare feet to my lips. I blurted them. He stopped crying altogether.
Ever since then, we do ‘the feet thing’ when he seems to be building up to a paroxysm – kissing a teenager’s smelly size tens and stroking his hairy shins somehow doesn’t have the same appeal as when he was a baby, but whatever works.
‘I think he’s OK,’ I told Michael, studying Reuben, reading the air around him. The trick is to approach him as you might approach a wild horse. No questions, no fuss – even when he strips naked in public places. We’d somehow convinced him to wear shorts in Mexico and he complied (we made sure to buy blue shorts), but he was still ignoring Michael at that point. I tried to tell myself that this was progress. After the thing between Michael and Josh’s dad, Reuben had gone ballistic, crying, screaming, smashing up his bedroom. I managed to get him to stop being so violent, but he withdrew and wouldn’t speak. Instead, he took to writing ‘Dad’ on his iPad and then vigorously crossing it out, signalling that Michael was dead to him.
At Chichén Itzá, though, I hoped that we could put everything behind us. Reuben looked from me to the pyramid – El Castillo – as though he couldn’t quite believe it was real; that he was here. I glanced at Michael, signalling that now was his chance to make amends. He turned around in the driver’s seat and grinned at Reuben.
‘We’re here, son. We’re actually at Chichén Itzá.’
Reuben kept his head turned away. Definitely not a sign that he wanted his feet to be stroked.
‘Do you want to climb to the top with me, Reuben?’ Michael asked gently.
He reached out to take Reuben’s hand, but Reuben sprang up from his seat and raced up the bus aisle, his long limbs moving in fast strides towards the clearing.
‘I’ll go,’ I said, and I reached down for my bag and followed after. Once I caught up with him I put my arm around his waist. We fell into step. He’s already six foot, even though he’s only fourteen. I wish he wasn’t so tall. It would make the sight of him clambering on to my knee for a cuddle or breaking down in tears when we’re out in public far less likely to draw stares.
‘You OK, sweetheart?’
He nodded but kept his head down. I handed him his iPad and followed at a comfortable distance while he raced off and began to film the site. We spent the day with the rest of the tour group exploring, giving Reuben hourly countdowns, as promised, so that he could anticipate leaving and manage his feelings of sadness a little better. Even so, when we got back into the bus at dusk I saw that his lip was trembling, and my heart broke for him.
We headed to the hotel at Cancún, and that’s where things started to go wrong. It was just too busy. Reuben’s noise-cancelling headphones usually keep him calm but the crowds and heat were overwhelming for him. Saskia and I were worn out by the searing temperatures and squabbling couples amongst our tour group too, and the guide seemed intent on traipsing around tourist-tat stalls instead of taking us to more ancient ruins. At one point Saskia lost her teddy, Jack-Jack, in a market and we had to spend an entire day trawling through souvenirs to find it. She’s had Jack-Jack since birth – a gift from my sister, Jeannie – and wouldn’t be consoled until we found him.
Luckily, we did, but we were all agreed – noise and crowds weren’t for us. So Michael went online and changed our booking to a small resort in Belize, within driving distance of a Mayan site even bigger than Chichén Itzá. Reuben was elated. We hired a car, broke free of the tour group and drove to this place.
I go back inside and pull laundry out of the washing machine, then take it out to the side garden to hang on the line. Michael comes into the garden, soaking wet from his swim. He’s in the best shape of his life, his arms broad and sculpted from deadlifts, his legs strong and muscular from cycling most nights to counter long days at the bookshop. His deep tan suits him, though I’m not sure about the beard he’s grown. He likes to say he’s ‘an auld git’ (he’s forty-one) but to me, he’s never looked better.
‘Where’s Saskia?’ I say, looking past him at the tide that has begun to creep up the beach, devouring Reuben’s sand sculpture.
He slicks his dark wet hair off his face. ‘Oh, I just left her to swim on her own.’
‘You what?’ I take a step forward and scan the part of the beach further to the left. In a moment, Sas comes into view, wrapping a strand of seaweed around her waist to make a mermaid tutu.
‘Honestly, Helen,’ Michael says, grinning. ‘You think I’d leave her to swim out in open water on her own?’
I slap his arm lightly for winding me up. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past you.’
‘Ouch,’ he says, flinching at my slap. ‘Oh, I found something in this shed here. Come have a look.’
He steps towards the plastic bunker that I’d assumed was the cistern and flings open the doors to reveal a storage cupboard chock-full of beach boards, wet suits, snorkels, windsurfing sails, inflatables, rockpool nets, and surfboards. He takes out a rolled up piece of thick cotton and inspects it.
‘Doesn’t look very waterproof. What do you think it’s for?’
We unravel it, each taking an end, until it’s clear that it’s a hammock. Michael nods at the palm trees behind me and suggests I tie one end to the fattest trunk while he fastens the other to a tree about eight foot in the opposite direction. Both trunks conveniently have metal hooks where other guests have secured the hammock.
‘Climb in,’ he says once we’ve set it up. I shake my head. I worry that I’m too heavy for it. I haven’t weighed myself in almost a year but last time I did – under protest – I was thirteen stone, an unfortunate side effect of long-term antidepressant use. I’m five foot nine so can carry it, but most of the weight has settled around my waist.
‘This is the life,’ Michael says, climbing into the hammock. Then, when he spots me tidying up the storage cupboard: ‘Helen. Get. In.’
The hammock stretches as I lie beside him, almost touching the ground, but it holds.
‘See?’ Michael says, slipping an arm under my neck and holding me close to his wet skin. For a moment there is nothing but the rustle of palm trees and Saskia’s singing on the back of the wind. I try to resist sitting up to check she’s OK and that Reuben is still on his iPad on the deck.
‘That’s better,’ Michael says, kissing the top of my head. He has his hands clasped around me and I can feel his chest rise and fall with breaths that grow gradually slower and deeper. How long has it been since we lay like this? It feels nice.
‘Maybe we should move out here,’ he says.
‘Definitely.’
‘Serious. You could home-school the kids.’
‘Mmmm, way to sell it to me. And what would you do? Build a book shack?’
‘Not a bad idea. I could be our designated hunter-gatherer. I reckon I’d make a good Caribbean Bear Grylls. I’ve got the beard for it, now.’
‘Bear Grylls doesn’t have a beard, idiot.’
‘Robinson Crusoe, then.’
I stroke the side of his foot with my toe. ‘I wish we could.’
‘Why can’t we?’
‘Blimey, if we’d the money, I’d move out here in a shot.’
‘Cheaper to live out here than England. We could make money by taking tourists out on boat trips.’
‘Stop winding me up,’ I say.
‘I’m not winding you up …’
‘Neither of us speak a word of Spanish, Michael.’
‘Buenos días. Adiós, per favor. See? Practically fluent.’
‘You wally.’
‘Anyway, they speak Kriol here.’
‘We don’t speak that either …’
‘Belize is a British colony. We probably wouldn’t even need a visa.’
‘What about our house? And, you know, my job?’
‘You’re always whinging about how much you hate teaching.’
I feel a bit hurt by this. I enjoy teaching and I care deeply about my pupils … but no, this was not my dream. I sort of fell into it, and once I realised that the hours suited family life it was a no-brainer. I could argue that Michael’s book shop is the same – not his dream, but a reasonable attempt at fulfilment that pays the bills and fits around our children’s lifestyles.
‘A holiday is one thing, living here is another,’ I say, and I remind him of the conversation we had with the tour operator about Central America. Got to be careful out there. Lots of dangers in the rainforest. Jaguars, snakes, pumas aplenty.
‘What do you think I’m here for?’ he says. ‘I’m your protector.’
I roll my eyes. ‘I’d like to see you try and walk away from your bookshop. Even if it is burnt to a crisp.’
The words are out before I’ve a chance to haul them back into my mouth and lock them into the box of unmentionable things. The bookshop. We’ve not spoken about it the whole time we’ve been on holiday. Not a single mention of the fire that gutted Michael’s beautiful bookshop which he has single-handedly built up from scratch to become one of the best independents in the region. A three-storey Mecca for bookworms, the jewel of our town, now in ruins: black, cooked. For one awful moment I’m wrenched back into that night when we saw the flames dancing high into the night sky.
The phone woke us in the middle of the night. It was Mr Dickinson who owned the pet store a few shops along. He’d spotted smoke from the street, then drove down to check his own shop. He said he was about to call the fire brigade, but he wanted to let us know, too. We raced down there, both of us betting on a manageable fire, one that we could tackle ourselves with a couple of fire extinguishers that Michael had tossed into the boot of the car. When we arrived, smoke was already curling out from beneath the front door, orange flames dancing in the first-floor windows. Michael started to unlock the front door but I grabbed his arm.
‘Don’t go in,’ I said. He ignored me and pushed open the door, determined to damp down the flames. I watched, helpless, as he ran inside with the fire extinguishers and took to the stairs. Thick black smoke was funnelling down the stairs and beating across the ground floor, and I could hear the crackling sounds of the fire upstairs destroying the new café, chewing up the beautiful sofas and coffee tables that had only recently been installed. Sirens of fire engines screamed in the distance. I covered my mouth with my hand and tried not to breathe in the smoke, but with every second that went by it seemed to grow thicker, and my lungs ached for fresh air. I couldn’t call out to Michael. He was still on the first floor, and to my horror I could see flames at the top of the stairs.
Just when I thought I would have to go up there to drag Michael out he appeared, an armful of books pressed to his chest, struggling to breathe. He stumbled down the stairs, dropping the books and falling into my arms.
The shop was destroyed, our livelihood annihilated. Some kind stranger set up a JustGiving fund and within a few weeks we had raised eleven thousand pounds. Possibly enough money to recoup some stock, pay some creditors. But there’s the mortgage, the loss of income … The insurance company are still determining the cause of the fire.
The mood has dipped. I try to think of something to say that will swing it back again to the blissed-out vibe we’d enjoyed here since our arrival. It strikes me why we’ve avoided talking about the fire out here: the contrast between this heavenly place and drab, icicled Northumberland make it feel as though we’ve stepped into another realm. There are no reminders here. But silence doesn’t lie. We both know we have to go back and face it all.
‘I should have installed CCTV,’ he says in a low voice. ‘Everyone said to do it and I got lazy.’
‘There’s no guarantee that cameras would have picked up anything,’ I say, recalling how we sat in shock at the fire station, covered head to toe in black soot like two Victorian chimney sweeps. The deputy station chief educated us brusquely about the many causes of accidental blazes: sunlight bouncing off a mirror and hitting newspaper reduced a sixteenth century Scottish castle to embers. Hair straighteners left too close to a notebook on a teenager’s dressing table took out a row of houses. Our fire could have been down to a faulty storage heater or a loose wire.
‘They’d have caught who started the fire,’ Michael cuts in, swinging his legs over the side of the hammock to sit upright. I reach forward and stroke his back.
I recall with a shudder the police calling both of us in for separate interviews. They asked whether someone had a grudge against us. If we had upset a customer or laid off an employee. Just weeks before I’d persuaded Michael to sack one of our part-timers, Matilda. She doesn’t do anything, I protested. You’re barely paying yourself a salary as it is. The bookshop isn’t a charity for lazy eighteen-year-olds who sit around all day reading Tolkien.
Michael pointed out that she was Arnold’s daughter, and Arnold had been the first to help him out when he set up the shop, but I won in the end. Matilda was sketchy about her whereabouts at the time of the fire – her parents confirmed she’d been out of the house, and it turned out she’d been with a boy. But for a horrible few days it seemed that perhaps Matilda could have been responsible for the blaze.
‘We never ruled out arson,’ Michael says when I remind him that Matilda was found to be innocent. ‘Until the investigation closes, every possibility is on the table.’
‘Maybe it was a group of kids messing around,’ I say to his back. I desperately want him to lie back down with me, to recapture the idyllic mood.
‘We both know kids didn’t start that fire, Helen,’ Michael snaps, getting out of the hammock.
‘Michael?’
I’m taken aback by the sharpness of his tone. As I watch him head back into the hut I sense he’s exhausted, worn thin by worry. But I wish we could discuss this. Every time we start to talk about something that cuts deep he just walks away.
3 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Michael (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
28th August 2017
We’ve got a mutiny on our hands right now.
‘Pleeease can we stay here, Dad?’ Saskia howls in the kitchen as I make breakfast. This morning our butler (yes, an actual butler – I feel like a Kardashian) dropped off our food parcel, containing waffles (round, so we can tell Reuben they’re pizzas), maple syrup, coconuts, dragon fruit, freshly baked bread, eggs, salad, blueberry pancakes, pineapple, the most mouth-watering bacon I’ve ever tasted in my entire life, and a bottle of wine.
‘I’m sorry, my love,’ I say, hugging Sas to my side as I heat the waffles on the hob. She smells of sunlight and the ocean. ‘I’m afraid we can’t change our flight. We’ve got today and tomorrow and then we have to head off to Mexico City to fly home.’
‘But Daa-aad, I don’t want to go home. Jack-Jack doesn’t want to go, either.’
‘Hmmm,’ I say, tipping waffles on to a plate. ‘So, nobody wants to go home? What do you suggest we do then?’
She does the same thing as Helen when she thinks. Screws up her nose like there’s a bad smell. Face just her like mother’s, too. Same twinkling blue eyes that show every emotion and absorb every last detail. Same dimple in her left cheek and buttery curls to her shoulders.
‘Can’t we just buy a house here?’
‘You’d miss everyone, I think. So would Jack-Jack.’
She gives a dramatic sigh, seven going on seventeen. ‘Like who, exactly?’
‘Well, Amber and Holly would miss you. And I bet Oreo can’t wait to see you …’
‘But they could come here …’
‘What about your ballet recital?’ I ask. She has no answer to that and I know she’s excited for it. I set her plate of waffles on the coffee table and squat down to face as her as she begins to do a couple of ballet moves.
‘To tell you the truth, my love, I don’t want to go home either.’
She widens her eyes. ‘You don’t?’
I press my lips together, shake my head. ‘But don’t tell Mummy.’
‘Is it because you don’t like flying?’
‘Nope.’
‘Is it because you love this house and the sea and you’d like to live here?’
‘Exactly. I like spending my days on the beach instead of having to go to work. I’d like to do it for ever. Wouldn’t you?’
She nods eagerly, her face all lit up with hope. I wish I could give her everything. I wish I could make the world as perfect as she deserves it to be.
‘Here, come and help me put all this food away.’
She does a little ballet twirl across the floor, arms crooked like she’s holding an invisible beach ball between them, and looks into the box of food that I’m unloading.
‘Bacon?’ she says, holding up the packet like it’s a dead rat.
‘Not for you, love. Reuben and I will enjoy that.’
‘Bacon isn’t even nice, Daddy,’ Saskia says. She’s decided to become vegetarian, like Helen, so all I’ve heard about for the last three months is how meat is Satan. ‘I tried some once and it tasted not very nice. Plus, it’s from pigs and they’re more smarter than dogs and you wouldn’t eat our dog, would you?’
‘Hmmm. You know, if he tasted like bacon, I’d consider it.’
‘Daddy!’
I lean over and give her a kiss. She still kisses me on the lips, a quick peck with a big ‘mwah’ at the end, just as she did as a baby. When the day comes that she tells me she’s too old to kiss me anymore I think my heart will break.
‘Do the thing,’ she says when I plop one of the blueberry pancakes into a pan on the stove. ‘Do the flip, Dad. Do it!’
I wait until the pan is nice and hot before planting my feet wide, gripping the pan handle tightly and tossing the pancake as high as I can. It flips into the air, smacks the ceiling, then lands splat in the pan.
‘You did it, Dad!’ she squeals, high-fiving me. ‘Five points for Gryffindor!’
Reuben comes in through the front door, his dark hair and shorts dripping wet. I’m careful to be calm around him. No eye contact. I’m still in his bad books. He dumps a plastic bucket on the floor.
‘We can’t go home,’ he announces flatly.
‘Daddy pancaked the ceiling,’ Saskia says.
‘Five points for Gryffindor,’ Reuben says, deadpan. ‘Look what I found.’
Saskia peers into his bucket and squeals. I tell her to shush, she’ll upset Reuben, but his focus is on the baby turtle, its head no bigger than the tip of my thumb, its shell covered in zigzag patterns. It sweeps its flippers back and forth as though it wants to swim.
‘We should take it back to the water,’ I say as Saskia plucks it out of the bucket and cuddles it to her chest. ‘His mum must be looking for him.’
‘Like Finding Nemo?’ Saskia says.
‘That was a clown fish,’ Reuben replies.
‘Dude,’ I say, imitating the turtles in Finding Nemo. ‘What up, squirt?’
Reuben falls silent, and I freeze, expecting one of two reactions: he’ll either storm out of the room or he’ll slug me across the face. Reuben isn’t often violent but when he is it’s ugly, given that he has the strength and height of an adult. He looks like he’s thinking really hard about something. Maybe he’s trying to control his anger.
‘Righteous!’ he says suddenly, a big grin lighting up his face.
‘Curl away, my son,’ I say, suddenly glad that I watched Finding Nemo ten million times.
I raise my eyebrows at Helen who is standing there with her eyes like saucers and her jaw on the ground, stunned that Reuben has actually spoken to me. He’s deeply forgiving, full of love, but I could hardly expect him to react any other way after what happened at Josh’s birthday party.
I was only trying to protect him. That’s my job. My whole reason for existing.
I wake to find Helen sitting at the end of the bed wrapped in a yellow towel. She’s on the other side of the mosquito curtain but I can make out her gold hair, braided down her back, the web of the Celtic tattoo on her shoulder just visible in the dim light. I sit up quickly, amazed that I actually slept, and she tells me to relax, it’s OK, but I’m covered in sweat and my heart is racing. I was dreaming. Bright images pitch and mulch in my head like a soup. When Helen comes into focus I see her face is filled with worry.
‘Are you alright?’ she says. ‘Bad dreams again?’
I push my fingertips into my eyes, trying to blot out the disturbing images in my head. For years, the same dream. A door made of fire. I’m standing in front of it with the knowledge that I have to open it, because on the other side is paradise, a land of pure, endless happiness. Sometimes I’m alone. Sometimes I’m with Helen and the kids, and I have to take them through the door, but I worry about them getting hurt. I always wake in a sweat. Sleeping pills washed it away and now it’s back, as vivid as ever.
‘I went for a swim,’ she whispers. I take her hand, wondering what’s wrong. She looks shaken.
‘You OK?’
‘I saw something weird. It was probably nothing. I don’t know.’
‘You saw something weird where? Out in the water?’
She nods and holds a finger to her lips, urging me to keep my voice down. ‘In the beach hut next to ours. They had a telescope just like the one we have in the living room.’
A telescope? Ah yes, I remember. The scope on the tripod we moved into a corner so the kids wouldn’t knock it over. We presumed it was for spotting sharks and rays in the water outside.
‘And?’
‘It was pointed at our hut.’
‘What was?’
‘The telescope.’ She gives a shudder. ‘It was creepy …’
‘But … didn’t the butler say all the other huts were empty as of yesterday?’
She bites her lip. ‘That’s the other thing. When I looked in the window of one of the rooms the bed was unmade. There were clothes on the floor. It looked like someone was staying there.’
‘Maybe one of the groups stayed on? Or a late booking?’
‘But why would they point the telescope at our beach hut?’ She looks on the verge of tears now, terrified. ‘It felt like someone was watching us.’
I tell her I’ll check it out myself. But if I’m honest this has me worried. The fire at the bookshop was no accident, I know that, but I can’t say too much about it to Helen. We were being watched at home, before we left. I saw a guy watching the shop right before the fire. Same car outside every day for a week, and then he followed me home. Couldn’t say anything about this to the police, of course. They’d ask questions. Why would someone be watching you? It was the reason I pushed for us to go abroad for an extended holiday, to buy some time to think.
I can’t change what happened to Luke. I can’t stop them from hunting our family. But I can definitely work out a way to protect us.
I don’t go back to sleep. Nothing unusual about that, though tonight I’m wired, all my senses on high alert. I’ve learned to manage on about four hours a night, with the occasional catnap during the day to keep me going. Four nights a week I’ll set my alarm for 3am and get up to work out. Arms and abs on Mondays and Thursdays, a ten-mile run on Tuesdays and Fridays. Then I read, answer work emails, maybe tidy the house or go for a walk. We live near a beautiful tow path in England and at sunrise you see all kinds of wildlife: otters, foxes, hedgehogs. I’ve tried to persuade the kids to come out with me but they’re not morning people.
Here, though, the wildlife is something else. We’re about a mile from the rainforest but even so, I spot a monkey in one of the trees at the side of our hut. He helps himself to the coconuts, then spies a half-empty packet of crisps left out by one of the kids on the decking. I film it all on my mobile. He’s right in front of me, so close I can touch him. Completely unafraid. I set down my can of Coke to reach out and stroke him. Amazingly, he lets me, then reaches out and snatches my Coke before running off. Little git.
I put my hands in my pockets and take a walk up the bank to the road that links all the beach huts. The family from Alabama are gone, and good riddance. Too many questions about where we were from, why we were here. One of the kids screwed up her face at Reuben and said loudly, ‘Why are you so weird?’ Yeah, so she’s only a kid but the parents didn’t correct her, didn’t tell her gently not to be rude. They just laughed.
The road is clear of cars, meaning that there aren’t any guests in the huts. So why would Helen have seen clothes in one of the bedrooms? There’s nothing but rainforest for about twenty miles. Someone could have been dropped off at one of the huts, or the guests could have gone out for the day. Holiday season’s virtually over, though. That’s what Kyle said.
I walk on the sand, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. The moon is bright tonight, a long causeway of silver light tossed over a slate of ocean. I walk carefully around the hut and when I glance into the living room window I make out the shape of the telescope pointed not at the sea but towards our hut, just like Helen said. It could just be pointed at the north end of the bay, though. Hard to tell. The dolphins like that end of the bay so it’s feasible that they were watching the pod … The other windows are at the back of the hut, too dark to make out what’s inside. No lights on. The palm trees sway in the breeze and the sea sweeps forward and back, exhaling. No movement, no sign of anyone around.
After ten minutes or so I turn back.
The butler comes just after dawn. Helen and the kids are still sound asleep, so I press a finger to my lips as he passes over the food box for today.
‘I found pizza,’ he whispers. ‘For your son. I can’t promise that it won’t taste different but at least it’s the next best thing.’
‘That’s kind of you.’ I find a $10 note in my pocket and slip it to him. ‘Reuben will be thrilled.’
He grins, pockets the cash, then turns to leave, but I set down the box quickly and skip after him.
‘I don’t suppose you can tell me if someone has checked into that hut?’ I say, nodding at the one next to ours.
He thinks, shakes his head. ‘Just you and one other family staying for now.’
‘Another family? Which hut are they staying at?’
He turns and points down the bay. ‘The very last hut, right on the edge of the strand. Has there been some trouble?’
‘No, no. No trouble. Thanks anyway.’
Around eight I find Helen in the bathroom plaiting her hair and present her with breakfast on a tray and a kiss. Then I wake the kids. ‘Get dressed,’ I tell them. ‘It’s our sea safari today.’
‘Sea safari?’ Sas asks, her hair sticking out like she’s rammed her finger in a socket. She leaps out of bed and pulls off her nightie. ‘You’ll need to bring your poncho,’ I tell her.
‘Is it going to rain?’
‘No, but the dolphins might splash water over the boat. You know, when they jump through the water?’
She gives a squeal and wraps her arms around my waist.
‘Sooo excited, Daddy!’
The ride out to sea takes an hour on a twenty-foot sailing boat. I tell Reuben and Saskia to stay in the cabin downstairs where they can sit comfortably and eat snacks, though I have to promise that I’ll shout the second I spot anything with a fin.
After half an hour Helen comes out to join me. She rubs my back and lays her head against my shoulder.
‘You were up again all night, weren’t you?’ she says with a sigh.
‘No.’
‘Don’t lie …’
‘I just thought I heard something, that’s all.’
She leans back, maps my face with a look of concern. ‘You don’t have to worry about us, you know. I shouldn’t have said anything about the telescope. I was probably just being paranoid after …’
She trails off.
‘After what?’
She looks down. When she meets my gaze again there’s hardness in her eyes. And something else. Frustration.
‘I need to ask something,’ she says, folding her arms. ‘And I need you for once not to avoid the question.’
‘OK.’
She takes a deep breath, readies herself. ‘The day you attacked Josh’s dad …’
‘I didn’t attack him,’ I start to say. ‘It was a disagreement …’
She raises a hand, signalling that I’m to shut up. ‘When you attacked him, you said you were looking out for Reuben. I still don’t know what you meant by that.’
I don’t want to talk about this. I look around, searching for an exit, a distraction. Unless I’m prepared to swim back to land there’s nowhere for me to go. We’re at least fifteen miles from land and even I’m not that strong.
‘I was protecting him,’ I say at last.
‘Protecting him from what, exactly?’
‘Look, the birthday party wasn’t at a climbing centre,’ I say, anxious to close this up once and for all. ‘Josh’s dad was taking the boys climbing up the Simonside Hills …’
‘And?’
I’m starting to feel angry. What has this got to do with what happened at the birthday party? ‘And I could see Reuben was nervous about it. Look, I told you. It was wrong of Josh’s father to …’
‘To what?’
I look up, catch her eyes. She’s challenging me.
‘To … to put Reuben in a position where he had to choose between his friend and feeling safe.’
She screws up her face. ‘But why …’
‘… and trust me, I did everything to stop it from becoming a scene. You weren’t there. Reuben was freaking out, I could see it in his eyes. And the guy kept talking over him. Even made him start to gear up.’
I see her wince.
‘Josh’s dad wasn’t taking no for an answer. OK, so maybe slugging him was a bit over the mark but I did what I had to …’
She lifts her eyes to mine, an eyebrow cocked. ‘A little over the mark? You knocked him unconscious.’
‘It was an unlucky punch,’ I say, and I can feel a hot ripple of fire in my stomach. I try to swallow it down but it’s insistent. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. What more do you want?’
She looks hurt, which wasn’t my intention, so I reach out and put my hand on hers.
We stand together in mutually wounded silence. We want the same thing, but we go about it in completely different ways. I’m the head of the home, the bad cop. Helen’s still pissed off because it’s meant Reuben losing his one and only friend, Josh. Nice lad. Like Reuben, Josh is autistic. We’ve waited years for Reuben to make friends. Years without a single birthday party invitation or play date. Finally, he goes out and gets a pal and I wreck it all by busting his dad’s face.
But I did what I had to do. And everything has a price, doesn’t it?
And then, there they are, about ten feet from the boat. Whales, as long as buses. Helen spots them and runs to the cabin to alert the kids. By the time they emerge the captain has cut the engine. Sas squeals and jumps up and down at the sight of them while Reuben claps his hands and shouts ‘Magic!’ The captain tells me in concerned tones that humpbacks out here, especially at this time of year, is a bad sign. They could be sick or dying. Of course I don’t mention any of this to the kids. We are close enough to see the barnacles studding their backs, long white lines etched along their bellies, their mouths scissoring the water. A way out to sea another whale bursts out of the water, landing with a huge splash and the peace sign of his tail as he dives below.
‘Look how happy they are, Dad!’ Saskia shouts, and I agree with her, because sometimes love means telling lies.
‘Michael. Michael! Wake up!’
‘What? What’s wrong?’
I sit upright, my head buzzing. I can’t believe I fell asleep. The window squares off a lapis lazuli sky speckled with a million stars and a silvery moon. Helen is out of bed, bending over me as I pull back the sheet.
‘I think someone’s outside,’ she says. ‘I heard footsteps in the back garden and when I went to …’
I’m already up on my feet, pulling on a pair of shorts.
‘I thought it was an animal, at first,’ Helen says. ‘But I saw a man.’
‘How sure are you?’
She bites her lip. ‘Pretty sure.’
‘Stay here,’ I whisper quickly. ‘Keep everything locked behind me.’
In the kitchen I search quickly for something weapon-like – a baseball bat, ideally – but the cupboards yield only a rolling pin and a meat knife. I plumb for the latter and open the side door. Suddenly Helen is there, holding my arm, tears wobbling in her eyes.
‘Why don’t we phone Kyle?’ she says. ‘Or I can look for the tour operator …’
‘And what are they going to do? It’s two in the morning …’
‘I know, but … I shouldn’t … I shouldn’t have woken you …’
I peck her on the forehead. ‘Stay here. I won’t be long.’
I step outside and wait until I hear the click of the door locking behind me. The dark is impenetrable, the only light coming from the moon and the stars. The garden is swallowed by night. No Coke-thieving monkeys to be seen.
I hear a noise to my right. Quick, stealthy strides headed towards the road. I move towards the sound, squinting. I can’t see anything. The footsteps stop, and I hold my breath.
But then, movement on the hill that leads up to the road where our rental car is parked. It’s difficult to see, but I can just make out someone or something moving briskly up the bank.
‘Hey!’ I shout, and the figure moves quickly. My heart is racing. I hold the knife in front of me and go after him.
4 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Helen (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
30th August 2017
I’m wool-headed this morning after last night’s escapades. Not nearly as sexy as it sounds. I woke up to use the loo around two in the morning and heard noises outside. I went to check and saw a man moving around in the garden. At least, I think I did. I was so sure last night and now I’m not. I feel so guilty. I woke Michael and he went after him. He was gone for over an hour. The longest hour of my life. When I saw him coming in through the door I almost collapsed with relief. He was sweaty and out of breath, but not injured.
‘Did you find him?’ I said, my voice trembling. I found myself looking him over for signs of blood.
He set the torch back in the block on the kitchen bench. ‘No. It was too dark.’
‘Didn’t you take a knife? Where is it?’
He sank into a chair by the table and wiped his face. ‘Dropped it.’
I waited for something more – where he’d been, details of a confrontation with an intruder, a fight. A narrative of any sort to put all the questions whirring through my head to bed. Michael wouldn’t make eye contact.
‘But … you were gone for ages. I was out of my mind … I was absolutely beside myself, Michael. Did you catch up with him?’
He rubbed his eyes, stifled a yawn. ‘I followed him into the trees and then I turned back. I got a bit lost, though. Luckily I saw the lights from the bay through the trees and followed them home.’
I gasped. ‘You were in the rainforest?’
He was tired, keen to shrug off the memory of it. ‘It was pitch black. Couldn’t see a thing. One minute I was on the road and the next I was surrounded by trees and frigging monkeys.’
I studied his face. He looked amused by the memory of being surrounded by monkeys, not bothered at all by the fact that he went racing out after a suspected intruder.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, deciding that I had somehow got it all wrong. I’d let my paranoia get to me. ‘But … you really didn’t see who it was?’
He gulped back a glass of water. ‘That’s what I said.’
‘But who could it have been?’ I said. ‘Why would someone have been outside?’
‘Are you sure it was someone?’ Michael said, and I did a double take.
‘You saw him, Michael. You went after him …’
‘I was half asleep. I spent an hour walking in circles in the bloody jungle.’
And there it was again, the edge of guilt against my skin. I looked down, ashamed. ‘Sorry. I think we were both possibly being paranoid.’
‘Both of us?’ he sniped back.
I fell silent. I had been absolutely sure that I had seen a dark figure, a man moving through the garden and up the bank, but just then doubt slipped in, like a lie sliding inside a truth.
‘Let’s just go to bed,’ he said, rubbing his face. ‘We’ve got a long drive back to the airport tomorrow.’
No one is happy when we shut the door on the beach hut for the last time. Reuben has his headphones on but is clicking his fingers and stamping his feet in the way he does when he’s particularly stressed. Saskia is long-faced and holds Jack-Jack extra tight.
‘Maybe we can come back next year,’ Michael says cheerily, though I catch his eye and give a small shake of my head as if to say, let’s not make promises we can’t keep. I have no idea how we’ve afforded this trip, never mind how we could possibly afford round two in a year’s time. We’re still paying off Reuben’s iPad, for crying out loud.
We spend the first hour of the drive to the airport in a gloomy silence. In reflection of our mood it starts to rain, and before long it’s coming down in great sweeping chains. The air feels cooler, which is no bad thing. Grey cloud spreads out across the sky. It’s been blue skies and belting heat for six weeks straight. Saskia decides she needs to wee every four minutes, so we pull over for the dozenth time and let her go at the side of the road.
‘I’ll drive for a bit,’ I tell Michael as he heads back to the driver’s side. ‘You have a nap.’ I’m not completely comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road but I feel guilty at the dark circles under his eyes.
The kids settle down in the backseat, Saskia holding Jack-Jack tightly and looking mournfully out the window, Reuben plugged into his iPad. Michael folds his arms and leans his head against the window. I find a British radio channel and turn the volume just enough to hear. Enjoy the lack of traffic, I tell myself, forcing optimism. It’ll be bumper-to-bumper when you get back home.
About an hour into the journey a white van appears as we approach a bend, moving at high speed along the road towards us. Instinctively I press the brake as I reach the curve of the road. The van draws closer. It appears to be speeding up. Odd, I think. And dangerous. Why speed up on a bend, especially when the road is wet?
At the very last moment, the van veers sharply into our lane, two tyres lifting off the tarmac as it swerves and plunges straight into us.
There is no time to react.
An explosion of metal slamming into metal, the sound of tyres screeching like a wounded animal, the air slashed by screams. An airbag explodes in my face and the car careens wildly, glass shards whipping through the air.
5 (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
Michael (#u6cac2ed4-eba3-5b58-bfcd-ab06c701e7fd)
14th June 1995
The minute I finish my exams I get the cheapest flight I can out of Heathrow. Luke and Theo are already gone – their parents got them first class tickets. I buy the most sophisticated climbing equipment I can squeeze into my tatty rucksack: shorts, T-shirt, hiking pants, sleeping bag and dry bag, tent and stakes, crampons, stove, towel, light, cutlery, thermometer, thermos, Swiss Army knife, rain gear, balaclava, goggles, sandals, granola bars, noodle packets, Chapstick, headlamp, first aid kit, ice axe, carabiners, prusiks, harnesses, rope, flask, and my lucky bear claw.
I expected Chamonix to be a campsite. Instead the bus pulls up to a charming Alpine village with hotels, B&Bs, shops, restaurants with verandas and parasols, right in the crease of a mountain range. It’s pretty mind-blowing here, like being on another planet. All around me are unimaginably tall, jagged peaks, like the spine of a massive dinosaur. I stand in the middle of the street looking up at them, awe-struck. They’re so tall I suddenly feel scared. Ben Nevis didn’t look this big. That’s because it isn’t, you moron, I tell myself. Mont Blanc is fifteen frickin’ thousand feet tall. It takes me a moment to spot her, and then there she is: the almost-perfect triangle at the very top of the massif.
I dump my bags at the youth hostel and set about scavenging for grub.
I head into the pub and lo, Luke and Theo are standing right in front of me with a couple of beers. I can tell who’s who by the choice of outfit. Luke’s dressed like the eighties vomited all over him. Neon pink leggings, white leg-warmers, a Bon Jovi T-shirt and blue goggles over a black bandana. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s wearing a leopard-print thong. Theo’s dressed like he’s recruiting for the SAS: khaki everything, even the boots. A girl is with them. She must be Luke’s girlfriend, Helen.
When Theo catches sight of me he leaves the table and walks quickly towards me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and effectively spinning me the whole way around.
‘Hey,’ he says, nudging us to a table on the other side of the pub.
‘Theo, can you get off me,’ I say, breaking free. I glance over at Luke who is deliberately avoiding eye contact. ‘What’s all this about?’
He sighs, puts his hands on his hips. ‘Look, I know you had a problem with Luke’s girlfriend coming on this trip. I just want you to … stay calm, you know?’
‘I am calm. I’m as calm as a cucumber patch.’
He tilts his chin. ‘You being sarcastic?’
He hates it when I rip the piss out of him. ‘What are you, his bodyguard?’
I catch Luke glancing over to check out my reaction. Theo takes out a pack of cigarettes.
‘Smoke?’
I shake my head.
‘Go on, have one.’
I relent with a sigh. He lights it for me, sits down and invites me to join him. I won’t, so he stands.
I met Luke and Theo two years ago, when we starting a degree in Medieval Literature at Oxford University. They’re twins, both six foot two, blonde rugby-playing public schoolboys who scored straight As in their exams. Both on a full-ride scholarship. Not that they need it; their folks made a fortune in the tech boom in France. They’re identical twins but you can tell them apart. Theo wears glasses, has recently grown a Musketeer moustache, and his personal style is somewhere between misunderstood genius and Kurt Cobain, but even if you closed your eyes you’d pick them out by their voices. They’ve lived all over the world but spent most of their lives at boarding school in Cambridge, though Luke’s accent is still more Oz than Brit with the occasional French twist. Theo’s is perfected Norf Landan.
It’s their personalities that really set them apart. Luke’s an arrogant git but can be good fun when the mood takes him. Theo’s Luke’s shadow, a classic introvert. He prefers to sit in a corner with a beer and a book but he goes to the pub with us out of duty to Luke. He can be weird. He sees a psychiatrist every week. Luke says Theo’s Theo-ness is down to their time at boarding school in Melbourne. A soft-natured three-year-old crying for his mum makes easy prey for bullies and cruel teachers and I reckon he’s never shaken that complex.
And now it seems we’re bringing one of Luke’s groupies along. This Helen. It was only meant to be the three of us. I’ve never even met her. She lives in London and Luke only sees her at weekends. I’ve nothing against girlfriends, or girls for that matter. I’m sure girls can climb just as well as blokes. But she’s never climbed before, and I know exactly what’s happened: she’s one of these possessive types that can’t let Luke out of her sight. He tends to date girls who’re messed up and needy, the ones who only came to Oxford because their folks pressurised them, wanting to make good on years of private school fees, but who are starting to go slightly crazy from the pressure. His last girlfriend got him into cocaine. I’m no angel but I draw the line at the hard stuff. That, and I don’t have any money.
Anyway, the point is that this trip is no stroll in the park. It takes training, strength, stamina and experience – with a good dollop of common sense – to climb Mont Blanc, and if I’m honest even I feel a wee bit intimidated. People have died doing this climb. I’ve spent the last three months training to make sure I’m up to it. What if she has an accident, or freaks out? What if she decides halfway up that she wants to go home? It’ll wreck the trip. A once-in-a-lifetime trip that’s costing an absolute fortune. Luke and Theo’s folks are loaded, so they don’t care how much it costs. But for some of us this means living on beans and toast for the next six months.
I thought Luke was kidding when he first mentioned about a girl tagging along. When it seemed he was actually serious, I tried to get him to see sense. Gently, then with more muscle. Meaning that I plied him with vodka.
‘This new girlfriend,’ I said, once he’d knocked back the fifth glass. ‘The one who’s apparently coming with us to the Alps. Won’t she feel a little like a third wheel?’
‘Fourth wheel,’ Theo corrected.
‘Don’t get what you mean,’ Luke said, lighting a cigar and swearing when the match burnt his fingers.
‘Not exactly a girl’s thing, is it? A twelve-day peregrination up a mountain.’
Luke sniffed at this. Peregrination was his word. He’s such a snob when it comes to language. Why say ‘trek’ when you can say ‘peregrination’?
Luke took a drag on the cigar and blew a thick O of smoke in my direction. ‘Helen’s up for it,’ he said. ‘She’s into that kind of thing.’
‘There aren’t any showers in the Alps. Twelve days without washing, mate. Girls can be a bit funny about that kind of thing. You sure she’s up for that?’
Luke leaned into me until his nose almost touched mine.
‘Michael, my love, she’ll be fine with that.’
‘Can she actually climb?’ I said.
A grim look. ‘Can you?’
‘This isn’t a walk in the park, Luke. It’s the highest mountain in Europe.’
‘It’s the highest mountain in Europe,’ he parroted in a high-pitched voice. ‘She’s fitter than you are, mate. She’s a ballet dancer. Fit as butcher’s dogs, those girls.’
‘I’m sure Helen’ll love being compared to a dog,’ Theo said.
‘Dancing’s hardly climbing, Luke.’
‘What I mean is, she’s athletic …’
‘I’m not risking my neck with an amateur.’
He frowned. ‘So you’re saying you won’t go if she does?’
I took a long drink of my beer, enjoying watching him sweat, his eyes turning nervously to Theo. The thing is, we work very well together as a trio, particularly as Luke finds his twin boring and strange. He spends most of his time trying to palm Theo off on to someone else, occasionally paying other guys to take Theo out for a beer, but Theo prefers to be in Luke’s shadow. And I’ve a knack for getting on both Theo’s and Luke’s level, so I’ve assumed the role of go-between, a stepping stone for their disparate personalities. I’m able to bring out the best in Theo, thus making his constant presence (‘like a frickin’ tumour,’ Luke likes to say) bearable and occasionally pleasant.
‘Come on, Mikey,’ Luke said, backpedalling. ‘This is our epic adventure. It won’t be the same if you don’t come.’
I shrugged, gave him a look of sorry-but-that’s-how-it-is.
He leaned back in his chair, glanced at Theo. ‘We could ask Oliver if he’ll take Michael’s place.’
Theo nodded.
‘Oliver?’ I said. ‘Who’s Oliver?’
‘He’s in Theo’s Old Norse class. Said he’d like to come. He could take your place, Mike. You could maybe even sell your plane ticket to him …’
‘What?’ I said panicking. ‘No! I mean …’
Luke grinned. He knew he had me. He knew better than I did how much I wanted this climb.
‘We’d prefer you to go instead of Oliver, mate,’ Luke said, wrapping an arm around my neck and putting his cigar to my lips. ‘But if you’re a widdle bit afwaid of a girl …’
I shoved him off. ‘Alright,’ I said. ‘I’ll go. But on one condition. We stick to the walking trails. No climbing. No abseiling.’
‘Piss off,’ Luke said. ‘You’re suggesting we don’t actually climb the mountain? What would be the point in going?’
Luke raises his head as I make my way towards the table. He gives me a big cheesy grin and actually stands up to give me a big ‘come here, you’ bear hug which we both know is an attempt to butter me up. I was sure she wouldn’t come. Luke is all-or-nothing, always acting on impulse, so it was likely that his spur-of-the-moment decision to bring her along would be dropped as fast as it was raised.
‘This is Helen,’ Luke says. I grin at the girl beside him, who blushes and says hello. She’s tall, about five foot nine, blonde hair worn in a plait, skinny but not anorexic. A bit shy, and preppier than I expected, with a slender face and high cheekbones, a look of a librarian about her. ‘I’m Michael,’ I say, offering a hand as she seems the sort of girl who does handshakes. A surprisingly firm grip. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she says, and I try to force out the same response but can’t. She’s pretty, though, in a way I didn’t expect. She seems … normal.
‘Nice to meet you, too.’
The words stick in my throat. After all, I finished with Nina a month ago on the basis that I’d be heading off to the Alps for a fortnight and wanted to be free to do as I pleased. Nina might have mentioned that she wanted to see other people the night before but that isn’t the point. I made sacrifices, dammit.
‘I hope you don’t mind me gate-crashing your trip,’ Helen says, sliding her eyes to Luke who shakes his head as if to say, of course not. Git.
‘Yeah, not at all,’ I say, lying through my teeth. ‘The more the merrier, right?’
Later, we head outside for a practice climb up one of the crags ten minutes from the village. It’s the size of a skyscraper but still looks puny compared to the mountains. Seems we’re not alone in this idea, either – about a dozen other climbers are scaling the crag with us. An older couple from New York City, a bunch of tie-dyed, weed-smoking hippies from Portugal, and some plaid-wearing members of a Welsh photography club.
Helen looks visibly nervous about climbing this size of peak and I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from calling it out to Luke. If she can’t manage this, how’s she going to manage Mont Blanc? He spots it though, and subtly suggests we take the walking trail that winds around the side of the crag, avoiding the rocks. Theo finds a ledge about six hundred feet above the valley and we all take a breather, sitting on the big slab with our legs dangling. Luke produces a box of cigars from a pocket in his trousers and passes them round.
‘Mate,’ I say, my mood rising considerably. ‘You’re the best.’
‘There’s more,’ he says, unzipping another pocket.
‘What you got in there?’ Helen says, wiping her face. ‘A parachute so we can all just float back down instead of climbing?’
‘Even better, my love, even better,’ Luke says, pulling out a flask. ‘I’ve got … whisky.’
Helen doesn’t look thrilled but Theo and I are all over it, and in a handful of minutes Luke’s tapping the bottom for the last dregs. I lie back, my legs dangling over the edge, nothing but air between me and death six hundred feet below. The moon is a Cheshire cat’s smile in an inky, cloudless sky.
‘There she is,’ Luke says, leaning towards Helen and pointing at the whitest peak. ‘Mont Blanc. The imaginatively-monikered “white mountain”. Highest mountain in the world.’
‘Western Europe,’ Theo corrects.
‘Highest mountain in Western Europe,’ Luke says sourly.
We sit for a moment in the still warm air, looking over the silhouetted peaks towering above us and the lights of Chamonix below, the hostels and alpine huts glimmering and small as a gingerbread village. To the right I can make out movement, or what looks like a stream of ants hustling along a narrow trail. I take out my binoculars and there they are: hordes of climbers already setting off on the trail.
‘Feels like we’re going on a pilgrimage,’ I observe, stupidly.
‘You bring your rosary with you, then?’ Theo says.
I pass the binoculars to Luke and he glowers at the people heading off. ‘This isn’t a pilgrimage, it’s a traffic jam.’ He looks over the lights in Chamonix and I read his mind: we didn’t think there would be so many hostels. ‘Thought we’d be doing this alone,’ he says. ‘Just the four of us.’
‘Like the four horsemen of the apocalypse?’ Theo says.
‘You’re so competitive,’ Helen tells Luke, rubbing his arm.
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Luke says, kissing her hand.
‘It’s not like there’s someone at the top handing out awards for whoever arrives first,’ Helen laughs.
Theo shrugs. ‘You never know.’
‘The summit is its own reward,’ Luke says.
‘So you won’t be bothered if I get there first?’ Helen says, and I see Luke’s face fall.
‘Not at all.’ He breaks into a beaming grin, then slaps me and Theo on our backs before tilting his head to the sky.
‘I love you guys,’ he says, then adding: ‘and girl.’
‘Luke, babe, don’t take this the wrong way,’ Theo says. ‘But … I’m not snogging you. Don’t care what you give me. I draw a line at tongues. Pecking is fine, but snogging – no. I’m your brother and it’s wrong.’
Helen laughs out loud while Luke and I lie on our backs sending loops of smoke drifting into the night air. I don’t say it, and this is a rare feeling for me, but right now there is simply nowhere else I’d rather be.
6 (#ulink_f31c2774-e437-53d5-a5b7-83b7df5202b4)
Helen (#ulink_f31c2774-e437-53d5-a5b7-83b7df5202b4)
30th August 2017
‘Mum!’
Reuben is running down the hospital corridor towards me, his arms spread wide. He presses his face to my chest and I give a loud cry of relief. There’s a nasty bruise above his right eyebrow, some cuts and dried blood on his forehead, his T-shirt smeared in blood, but otherwise he seems fine. I start to sob – relief or fear, I can’t tell – and he starts to cry, too.
‘Can we go home now, Mum?’ he says, trying to climb on to my knee. ‘I want to go home, OK? Let’s go home.’
‘OK,’ I whisper weakly, wiping tears off my face. ‘We can go home. I promise.’
I tell him as gently as I can not to sit on my lap and hold his hand tightly. The nurse says something that I make out as an urge to keep going, so I tell Reuben to stand and we’re off again, the nurse pushing my wheelchair briskly along the corridor as Reuben staggers alongside me with both hands holding one of mine.
When we turn into a side room I see a figure lying on the bed. Strips of white tape run across his nose, chin, forehead and cheeks, holding a series of tubes and valves leading from his mouth to a monitor by his side.
Slowly I’m skewered by the realisation that this bloodied, unconscious figure is Michael. It’s a realisation that seems to stop time. Trembling, I move closer. A bloodied ear, a small patch of his beard, two blood-encrusted nostrils and a pattern of dried blood on his shin.
‘Why’s Dad not waking up?’ Reuben says behind me. ‘Wake him up, Mum! Wake him!’ His cries wrench at my heart. I try to console him but I grow more and more upset by his distress.
A doctor comes into the room and introduces himself as Dr Atilio. ‘This is your husband?’ he asks me.
I’m gasping for air and my heart is racing. I’m in the grip of a major panic attack.
‘He was awake when the soldiers brought you here,’ I hear the doctor say, though he sounds distant, far away, as though I’m underwater. ‘He is falling in and out of consciousness.’
It’s only when I see Reuben from the corner of my eye and remember that he’s in the room that I somehow find the strength to stop and hold myself together. I hear myself tell Reuben it’s alright, everything is OK, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’m chanting the words over and over to help regulate my heart rate. The nurse moves me close enough to take Michael’s hand. It is limp and covered in dried blood.
I can’t believe this is happening. I can barely breathe. My thoughts whirr and strain to find answers, solutions. I remember with a hard punch to my chest the sight of Saskia on the ground in front of the car.
‘Where is my daughter?’ I shout frantically. ‘Her name … Her name is Saskia. Saskia Pengilly. She’s seven years old, she … she has blonde hair, she was wearing a stripy T-shirt …’
‘We will take you to her,’ the doctor says, and they wheel me abruptly out of Michael’s room towards another ward further along the hallway.
The sight of Saskia on the bed is like a fist slammed into my face. She’s hooked up to machines, there are blood stains on her pink cotton dress, her small, limp hands are bruised and painfully gashed. It is unbearable.
I start to shake, a strangled scream escaping from my open mouth. Even when Reuben starts slapping his head I can’t stop. A nurse appears at my side, pulls the waistband of my shorts down below my hip and sticks a needle in my backside.
Blackness.
‘The lady, she come here for see you.’
A nurse is leaning over me and adjusting a tube in my arm. The room is swaying. Another woman comes into focus. Slim, young. Bobbed black hair, red lipstick. Wide smile. A suit.
‘I’m Vanessa Shoman,’ she says, stretching out a hand. ‘I’m from the British High Commission. The doctor told me that your family had a car accident.’
The knowledge of why I’m here hits me like a wrecking ball. An invisible force sweeping me off my feet and landing me somewhere else in time, outside my own body. Horrifying fragments of the crash flash painfully across my eyes. I wrap my arms around my legs and howl in the space between my knees. I remember crawling on all fours to reach Saskia. She was lying on the ground, about ten feet ahead of the mangled hire car. I remember it was raining and there was glass everywhere. Saskia wouldn’t move. I was screaming for her to wake up.
‘My daughter,’ I tell Vanessa through gulping sobs. ‘She’s seriously injured. I … I don’t know if she’s going to survive.’
I can hardly bring myself to say the words aloud. I can’t stop crying. Reuben is sitting back in his chair, knees to his chest. He looks stricken at the state of me but I’m too helpless to comfort him.
Vanessa rubs my back sympathetically and explains her role as an officer of the High Commission is to help people like me. She assures me she will contact my family and help us get home, but none of it brings any comfort. She tells me we are in a hospital just outside of San Alvaro, one of Belize’s poorest towns. She says the hospitals in this region are understaffed, underfunded, but that a neurosurgeon is coming from Belize City today or tomorrow for Michael and Saskia.
My memories are an explosion of particles that I have to knit together, atom by atom. I remember coming to in the modernist sculpture that used to be the car. I remember Michael slumped like a beanbag in the seat beside me, his right shoulder twisted at an unnatural angle. I was certain he was dead.
What happened after that? How did we get to the hospital?
Vanessa tells me an army truck full of soldiers came across us after the crash. The soldiers dragged Michael and Reuben out of the car, dumped us in their truck and brought us all to the hospital.
‘You were lucky,’ she says. ‘It’s a very remote part of Belize. No towns or villages for many miles. You could have been there a long time before someone found you. Maybe even days.’
She tells me that the soldiers managed to salvage some luggage from our rental car. The bag containing our passports and money is in Michael’s room, but we had other suitcases containing clothes, toys, souvenirs, our mobile phones. Irrelevant, of course, but Vanessa mentions that we were also lucky that the army managed to save them.
‘Save them?’ I say weakly. ‘From what?’
‘From the police. They steal all the time. How many bags had you in total?’
‘I think we had four,’ I say.
She writes this down. ‘How much money did you have in cash?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Any gadgets? Laptops, smartphones?’
I bite my lip. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Credit cards?’
‘I think … maybe AMEX and Mastercard.’
Why does this matter? I don’t care about money. I care about my family.
‘We will check that these are still there. If not, we’ll attempt to cancel the cards for you. But the other bags I don’t think we will ever see again.’
Vanessa folds away her notebook, her information retracted. She pulls another packet of tissues from her bag and passes them to me.
‘You poor thing,’ she says, watching me dissolve into gulping sobs. ‘But it’s good you’re awake. The police will want to get a statement from you as soon as possible.’
Reuben is huddled on the bed next to me. The lights go out, plunging the hospital into darkness. Somehow the darkness makes the sense of loneliness and disorientation ten times worse. I feel trapped in a nightmare. My heart starts to race again. I press my fists against my eyes and weep from my core. It feels like I’ve been torn apart.
I wish Michael was here to tell me that everything is OK. I wish someone could promise me that Saskia is going to make it through. I can’t believe this has happened. I hate myself for being less injured than she is. I would give anything, absolutely anything, to trade places with her.
Earlier I caught my reflection in a broken mirror in the bathroom and had to look twice to check it was me. The left side of my face is yellow and puffed up so badly that my left eye is a mere slit in my face. My hair is pinked with blood and under the dressing on the side of my head is a painful gash. I think my collarbone and wrist are broken. My right ankle might be broken too. I can barely put any pressure on my feet and every movement feels like I’ve torn dozens of muscles.
But I’m alive. We all are. I have to cling to that. It could so, so easily have been otherwise.
Vanessa said that the army brought us here. As I sit up in the darkness I remember a pair of heavy black shoes next to my face as I came to by the car. My image was blurry but I definitely saw them. A ripped denim hem, like jeans. A crunch of glass underfoot.
Michael was unconscious. He was wearing flipflops, not boots. The soldiers would have been wearing fatigues, not jeans. I think the van driver came to inspect the damage to our vehicle after the crash. He was unharmed enough to walk. I’d identify his shoes if I saw them again. Black lace-ups, a scuff on the right toe.
But he didn’t call the police. Vanessa said the army came across us by chance. The driver had left the scene of the crash long before then. I try to imagine him looking over our mangled car, our bodies covered in glass and blood. How could he have looked at Saskia on the ground like that and just raced off without calling anyone? How heartless would you have to be to leave her like that?
I know I saw someone outside the beach hut the other night. Michael questioned me and yes, it was dark but I know I did. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. Dark hair. Short – about five foot eight – with black fuzzy hair. Dark-skinned, stocky. I didn’t see his face.
And the telescope at the other hut that was pointed at ours. It freaked me out. I only stopped to catch my breath on the pier. Curiosity got the better of me so I went for a look around. I knew no one was staying there. But when I glanced inside the window I saw one of the bedrooms with clothes on the floor, the sheets kicked back off the bed as though someone had been sleeping there.
‘I need a story,’ Reuben says. ‘Tell me a story.’
‘I don’t have any books, love,’ I say weakly. ‘I don’t think the hospital has any either.’
‘Tell me a story, Mum. I want a story. Tell me a story.’
I make him turn away from me so he won’t see the tears running down my face. Then, in low whispers, I tell him the story of Angelina Ballerina. It’s the only story I can recall because Saskia makes me read it to her all the time.
When he falls asleep I try to will myself to stand. My legs feel like jelly and I want to throw up from the pain but finally I’m able to pull myself upright. I need to go and check on Saskia. I want to make sure she’s OK. I’m stricken by the thought that, if someone has struck our car deliberately, they won’t stop there.
I try and will my body to do what I so desperately need it to do, but it won’t. I used to be able to push through all kinds of muscle damage and foot injuries, but now I have no strength left and feel dangerously woozy. I sink back down beside Reuben and fall into darkness.
I dream of Saskia coming into our bed for a cuddle.
Morning, Mummy. Can I snuggle with you?
In the dream she curls up next to me and watches Netflix on an iPad while I read. Michael appears in the doorway with a tray laden with cereal bowls, toast, coffee, and a babyccino for Saskia. We stay there until it’s time to take Reuben swimming and Saskia to ballet. The warmth of the blankets, her feet against my calves, her forehead against my lips, butter-soft, and her little fingers laced between mine, both of us wearing sky-blue nail polish flecked with glitter.
Mummy, please stay a little longer. I love our mornings.
7 (#ulink_ae91826e-8f10-5d49-b993-433e4214bfe9)
Michael (#ulink_ae91826e-8f10-5d49-b993-433e4214bfe9)
31st August 2017
I can hear someone screaming. No, not screaming. A mechanical whine, a machine somewhere that whirs.
I open my eyes and immediately bright light squared off by a window blinds me. My eyes adjust and I see I’m in a room with a small rectangular window to my right. Plaster is peeling off the wall beneath the windowsill. I can hear shouting down the hall. All a bit Mad Max in here. A white sheet is drawn across my legs. My T-shirt and jeans are covered in dirt and blood stains. There’s dried blood all over my arms. I feel like someone’s beaten me with a metal bar.
My mind flicks through reasons that I might be in hospital like a slot machine spinning its three wheels printed with cherries and bells. Three sevens line up, and I remember.
The crash.
It comes to me in vivid, broken flashes. The sound of the car whipping round. I was sure I’d died. I was sure we’d all died. Did we hit a tree? I remember the car coming to rest virtually upside down. Helen was shaking like she was having a fit, her teeth chattering. I told her it was OK, that everything was OK. Her breathing slowed. After a few moments I managed to make out something she said.
He just came out of nowhere.
A tear slid down her cheek.
Who? I said. Who came out of nowhere?
The van. He just slammed into us.
I told her I loved her.
I love you too. I’m so scared, Michael.
I thought those were the last words I’d ever hear.
I think back to last night, when I chased after the guy who’d been trespassing outside our beach hut. I didn’t want to make much of it to Helen but when I got to the top of the bank I saw someone running towards a white van that was parked about a hundred yards away from the hut. I shouted, ‘hey!’, and this guy turns and looks at me, holding his hands at either side of his shoulders as if to say ‘what?’
I stopped dead in my tracks and gave a gasp. He looked exactly like Luke. Same sandy-blonde hair, same build, same face. I felt all the blood drain from my face.
‘Luke?’ I called out. ‘What are you doing here? Luke?’
He took a few steps towards the van, then jumped in and took off, the tyres kicking up white stones. I was so stunned at the sight of him that I didn’t react, at first. Then I started to run after him, thinking that if I could get the registration plate I could report him. He sped off down the path and took a right. There was no way I was going to catch up with him so I cut through the trees. Daft, on hindsight, but I was in a daze. Luke is dead. It could have been Theo. But why here? And why now?
I’m lucky to have made it out. The rainforest is fifty miles thick. One wrong turn and I’d have been in deep kimchi.
The bleep of the heart monitor tugs me back into the present.
I sit up and try to speak but my mouth feels full of cotton wool. I think back to the fire at the bookshop. The bookshop wasn’t just my pride and joy. It was an offering, an act of supplication to Luke. And they burned it down.
We’re not safe here. They won’t stop until we’re all dead.
8 (#ulink_fda062c4-fde8-591d-afac-4cfacce15480)
Helen (#ulink_fda062c4-fde8-591d-afac-4cfacce15480)
31st August 2017
I’m woken by a man and woman removing my drip. Both are in plain clothes, the man dressed so casually that I jump when I see him standing so close. Jeans and a colourful Hawaiian shirt with a rosary around his neck. He speaks to me in Kriol.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ I tell him. He starts to gesture with his hand but I don’t understand it. After a few minutes of confusion the nurse says ‘X-ray’ and I realise they want to take me for one.
‘Yes. Yes, X-ray,’ I say, nodding. They bring in a wheelchair, tell me to take off my clothes to be gowned. I’m so hot and filmed in blood and dirt that I virtually have to peel them off, which takes a while. Every movement makes me yelp in pain. When Reuben starts to follow after the wheelchair they shake their head and I try to explain that he has to come with me, but they won’t hear of it. I look around desperately for Vanessa.
‘My son … my son’s autistic,’ I say, stumbling over my words. ‘He has to come with me because I’m afraid someone will hurt him. Please …’ The nurse rubs my arm and tries to tell me it’s OK, he is safe here in a hospital, and then they ignore me completely and wheel me down the corridor while Reuben stands in the ward, dumbfounded.
I’m crying and shaking all over when they wheel me into the X-ray room, weakened by fear and shock. The radiographer – a woman about my age, slim, concerned – speaks good English and asks me what’s wrong.
‘We were in a car accident,’ I say, and I’m trembling so badly I can hardly get the words out. ‘I’m afraid someone is going to come into the hospital and hurt us.’
She bends down in front of me and listens.
‘Who do you think will hurt you?’
‘A man,’ I say, gulping back air as though I’m drowning. ‘He was wearing black boots. He crashed into us on purpose … he’s going to come here, I know it!’
She takes my hand and I manage to take a breath. ‘Is there security at the hospital?’
She frowns. ‘Not really. But the police should help. If you had a car accident they will want to find who did this.’
This is comforting enough to help me stop shaking. ‘The police,’ I say. ‘The woman from the British High Commission said they would want a statement but they’ve not come to see me yet.’
She smiles reassuringly.
‘They will be here very soon. It is not a big police force so they may be busy. But they will help. If someone is trying to hurt you, the police will protect you.’
I lie on a cold metal table as she pulls the machine over my collarbone, then my legs and arms.
In my mind’s eye I see myself standing in our ground floor flat in Sheffield. Reuben is in his high-chair in the room behind me shouting and throwing beans across the room. The postman pushes a pile of letters through the letter box and Reuben screams at the sound.
Most of the letters are bills, but there’s a padded envelope sent on by our landlady, Lleucu, from our loft flat in Cardiff. Amongst the letters is a cream-coloured bonded envelope with ‘Haden, Morris & Laurence’ emblazoned in navy lettering across the back. It looks important, so I open it first.
K. Haden
Haden, Morris & Laurence Law Practice
4 Martin Place
London, EN9 1AS
25th June 2004
Michael King
101 Oxford Lane
Cardiff
CF10 1FY
Sir,
We request your correspondence in receipt of this letter to the address above.
Our clients desire a meeting with you regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.
The time to meet about this tragedy is long overdue. Please do not delay in writing to us at the above address to arrange a meeting.
Sincerely,
K. Haden
The letter drifts from my hand to the ground. Reuben continues to shout in the background. I feel like someone’s run through me with a sword. Slowly I sink to the ground and pick the letter up again. Five words scream off the page.
The death of Luke Aucoin.
Those words chill me to the bone, turn my guts to mush. At one point I believed Luke was the love of my life. And yet I caused his death.
I turn and look at Reuben. My first thought is: they’ll take him from me. I will lose him if I face this.
So, I hid the letter. And I persuaded Michael that it was time to move again.
I thought it would all go away.
The voices in my head remind me that there have been dozens of occasions in the past where something has gone wrong and I’ve connected it to these letters. When we lived in Belfast our cat Phoebe died. The vet said it was poison. I worked myself into a complete state, certain it was deliberate, payback for Luke, until a neighbour approached us and apologetically explained that he’d left out rat poison in the back garden and had spotted Phoebe near the tray on the day that she died. And the miscarriage I had a few years before Saskia came along … for about year afterwards I was trapped in the silent torture of being convinced that Luke’s family had done it. I even had the scenario in my head. We were living in London at the time and I took the tube to and from work every day. I was seventeen weeks’ pregnant. The first cramps started about ten minutes after I got off the tube. It would be easy to inject me with something that would start early labour. A light prick that I’d probably never notice.
It’s difficult to explain paranoia. Saying something like that aloud – though I never did, not to anyone – makes it sound ridiculous. But the suspicion was like a monolith in my head, impossible to budge. We buried our little girl in the hospital graveyard, named her Hester. And when the voices of suspicion finally died down, a new one set in: Hester’s loss was karma for Luke.
Other mishaps were similarly difficult to assign to chance: a slashed car tyre, the night I was followed home in Kent, a few week of silent phone calls at three in the morning, two bouts of severe food poisoning. On hindsight it’s unlikely any of these were related to what happened to Luke, but at the time I was sure they were, and I carried that knowledge like a knife lodged in my chest. I could tell no one, not even Michael. My hair would fall out in handfuls and the smallest thing felt physically impossible. Cooking a meal, meeting up with friends … I felt incapacitated, barely able to look after myself, never mind my children. Life stalled and sputtered, but somehow hobbled on.
There is a point when fear is no longer a protective instinct, and it becomes sabotage.
No, I tell myself resolutely through tears. The crash has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with what happened to Luke.
I’m trying hard to convince myself, to drown out the other voices. But they’re too loud for me to silence. They shout in my head like a Greek chorus.
But what if it is? You’re alone in the hospital, completely vulnerable. If they want to come and finish you off they only have to walk through the doors.
When I return to the ward – with the news that my wrist is broken – I breathe a sigh of relief that Reuben is there, hugging a flat rectangular object with a blue rubber casing to his chest. His iPad. The glass is cracked in one corner but otherwise it seems OK. I ask him if he’s OK, and he nods, but then tells me that a man came up to him and asked him where I was.
‘Who was it?’ I say. ‘Was he a doctor? A nurse?’
He shrugs and moves his eyes around the room. He seems agitated, but of course he has every reason to be and I can’t read him.
‘Did the man say why he wanted me?’
‘My headphones are gone,’ he says.
‘How did you get the iPad?’
‘A nurse,’ he says, but doesn’t explain further.
I nod and study his face for clues. This is probably as much information as I’m going to get from him about the man who came. I look around the ward – it’s unusually quiet, all the visitors gone and the patients asleep. Just the sound of the traffic outside and the ceiling fan.
‘Let’s go check on Saskia,’ I say, and he wheels me quickly down the hall to her room. When I see her there in the bed it’s a bizarre mixture of relief and renewed grief that hits me hard.
I take her little hand in mine, staggered by the confirmation by each of my senses that this is happening. Crescent moons of blood and dirt under her nails. Her closed eyes and the frightening chasm between each bleep of her pulse.
Night falls and every time I hear footsteps coming up the hallway I seize up with blunt, raw fear. The ward I’m in is right at the far end of the wing and there is no exit without going up the hallway, so if anyone came to get Reuben and me, we have nowhere to run. The hospital is like something straight out of a zombie movie – there is one bathroom that I’ve spotted and it was crawling with insects, no loo paper, and brown water pouring from the taps. No catering, very little drinking water. Both Reuben and I are weak from hunger. I’ve asked to be moved but the nurses either don’t understand me or feign ignorance. Vanessa hasn’t appeared and I’m worried that she won’t return. She said a neurosurgeon was coming to see Saskia – why isn’t he here?
There is no phone I can use and I don’t have my mobile. Worst of all, they won’t let me sleep in Saskia’s room. Reuben and I take up too much space and the nurses need to be able to access her – it took half an hour of interpretive gestures for me to work out that this was the reason – but it’s utter rubbish, because we only get seen once a day. I’m trying to be brave for Reuben’s sake. He keeps saying, ‘What’s wrong, Mum? What’s wrong?’ and I have to tell him I’m fine, that everything is fine.
But it’s a lie.
9 (#ulink_b38ba555-d038-5f2b-b79a-cd14733bcce9)
Michael (#ulink_b38ba555-d038-5f2b-b79a-cd14733bcce9)
31st August 2017
My head hurts like a meteor has landed on it. Someone’s knocking against the windowpane, a thunk thunk that seems to fall into rhythm with the banging in my head. I get up to see who’s knocking and find it’s an insect of some sort, the size of a small bird, trying to get outside. With a gasp of pain I yank the tube out of my arm and struggle forward to let the bugger out. He has a stinger about three inches long but he’s more scared of me than I am of him.
I sit on the side of the bed and discover I’m wearing a snot-green hospital gown, tied at the waist and neck like a weird apron. Nothing underneath. Who undressed me? I’m in what seems to be a hospital, albeit a pretty nasty one. It looks like a building site. Smells like one, too. My back aches like I’ve fallen off a mountain. I’m covered in cuts and bruises. My first thought is that I’m here because of the fire, and my mind spins back to being trapped inside the shop, black smoke swirling. The sensation of my lungs being crushed.
And then the sight of Luke at the beach hut. His hands out at either side in a half-shrug, as if to say, what did you expect? With a shiver I wonder if I saw a ghost. A more rational explanation is that I was half-asleep, or that the trespasser bore an uncanny resemblance to Luke. But it could have been Theo.
There’s a black rucksack on the floor next to the bed. I pull it towards me and begin hunting through it. Not much in here. Someone’s already been through it. Of course they have. I know I put Helen’s passport in here, the kids’. All three are gone.
I remember putting my passport in the secret pocket at the back. It’s still there, along with my wallet, a notepad, pen, and my mobile phone. The battery’s dead. Damn it.
My checked shirt is rolled up in there, too. I pull off my bloodied T-shirt and use it to wipe my armpits and neck, throw on the clean checked shirt. I see my shoes on the floor by the door.
I see a nurse walking down the corridor and my impulse is to call out to her, tell her to contact our next of kin and tell them what’s happened. But neither Helen nor I have parents, or any close relatives.
I sit back against the cold bars of the bed, weighed down by the knowledge that we have no one to call for help.
This is my family. I have to do it. There is no one else.
10 (#ulink_0bf1c168-7554-5270-9f74-be11d5d88df4)
Helen (#ulink_0bf1c168-7554-5270-9f74-be11d5d88df4)
1st September 2017
I fight sleep for as long as I can, listening out for sounds of movement in the hallway. I have the distinct feeling of being watched. Not just a feeling – a gut-wrenching certainty. All the hairs on my body stand on end despite the crushing heat, my senses on high alert and my heart fluttering in my chest. I’m in excruciating pain and physically helpless against whoever is in the shadows, watching us. None of the nurses on the ward tonight understand me and no one helps. We are completely alone.
The white van coming towards us is a vivid, garish splinter in my mind, and my foot jerks, puppet-like, at an imaginary brake pedal every time I think of it. Over and over, this circular reaction, my body reacting to a memory that’s stuck in the pipework of my mind.
When my body finally caves in to exhaustion I dive deep into dreams and surface again with a gasp into that same terrible realisation of where I am, and why.
I dream of the fire at the bookstore, black clouds of smoke billowing out of the windows of the shop, ferociously hot. Michael and I at the end of the street helplessly watching on as fire fighters roll out long hoses and blast the flames with jets of water. In the dream, though, it is the beach hut that’s ablaze, not the shop. A figure running away from the scene, up the bank into darkness. I try to get Michael’s attention.
Look! Do you think he was the one who caused the fire?
Michael’s comment floats to the surface of my dreams.
Kids didn’t start the fire, Helen.
There is a tone in his voice that I can’t work out. When I wake, it continues to echo in my ears, making the slow transition from dream to memory.
A little after eight in the morning I hear voices down the hall: an ambulance is here to take Saskia to the hospital in Belize City. To my relief, they say that both Reuben and I can go, though for one terrifying moment I feel I’m abandoning Michael. He would want me to go.
But right as the nurses are helping me into the ambulance, Vanessa pulls up alongside us in her car. ‘The police have requested that you go to the station right now to make a statement about the collision,’ she says emphatically.
I tell her that Saskia is going for surgery right at this moment but she holds up her hands.
‘It’s not my call,’ she says. ‘The police have the last say. And they require you to go to them right away.’
It’s a heart-breaking decision to have to make, but Vanessa insists I have no choice. She says I have a legal obligation to give information on the crash and that it has to happen right away.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she says. ‘But this is out of my hands.’
I watch on, tears rolling down my face, as the ambulance pulls away with my daughter inside. It feels like someone is pulling off one of my limbs and dragging it down the street, out of sight. My instincts divide me, one shouting that at least Saskia will be safe in Belize City and the other shouting, Are you nuts? You’ve just let them take her away! You have no idea that they’re even real doctors!
At least the police will protect us. I’ll tell them about the trespasser, about the van driver who got out after the crash and looked over us without helping.
And perhaps they’ll assign Saskia a police escort to ensure she’s safe.
The police station is about half a mile outside the town of San Alvaro, which appears to be no more than a row of wooden shacks selling fruit, vegetables, and handmade rugs and clothing at the side of a dirt road. Children running naked in the streets. Stray dogs everywhere, their ribs protruding like comb teeth through patchy fur.
Inside the station, we are summoned to a small room at the end of the corridor. Vanessa pushes me in the wheelchair and a couple of police officers stop chatting at the front desk when they see us. Vanessa addresses them cheerfully in Kriol, but they don’t respond, their eyes fixed on me and Reuben, who is clicking his fingers and being extremely brave in this hostile and foreign place.
‘So, tell me what happened,’ Superintendent Caliz says once Vanessa, Reuben and I are sitting down by his desk in the small room. His eyes are hidden behind darkened lenses, the corners of his mouth turned down in a deep frown. A pot belly stretching out his beige uniform, badges on the breast pocket. Photographs behind his desk show him being decorated for service in the police over many decades. He flicks his eyes across Reuben who has his attention fully on the row of glass bottles by the window, filtering sunlight across the floor in a kaleidoscope of colours.
I notice that Superintendent Caliz has no pen in hand to transcribe the interview, no tape recorder. I glance at Vanessa and tell him everything that I can recall: the trip to Mexico, our fortnight at the beach hut, the trespasser running up the bank. Then, my heart in my mouth, I tell him about the crash, recounting it with tears streaming down my face. I have to tell him this so he understands why the van driver standing at the scene of the crash, watching us, was so cruel. Recounting this feels like I’m right back on the ground again beside Saskia, praying for our lives.
‘I feel afraid,’ I say, trying to be as clear as possible in my use of language so he doesn’t miss a thing. ‘I feel worried that this man is going to come back and hurt us again.’
Superintendent Caliz purses his lips, nods. ‘You were all wearing seatbelts?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say, confused.
‘Why your little girl go out the window?’ He makes a motion with his hand. It takes a second for me to realise he’s demonstrating Saskia being catapulted out of the windscreen of the car.
‘We were wearing seatbelts,’ I say, but my mind turns to the last time we pulled over to let Saskia go to the loo. Did I clip her seatbelt in? She was capable of doing it herself and I usually left her to it, but the rental car was old, a 1999 hatchback with tight, irritating seatbelts that she complained about. Guilt rivets me as I think that I didn’t check it. If I had, she might not be in coma.
‘You were driving, yes?’ he says.
I nod. ‘Yes.’
‘Why your husband not drive?’
‘The other vehicle drove straight into us,’ I say in a brittle voice. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered who was driving. He swerved into our lane, right at the last minute …’
He leans forward across the desk, his hands clasped, and gives me a murky look. ‘You buy drugs here in Belize?’
‘Drugs?’
Superintendent Caliz addresses Vanessa in Kriol. She falters, confused.
‘We were told that someone has been arrested,’ Vanessa interrupts, addressing him. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I had thought the police of all people would want to help, that the Superintendent would see the situation for what it is and offer to protect us. Michael lies unconscious in the hospital. Saskia is seventy miles away, in a hospital surrounded by strangers. Reuben and I are completely alone.
‘What’s he saying?’ I ask, and she hesitates before answering me.
‘They’ve arrested the driver of the van that crashed into your car,’ she says slowly.
I take a deep breath. ‘Good.’
But she shakes her head, as though I’ve misunderstood. ‘He is saying the crash was deliberate. The driver says he was paid to do this.’
A noise escapes my mouth. Every suspicion I’ve had has been correct, all my instincts ringing true. Someone was watching us. Someone wants us dead.
‘So, you’re completely sure,’ Vanessa asks me again. ‘No drugs purchased in Mexico. No reason for anyone to try and harm your family.’
‘This has nothing to do with drugs!’ I shout, the strength of my anger surprising everyone in the room, including me. ‘I told you! Someone was watching us at the beach hut and the next day a man crashed into our car. You say you’ve arrested him. Who paid him to crash into our car?’
Superintendent Caliz leans back in his chair, laces his fingers together and barks something in Kriol.
Vanessa processes whatever information he has shared before tilting her head to mine, her brow folded in confusion.
‘What is your husband’s name?’ she asks.
‘Michael,’ I say, confused. ‘Why?’
‘Michael Pengilly?’
‘Yes, Michael. Why? What has that got to do with the man who crashed into us?’
My voice rises again in desperation. She repeats this to Superintendent Caliz, then listens intently as he replies in Kriol. The air is suddenly loud with suspicion and menace. I had expected to feel safe here but instead I feel in even more danger than I did at the hospital.
Vanessa fixes me with a dark stare. She chooses her words carefully. ‘The van driver claims your husband paid him to crash into your car to kill you all and make it look like an accident.’
Her words are like a black hole, sucking me into it cell by cell, until all that’s left of me is a scream.
11 (#ulink_668e0990-9b4d-5652-8158-2cd6df321a90)
Michael (#ulink_668e0990-9b4d-5652-8158-2cd6df321a90)
1st September 2017
It’s a shock to the system to be in a car again, right after the crash. I break into a cold sweat as we move through the streets, pushing through crowds of people – donkeys, too, and I swear some guy had an orangutan back there – and then a flood of cars that veer all over the place. The driver tells me there are no road lanes in this town. Looks like there are barely any roads either, at least not of the tarmac variety, despite the fact that there appears to be a car-to-human ratio of eleven-to-one. Dust rises from the tyres, making it impossible to see or breathe. Like driving through a sandstorm. The driver smokes weed, has some funky music playing loudly. He tries to strike up a conversation, asks if I’m a medical student at the hospital. I say yes and try to conceal the lie in my voice.
There’s a white phone charger trailing into the back seat over a couple of Coke cans. It’s a match for my phone. I say, ‘Can I use this?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he says. I plug in my phone and within minutes the screen flashes white. I scroll through my photographs, past videos taken by Reuben. I click on one of them and find it’s of the bookstore, pre-fire. The sight of it pierces me. His face appears large on the screen as he props the phone against the leg of a table, plucks a book off the shelf and then sits on the floor, cross-legged, filming himself reading. A pair of legs appears next to him after a few minutes. I watch as he glances up at whoever’s standing there, then goes back to reading. It must be a customer. She’s carrying a Sainsbury’s shopping bag. She steps over him, like he’s part of the furniture, then turns to him and snaps, ‘Why are you just sitting there in the middle of the floor? Can’t you see people are trying to get past?’
Reuben lifts his head and stares at her blankly before returning to his book.
‘So rude,’ the woman says off-screen, and instantly I feel an old urge to shout, He’s not rude, he’s autistic! Helen and I once said we ought to have that emblazoned on T-shirts and wear them whenever we went out as a family. One day Saskia came home from school and said her teacher had said she was very artistic. Saskia was quick to correct the teacher. ‘I told her that doesn’t mean I’m rude and ignorant, Mummy. Artistic people are just as polite as neuro-typical people. Isn’t that right?’
We had a laugh at that one.
I scroll through his other videos, one of him playing Minecraft, another of him drawing. I know Reuben is an amazing boy. Despite society’s obsession with status, personas, the endless barrage of visual culture, we still place a ludicrous amount of trust in what we see. On the outside my boy isn’t normal, and that’s still a problem. Helen and I vowed a long time ago that we would fight for our children to feel at home in this dying, messed-up world, to find their place in it. We would protect them.
And that’s precisely what I intend to do now.
I scroll through my gallery to find the photographs I took of the letters. Helen doesn’t know I opened them, but she knows we were receiving them. Why hide them from me? Every year, a new letter. And always on the date of Luke’s death to make a point. As if I could ever forget.
I took photographs of the letters in case she got rid of them. And I needed time to think about what the letters said, about why she didn’t tell me about them. There are many secrets in our marriage, but they pale in comparison to squirrelling away letters that contain so much threat. Helen’s forever accusing me of avoiding confrontation, and yet she was the one keeping these from me. Why? What has she got to hide?
I start to panic when I can’t find the images. There are photos of Reuben wearing a snorkel mask for the first time, giving a big thumbs up. Pictures of Saskia pirouetting in her Trolls swimsuit, her face all lit up when she spotted the dolphins. I try to flick past them as fast as I can but something in my chest gives and I have to look away so as not to start sobbing.
Finally, I pull up an image of one of the letters and zoom in on the cream page.
Sir,
We write again on behalf of our clients regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.
Our records show that you signed for our previous letter. We request that you contact us immediately to avoid further consequences.
Sincerely,
K. Haden
A wave of anger rolls over me as I read the words ‘further consequences’.
‘Where to, man?’ the taxi driver asks.
‘The airport,’ I tell him. ‘Make it quick.’
12 (#ulink_e2d44ba1-621e-5d75-ae95-6288c4fc8840)
Michael (#ulink_e2d44ba1-621e-5d75-ae95-6288c4fc8840)
16th June 1995
It’s decided: we’ll spend the next three nights in Chamonix learning stuff like what to do in an avalanche (‘Duck?’ Theo offers), crevasse rescue (‘It’s called chucking a rope down there, mate,’ Luke says), and belay techniques, or in other words, we’ll be drinking our body weights in vodka and singing German folk songs, with some token ice pick swinging in between.
This morning we’re joining a crowd of fifteen other climbers led by a mountain guide named Sebastian who is taking us up the Aiguilles Rouges for some mixed climbing techniques. This part of the Alps reminds me of Ben Nevis in Scotland, or the Lake District – a palette of earthy brown and velvety green, with gentle rises and pockets of snow in the nooks of distant peaks. Mountains stretch as far as the eye can see, no sign of human life anywhere. Just our little group swallowed up in the mountains.
It’s a warm sunny day without much of a breeze, but Sebastian has us all geared up as if we’re approaching the summit – helmets, crampons, ice picks, the lot. Still, I get to watch the sun rise over the mountains, a rich, yolky light breaking over the crystalline towers, bright rays the length of motorways pouring across the valley. It’s pretty awesome. Enough to make me feel more at ease around Helen.
‘Where did you meet Luke and Theo?’ she asks me amiably, once we’ve settled into our stride. ‘I mean, I know you all go to Oxford but did you know each other before?’
‘Nah. We’re all on the University rowing team,’ I tell her. ‘Ugly here got us all into climbing. Didn’t you, Luke? We did Ben Nevis last year.’
He grins. ‘Dragged you and Theo kicking and screaming up Ben Nevis, more like.’
‘We’re doing Kilimanjaro next. Then Everest,’ I tell her, and she looks impressed.
‘Wow, Everest,’ she says, glancing at Luke, who clearly hasn’t mentioned any of this to her. ‘I don’t think I’ll be going on that trip!’
Oh, are you sure? I want to say in a voice dripping with sarcasm. What a pity.
‘Come on, you lot!’ a voice shouts. The guide, Sebastian. He’s made the group stop on a massive rock ledge overlooking a sapphire lake. We take off our helmets and rucksacks and start to set up the stove, but Sebastian shouts at us again.
‘This is not the lunch stop,’ he says. ‘First, we learn how not to die. Second, we eat. OK?’
Sounds fair.
Helen stands close to the front of the group, watching Sebastian as he demonstrates how to make a top managed belay site.
‘If you need to lower into a gorge, you need to set up an anchor,’ he says, looping a figure eight of rope around a tree by the edge. ‘You clove hitch yourself into the shelf which enables protection at the edge. My belay device clips into the masterpoint. I need two lockers on the masterpoint – use a small carabiner for this to redirect the brake strand, OK?’ He holds up a carabiner and links it to the shelf. I take a peek over the edge. Quite a distance to the bottom.
‘Now, for a demonstration. Who will be my volunteer?’
A nervous laugh ripples among the crowd.
‘You,’ Sebastian says, gesturing for me to step forward.
‘What, me?’ I say, glancing around.
‘We’re going to cover what happens in the event of an arête shearing your rope, OK?’
Luke laughs and shoves me forward. One of the more outspoken blokes in the crowd – the South African fella with purple dreads – raises a hand. ‘An arête? What is this?’
‘An arête is a knife-edged ridge,’ Seb says. ‘If your rope is rubbing back and forth on this, what do you think will happen?’
‘It’ll break,’ everyone murmurs.
He holds up a worn piece of rope and demonstrates. ‘Snap!’ He turns to me and gestures at me to lower down off the side of the cliff. I’m not feeling overly confident about this right now. Still, I hook myself to the rope and try not to look too terrified as I lower down, eyeing the rope fearfully as it tightens around the tree. He lowers me down about twenty feet – which feels like a hundred feet – when suddenly I feel the rope go slack. My feet slip against the smooth rock and I scramble wildly to find something to hold on to. There’s a chink in the rock face and I dig my fingers into it, my heart thumping like there’s a box of frogs in my chest.
A few moments later, Sebastian shouts at me to climb back up. The rope tightens and I scramble back up there like Spiderman.
Everyone applauds and I try not to faint.
‘So, you see,’ Sebastian informs the group. ‘It’s important you know how to make a secure anchor when descending, but even more important is making sure your rope doesn’t run over any sharp edges. If you find yourself in a no-fall zone, the number one rule is …?’
‘Don’t fall!’ everyone shouts.
Back in Chamonix, Luke announces at the bar that he’s paid for us all to sleep in one of the dorms – we’d been camping outside but he says it’s a better idea to stay indoors. ‘Call it insurance,’ he says. ‘We don’t want somebody forgetting to stub out their cigarette because they’re too drunk to think straight. We might all end up without any gear.’ We both turn to Theo, who says, ‘What?’
‘Don’t play innocent,’ Luke says, shuffling a deck of cards. ‘You know you almost set the house on fire last weekend. Every time you get drunk you set your cigarette on the edge of the sofa or on the frigging mattress.’
‘Don’t remember,’ Theo says with a shrug.
‘Don’t remember?’ Luke laughs. ‘The corner of the sofa was on fire, mate. It was starting to climb up your trouser leg. I grabbed a glass of water that turned out to be vodka, almost chucked it over you. You can imagine how that would have gone.’
‘You going to deal or what?’ Theo says, a fag bobbing between his lips, nodding at the pack of cards in Luke’s hands. He begins to deal.
‘What are we playing?’ I ask.
‘What are we drinking?’
‘Gin.’
‘Gin rummy, then.’
‘Why not poker?’ Theo asks.
‘Fine, poker.’
‘Where’s Helen?’ I say. ‘Isn’t she joining us?’
Luke deals. ‘She’s reading. Doesn’t want to impose.’
The gin has warmed me up, broken down my hostilities. ‘Mate, I don’t mind if she wants to come.’
Luke gives me a dark stare. ‘I don’t know what drug you’re taking but it’s making lies fall out of your mouth.’
‘I’m serious. Where is she? Invite her down here.’
Luke shakes his head. ‘She won’t come. She’s got an early start with one of the trainers on the slopes.’
‘She’s training?’ Theo says.
‘Yeah. She doesn’t want to rely on me when we’re doing the tough parts. She’s independent, mate.’
I sit with that for a moment. A sense of guilt has crept in, my words about her being a leech and a millstone starting to nip at my conscience. I figured that she was Luke’s trophy girlfriend, but with every hour that I spend in her company I find all my assumptions being scratched away. She seems hard-working, independent, and pleasant to be around. Even better is that so far Luke has been on top form, joking around and insisting on paying for everything. I’m putting it all down to Helen being here.
I stare at my cards. Not a great hand. My high card’s the queen of hearts.
‘You seem really into this chick,’ I tell Luke, only realising once I’ve said it how childish it sounds.
‘Thanks, mate. She’s my girlfriend so it’s probably a good thing that I’m into her. If you know what I mean.’
‘How long you been … you know …?’
‘Seven months.’
‘A long time to keep her away from your best mate,’ I say. I think about mildly accusing him of either lying or being possessive but think better about it.
He shrugs. ‘She lives in London. And when she’s in Oxford we don’t exactly want any extra company, if you know what I mean.’
Theo and I share a look. ‘So, we probably shouldn’t bring up any of the one-night stands you’ve had in that time?’ Theo adds.
‘Not unless you want me to mention the essay I helped you write for Comparative Literature last term. The Dean might not like that so much.’
I play my queen of hearts. Luke sets down a queen of spades and an ace.
He wins.
The next day the three of us are badly hungover. Luke and Theo say they’ll give the training a miss, but I spot Helen, all geared up in a fluorescent pink shell suit heading off to the practice slopes with the rest of the climbers.
‘Hey! Helen! Good morning!’ I say, waving like an idiot.
She turns to the sound of her name. Sees me, waves. ‘Hi, Michael. Have a good night?’
I nod and slap my forehead. ‘Paying for it now, though.’
Another smile.
I am restless all day. Even when I join another climbing group with some French dudes who are eager to practise rope skills I feel distracted, my thoughts spiralling off in all directions.
13 (#ulink_8a652564-452c-590d-b5a5-481530170eec)
Helen (#ulink_8a652564-452c-590d-b5a5-481530170eec)
1st September 2017
I’m at the British High Commission, sitting in a leather chair opposite Vanessa’s desk. I’m too numb for tears. I’m paralysed with fear and blind confusion at what has just happened. The walls seem to move in and out, exhaling. I don’t trust anyone.
I watch Vanessa on the phone to her superiors asking for advice. At least, that’s what she tells me she’s doing but for all I know she’s part of this. For all I know she’s involved in the crash.
I want to go back to the hospital and find Michael and tell him what’s happened. I need to leave, call someone, beg for help. Inside I’m floundering like someone tossed into the middle of the ocean without so much as a life jacket. When Vanessa looks up I ask if I can use one of the other phones to call my friend, Camilla, back in England, but she simply nods and holds up a finger, distracted by the person she’s speaking to. My breath comes in short, quick bursts. I move in and out of my body, into the past and the future.
The shrill sound of Vanessa’s mobile knocks me back into the room. She sets the handset of the landline down and answers, then hands her phone to me quickly. It is Alfredo, the neurosurgeon, and suddenly I’m plunged seventy miles north, in the hospital with Saskia.
‘We have done extensive scanning of Saskia’s brain,’ he says. ‘We can see a number of contusions on the frontal lobe and signs of a diffuse axonal. What I cannot see just now is whether there is any bleeding or swelling in the brain.’
‘Will she be OK?’ I ask tearfully.
He gives a sigh, and my heart plummets. ‘There’s a possibility that the pressure will increase and slow blood flow to the brain. If this happens, something called cerebral hypoxia and ischaemia can occur. It means that the brain can begin to protrude through the skull, which we certainly do not want.’
I feel turned inside out by this news. My mind races with questions. Will she survive this? Will she walk again? Speak again? What are the long-term effects?
‘What can you do to help her?’ I say weakly.
Another grave sigh. ‘She will need an operation to insert an ICP bolt to monitor pressure in the brain cavity.’
There’s a long silence, and I realise he is asking for my permission to perform this operation. To put a bolt in my daughter’s head.
‘Yes,’ I hear myself say, though instantly I feel terrified, flooded with doubt. Is this the right thing? Did I just agree? Can I trust him?
He tells me that the next twenty-four hours are absolutely critical for her survival.
‘Yes, please do whatever it takes,’ I tell him, apologising as I break into sobs. I tell him I will do anything, absolutely anything for her. I will sell my body, rob a bank, plunder a city. I will give her my organs. I will give her my life.
‘You must leave this to me,’ he says, and I realise with terrifying helplessness that Saskia’s fate – her survival – is entirely out of my hands.
‘Can you take me to Michael, please?’ I ask Vanessa as she wheels me through the hospital doors. I’m so weakened with worry about Saskia that I feel sick, and although I am desperate to see Michael I have no idea how to tell him about the van driver’s accusation. How will he take it? How will he cope with news of Saskia and this accusation?
As we turn towards the corridor linking to his room I hear a man’s voice bark, ‘Helen? Helen Pengilly?’
The man is white, broad-shouldered and sandy-haired, the sleeves of a white linen shirt rolled up to his elbows, his hands in fists by his sides. He seems restless, as though he’s searching for someone.
It is Theo.
I give a sharp, high-pitched scream.
‘What’s wrong?’ Vanessa shouts. I turn all the way around in the wheelchair and pull on her clothes, yelling at her to get me out of here.
‘Oh my Lord, Helen!’
A woman’s voice. My vision blurred with tears, I make out another blurry figure racing up the corridor towards me. A slim woman, early thirties, short red hair, a black cotton dress and yellow sandals. Her face is wet and streaked black with running mascara. My heart pounds in my throat as Theo walks briskly towards me, but with each step he reveals himself as someone else entirely. It’s not Theo after all. For a moment everything turns black and I’m gasping for breath.
Moments later my younger sister, Jeannie, is on her knees in front of me, her arms reaching around and pulling me into a painful embrace. I can smell her, feel her lips on my cheeks.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she says, fumbling to take my hand in hers. ‘I just can’t believe what’s happened, Helen, I can’t! It’s so awful!’
She reaches up and pushes a strand of hair out of my eyes, then cups my face. I burst into tears and she pulls me into another embrace.
When she pulls back she seems to be looking at the man behind her with a frightened expression.
‘This is my boyfriend, Shane,’ she says quickly. ‘Shane, my sister Helen.’
‘How do you do?’
I flinch as he looks at me, half-expecting him to turn into Theo again. My heart is still doing somersaults in my chest in case I’m mistaken. But he remains Shane – handsome, mid-forties, surprisingly anodyne, at least compared to Jeannie’s usual class of boyfriend – and offers a hand, as though we’re meeting in a café or bistro instead of a ramshackle hospital halfway around the world. He shakes Vanessa’s hand and pulls a banknote out of his pocket, handing it to her, before stepping in to take over the job of pushing my wheelchair.
‘Vanessa’s from the British High Commission,’ I say.
‘Oh, apologies,’ he says as she looks down with confusion at the twenty-pound note in her hand. ‘Shane Goodwin, how do you do? You guys do a terrific job.’
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C.J. Cooke
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: The gripping new thriller from the author of I KNOW MY NAMEHe said he’d do anything to protect her.She said she’d do anything to protect her family.And they both said they would forget what happened twenty-two years ago.But now it seems that there is someone who will stop at nothing to make them remember…Who is playing the blame game?