by C. J. Cooke
‘So … Michael’s still in Belize?’
I can feel myself starting to grow upset. ‘He could be. Everything’s up in the air at the moment. The police are investigating …’
‘Is there anything we can do to help?’ Ben says. ‘I know Mike was mates with a few of the other school dads. They went on that pub crawl not so long ago. Maybe we could ask around, see if he said anything that …’
‘That what?’ Kate asks, and he shrugs.
‘Well, I don’t know. It just seems out of the ordinary. Mind you, the smack he gave me at Joshie’s birthday party was out of the ordinary, too.’
I think back to what Reuben told me about the fight. ‘Michael said he was protecting Reuben when he hit you. Is that true?’
Ben widens his eyes. ‘Protecting Reuben? I don’t know what he thought he was protecting him from but blimey, it was me that needed protecting.’
I swallow hard. ‘Tell me what happened.’
He shares a look with Kate. ‘Well, it was like I literally didn’t know what had hit me. One minute we were chatting and then pow! He’s whacked me square on the jaw, a nasty uppercut.’ He demonstrates by raising his own fist to his jaw. ‘That wasn’t the punch that did the damage,’ he said. ‘I staggered backwards with the first one but then he hit me again. I think I blacked out for a moment or two with that one because the next thing I knew I was on the ground with lots of people standing over me. Josh was crying, begging me to wake up.’ He shakes his head. ‘It was madness.’
I try to envisage Michael doing these things. Attacking someone. Punching someone to the ground. He’s such a sensitive guy. A memory rises up of him punching Luke.
But that was different.
‘What happened when you got to your feet?’ I say.
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ he says. ‘Mike just legged it. No apology, no explanation.’ He glances at Kate again, and I see her face is flushed. She’s upset at the memory of it. ‘My glasses were broken. Party was cancelled, obviously. I took Josh home, tried to shake it off. The next morning, though, I could barely move my neck. Real bad shooting pains right into my shoulders. My jaw was swollen, too. I went to the doctor and ended up having to go to hospital for a CT scan for possible brain trauma.’
I am horrified. I manage to ask if he had brain trauma.
‘Luckily, no. Whiplash injuries, yes. All about the way he hit me, you see. I’d to take three weeks off work, had acupuncture, physio. Got new specs. All that doesn’t come cheap. So yeah, I spoke to a solicitor and filed charges.’
He’s growing upset the more he speaks, his voice getting louder, his eyes moving across the room as though he expected Michael to leap out again and attack him.
I say, ‘I need to understand what might have caused Michael to walk out of the hospital. I tried to talk to him about what provoked him at Josh’s birthday party that day but he wouldn’t open up. I guess I thought you must have said something to make him lash out like that.’
Ben reaches up to touch his jaw again.
‘I’ve gone over it in my head a thousand times,’ he says. ‘Your husband strikes me as an alright kind of bloke. Packs a mean punch, though. True what they say, isn’t it – it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch.’ He folds his arms. ‘An apology wouldn’t have hurt, though. I kept expecting a knock on the door, a phone call …’
‘I tried to speak to you,’ I blurt out. ‘I sent flowers …’
‘Yeah, but that kind of thing needed to come from him, didn’t it?’ Kate says. ‘But then we heard you’d all gone to Belize. And I thought, well, that’s nice. Here’s my husband having to sleep bolt upright and being jabbed by an acupuncturist while the man who decked him is off having the holiday of a lifetime.’
I draw a sharp breath. I should have tried harder to make Michael talk about it, to confront the Trevitts. Letting things linger is never a sensible resolution.
I turn to Ben. ‘So, what happened immediately before he hit you? Why did he react like that?’
‘Like I said, I don’t know …’ He pauses. ‘He seriously didn’t want me taking Reuben up there, that’s for sure. I tried to tell him it was perfectly fine. I knew what I was doing. I wouldn’t be taking my own son up there if I didn’t.’
I nod. ‘And what did Michael say to that?’
Ben scratches his head. ‘He said no, Reuben’s not climbing, we’re going home, see ya later. Alright, so maybe I told him not to mollycoddle Reuben, to let him man up and join in with his friends. A poor choice of words, on hindsight. But it was Joshie’s birthday party, for heaven’s sake. Mike just flipped.’
His words confirm everything I already suspected, but hearing it aloud feels like a kick to the chest. Michael didn’t expect the birthday party to be a climbing trip, it was as simple as that. Ben is a nice guy but he pushed the issue, tried to force Michael’s arm. But there was simply no way he would have let Reuben go climbing.
Not after what happened on Mont Blanc.
‘Excuse me,’ I say, and I run as fast I can to the kitchen sink, making it just in time before I throw up.
37
Michael
24th June 1995
I keep a careful distance from Helen to prove to Theo that I’m not attempting to steal his brother’s girlfriend, though to be fair, Luke is way more interested in cosying up to the Italians who evidently have more marijuana in their backpacks than climbing gear to notice.
My sleeping bag holds on to the smell of chamois dung for dear life. I have no spare, so I’ve no choice but to climb in night after night and attempt to distract myself from the awful stench, though generally I dry-retch myself to sleep. Theo has paid for a room inside the refuge, the git. At nights, when the campfire is in full blaze, I notice people will sit down next to me, then get up quickly and move away. I don’t blame them.
Luke pisses himself laughing when Theo tells him why I smell so bad, though he keeps quiet about why he stuffed my sleeping bag with dung.
‘That’s amazing,’ Luke says, crying with laughter and high-fiving his brother. ‘Chamois dung. Genius, mate.’
Theo beams with pride at Luke’s approval.
But there is something different in the air when we leave the camp site, a shift in the dynamic of our group. I put it down to the heart-to-heart I had with Helen, but there’s something else. A shadow has crept between Luke and me, and between me and Theo. It’s as though they can read my feelings for Helen, despite how hard I’ve tried to stamp them down.
I think I’m falling in love with her.
The sun is just beginning to rise, a belt of liquid gold across the horizon. We walk in silence. After an hour the trail fades to crumbling scree, the level path modulating to a pitched slope that makes my calf muscles and knee joints scream. We swap our walking boots for crampons, our T-shirts for thermals and duvet jackets, strap on our helmets and harnesses. The terrain is lunar, hostile, a platform of cotton clouds exactly level with our altitude. We can almost reach out and step on to it.
We find a fixed line and grasp on to it like the last survivors of a sinking ship as we make our way along the mountain’s shoulder to the next refuge hut.
I think about my conversation with Helen. I opened up to her in a way that I’ve never opened up to anyone before. I feel a connection, a pull towards her unlike anything else. I’ve never been in love but it feels like I’m definitely at the foothills. And yet it’s pointless. She’s with Luke. When I look up to see him holding her hand, I feel the sting of jealousy.
Pull yourself together, mate.
The climb gets harder and harder, the air thinning so drastically I have to gulp down each breath to stop from feeling woozy. Doing this for hours makes you believe you are literally drowning, and the panic instinct it releases in the body is an exhausting battle in itself. My lungs feel like they are being slowly but surely crushed. We are no longer walking so much as scrambling along a sideways slope, gradually drowning hundreds of metres above sea level.
‘Rock fall!’ Theo shouts from ahead. ‘Take cover!’
We all scramble under an overhang as the ground trembles and the sound of thunder grows louder. In an instant the ground all around is pelted with boulders.
The noise is deafening, and it’s so foggy that we can barely see one another. It starts to rain, too, and within seconds rivulets of water accompany the falling stones, veining the slopes. What was it Sebastian said to do in the case of rock fall? I know he covered it but I can’t remember. I start to slide and scramble at loose rock. This is it, I think, seeing nothing but my own feet scooting down the mountain. I’m actually going to die here.
Luke hurls two pick-axes deep into the ground. He hesitates as I slide past him, then holds out a hand to me and I cling on.
I look up. ‘Thanks, babe.’
He grins. ‘You’re welcome.’
Even so, I’m not sure how long I can hold on. One false move and I’m gone, sleighing down the rock face to certain death.
But as quickly as it arrived, the thundercloud passes, the fog creeps back, the blue skies re-appear, and the rocks stop barrelling down.
By the time we gather ourselves back on track the distinctive whomp-whomp of a helicopter sounds overhead. We watch as it circles an area about three hundred feet above before coming to land, whipping up pillars of dust.
‘Someone must be hurt,’ Helen pants, wiping mud off her face and tilting her head up to see. We can just about make out some people by the helicopter and a stretcher carrying someone inside.
‘Looks like it,’ Theo says.
The helicopter lifts off again. No one says a word as it drifts back to the valley.
It’s dusk when we arrive at the hut, all of us exhausted and out of puff. The hut isn’t as busy as the previous refuge, though just as big, with a spacious kitchen and dining area, ten dorms, a large communal area filled with flags and notes from previous guests, a gear room and even a small library. The sight of other people just sitting around, breathing, not drowning or dying, is strangely reassuring.
I force myself not to watch as Helen and Luke go off to find their room. Don’t think of her, mate. This isn’t love, it’s mountain fever.
I occupy myself by finding a good book – a rare edition of The Iliad – and a coffee and curl up next to the log fire, intent on leaving Helen and Luke well alone and enjoying every square inch of the hut’s luxuriantly flat ground.
A while later, once I’ve eaten and napped in a chair by the kitchen table, I get up to dig out my sleeping bag from my rucksack in the gear room. I head down the corridor looking for Theo. A couple of groups are visible in the dining area, but the communal area seems empty.
I duck my head around the door and think I spot Theo by the fire. But then I spot Helen, and I realise it’s Luke.
He and Helen are both on their feet, facing each other. Helen has her arms folded across her body protectively and her head bowed. He is pointing at her, his arm at a forty-five-degree angle. Accusing, and full of menace.
I hear her say, Stop it, Luke. And then he lifts his hand and she turns her head, and from where I’m standing it looks like he’s smacked her across the face.
Before I know what I’m doing I’m on the floor on top of him, my hands grabbing fistfuls of his T-shirt. ‘Don’t you ever hit her!’ I yell. ‘Don’t you dare!’
It doesn’t take long for him to shove me off.
‘Have you lost your bloody mind?’ Luke pants when we’re both on our feet. He dabs his nose with his hand, finding blood, then gives me a flat look that says, You’ve crossed a line, mate. But I don’t flinch. He’s the stronger of the two of us and we both know he could win a fight. The fire blazes nearby. For a moment I think he might reach out and grab a log, stab it in my face.
‘You don’t hit her,’ I say again, pointing at Helen.
‘Hit her?’ Luke says. We both turn to Helen. She looks from me to Luke, gives a small shake of her head. ‘I never hit her, you idiot. We were arguing about you, as it happens. About how cosy you two got the other night.’
He sees my face fall. ‘Theo told me all about it,’ he says.
‘She’s got bruises on her arm, Luke. I saw! And I saw you hit her.’
Helen shakes her head and goes to speak, but Luke gives me a hard shove with both hands, knocking me backwards. Somehow I don’t fall over.
‘What’s going on between you two?’ Luke says, glancing at Helen. There’s a sob in his voice, and when he turns back to me he no longer looks angry. Just wounded. And I feel terrible.
‘Nothing is going on,’ Helen says wearily.
‘Nothing’s going on between us,’ I repeat like a robot. ‘I thought … it looked like you hit her. It’s one thing for you to cheat on her but hitting, I won’t tolerate.’
‘Cheating?’ Helen says, tearing her eyes from me to Luke. ‘Cheating on who?’
I turn my eyes to Luke but say nothing. I’ve made a right mess of things now. Too late to backpedal.
‘What does he mean, “cheating”?’ Helen pleads with him. He can’t deny it. He bunches his fist, looks like he wants to knock me out. I almost want him to. In this moment I’ve chosen Helen over him. A girl I’ll never see again over my best friend.
I hear a noise to my left and turn to see Theo standing there, summoned like Luke’s frigging genie. I have no fear of Theo doing anything and I suspect he’s a little caught off guard by the fracas to do much.
An explosion goes off in my head from where Luke slams his fist into my skull.
In an instant I’m on the ground, his hands around my neck. I hear Helen shout at him to stop. Luke’s on top of me now, his hands squeezing so hard that the room starts to fade. The fire is close, burning hot. I can hear Theo murmuring, ‘Luke, take it easy, mate! He can’t breathe!’
‘I’m no fool,’ Luke says in a strange voice.
‘Luke, stop it!’ Helen yells.
He loosens his grip just enough for me to push him off and roll over, gasping for breath on all fours. I can see stars. My neck feels broken. With a last disgusted look at me he stomps out of the room. Theo follows shortly after, his side already chosen.
38
Helen
6th September 2017
I rinse my mouth with a glass of water and return to the living room.
‘Sorry about that,’ I say. Kate and Ben both look horrified.
‘Is everything alright?’ Kate asks.
‘Something you said made me realise why Michael might have reacted the way he did at Josh’s birthday party,’ I say slowly.
I sit down again, my movements unsteady. Kate watches me carefully.
‘What was it?’ she says. ‘Drugs?’
‘I really don’t think the attack was an act of malice,’ I say unevenly, my mind racing as I speak. ‘The fire at the bookshop … it really broke us, you know? Michael wasn’t himself. And when he was much younger he was into climbing. He did Ben Nevis, the Alps …’ I find I’m shaking as I say it aloud. ‘He lost a friend to climbing. It was terrible. That was why I threw up.’
Kate seems moved by this, and as I hear my own words echoing in my head it occurs to me with a shiver that it’s true: the fire at the bookshop, then Ben getting over enthusiastic about taking our son on a climb. It was just the right combination to make Michael take drastic measures.
‘Do you think that’s why he’s gone missing?’ Kate says. ‘Was it something to do with this friend he lost when they went climbing?’
I go to say no, but then I hesitate.
In a flash I’m back in our flat in Cardiff opening that first letter. Every year on the twenty-fifth of June, the same letter. The anniversary of Luke’s death.
‘I don’t know anymore,’ I tell Kate, my voice breaking. ‘I believed that he’d have contacted me by now, at least to check we’r
e all OK and let me know he’s alive. But he hasn’t.’
‘Let us know if there’s anything we can do, OK?’ Kate says. ‘Anything, OK?’
I try not to think what might happen if she discovers that just hours before I’d been in her house, trawling through her cupboards for anything that might implicate her husband in the car crash.
Ben calls Josh downstairs and a moment later he comes, smiling and bright-eyed, telling us excitedly about Reuben’s animation of a breaching humpback whale.
‘We can have Reuben stay at ours some time, if you like?’ Kate says, and I glance at Reuben who brightens. Reuben has never been to another child’s house, has never had a birthday invitation or a playdate. For many years I’ve told myself that, even if he got an invite, it would be awkward. What if he had a toilet accident, or a meltdown?
Kate puts a hand on my arm when she sees me falter. ‘And don’t be worried about anything he does or says. We know all about it, don’t we, Ben?’
As they say all of this Josh is by Kate’s side, asking on repeat for the car key. She ignores him until she’s finished her sentence, then faces him and says, ‘can you count to thirty, love? I’ll give it to you once you reach thirty.’
Josh nods, begins to count. ‘One, two, three …’
‘I think Reuben would love that,’ I tell them.
When they leave, Jeannie creeps downstairs and looks me over.
‘Well?’ she hisses. ‘Are they axe murderers or not?’
‘Not,’ I say, wearily. ‘Look, I need to ask a favour.’
‘Anything.’
‘Yes. I … Can Reuben and I come and stay with you? Is there a spare bed at the place you’re renting? It’s just weird, being here …’
‘Of course. Man, how thoughtless of me. I’m getting Shane to turn around right now.’
I manage to persuade Reuben to pack a small overnight bag, though he insists on bringing a large suitcase with all his Minecraft models and books and every piece of blue clothing he possesses. I don’t mind. I pack the most comfortable clothes I can find and lock the door behind me.
