“If your sky is falling...just take my hand and hold it...” Vincent continued to sing softly in time with the music, as we swayed against each other, cheek to cheek. “You don’t have to be alone...I won’t let you go...”
With tears spilling silently onto my face, I felt something I hadn’t felt before. I felt I was in the presence of someone who really, genuinely liked me, and it is so hard for me to describe how that felt. Vincent hadn’t come back to rip my clothes off me. He hadn’t come to me in the middle of the night to throw me over the edge of the sofa and screw me. Vincent had come to hold me close, to make me feel warm, to make me feel special. For the first time ever with a man, I didn’t feel like I had to be some kind of sex object...some sex-performing seal ....for him to like me – to want to be with me. For the first time ever with a man, there was a part of me which didn’t feel alone.
The music stopped, and Vincent eased us apart. He saw the tears on my cheeks. Gently cupping my face in his hands, he brushed the tears away with his thumbs. Very slowly he leant forward and kissed me on the lips. The kiss lasted just moments. I opened my eyes as Vincent led me by the hand to my bedroom. Slowly, we climbed onto the bed and lay down next to one another, our faces just inches apart.
“I know what it feels like to be scared and alone,” he whispered, folding his arms around me and holding me close. “You can sleep without fear of nightmares tonight, Sydney. You don’t have to be alone. I won’t let you go.”
Slowly, I closed my eyes, and wrapped in Vincent’s arms, I let sleep take me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I woke to find myself alone. There was no sign of Vincent. A thin strip of sunlight seeped through a gap in the curtains. I rolled over on the bed and glanced at the clock. It read 12:17. Had I really slept half of the day away? I felt better for it, my head clearer somehow. My sleep had been unbroken and Molly Smith and her father had stayed away. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I stood up.
“Vincent?” I called out.
Silence.
Standing alone in my bedroom, I wondered if Vincent returning hadn’t been a dream. Had he really come back last night to tell me he thought I was beautiful? Had we really danced together in each other’s arms? Had Vincent kissed me then held me in his arms all night long and had wanted nothing more from me? It couldn’t have been real. Stuff like that didn’t happen – not in Sydney’s world.
I padded out of my bedroom and into the living room. There was no sign of Vincent and the room looked just like it had before I’d gone to bed last night. Then, I saw it and my heart fluttered. I crossed the room to the coffee table and picked up the empty Coke bottle Vincent had left behind. He had come back last night. He had told me how he had offered to bring me my iPod just because he thought I’d looked beautiful in the newspaper. We had danced together. He had kissed me, then held me close all night. Vincent had kept the nightmares away like he’d promised he would.
I went to place the bottle back down on the table, when I saw the folded piece of paper tucked inside. At once, my skin prickled all over with gooseflesh as I remembered the bottle in the bottom of the well from my nightmare. Slowly, I unscrewed the lid and tipped the bottle up in the palm of my hand. I hooked my little finger in and eased out the folded piece of paper. Once out, I unfolded it. A message had been written across it.
Hey Sydney,
Gone into work to find more of those missing pieces from our mystery.
I’ll catch you later
Vincent X
I refolded the note and placed it back inside the bottle. Why had Vincent left me a note in the bottle and not on the table? Perhaps he didn’t want anyone else to come across it and take a look. But who? I lived alone. Then again, perhaps Vincent suspected that my father might come over – perhaps he even had a key and could let himself in. We were meant to be keeping our friendship secret from my father.
Why had I started to think so deeply about everything – stuff that probably didn’t even matter? I headed for the bathroom. I was sure the bottle did matter. Not the one Vincent had left on the coffee table – who knows why Vincent did that – I bet he didn’t even know himself. That was just Vincent, I had come to learn. The bottle at the bottom of the well was different, though, I reasoned as I filled the bath with hot water. I had seen it in my dream, just like I had seen Molly and her father. Therefore wasn’t the bottle somehow important, too?
I turned off the taps, let my bathrobe fall to the floor, then stepped into the bath. Sinking beneath the water, I closed my eyes. If the note did have some bearing on what had happened to Molly, what would it say and who could possibly have written it – and why? The only way to find out would be to retrieve the bottle. But how?
Massaging shampoo into my hair with my fingertips, I pictured the well and how it seemed to plummet deep into the earth. I imagined standing on the crest of that hill again and looking out towards the road and the farmhouse. Was there anything I was missing? After the deep night’s sleep I’d had, thanks to Vincent, my mind seemed less foggy. It was sharper than it had been since the accident. In my mind I saw the road, the blood, the dead bodies, broken windscreen, tyre marks, the crinkled-looking ECILOP...
“Tyre marks!” I breathed, sitting bolt upright in the water. “How come there were brake marks on the road by the accident? I never hit the brakes. I didn’t see the horse and the cart, so why would I have slammed on the brakes?”
I washed the remains of the shampoo from my hair and jumped from the bath. Throwing a towel about me, I raced to my bedroom, all the while the images of those thick, black tyre marks flashing before my mind.
“I didn’t make those tyre marks,” I whispered aloud, pulling a T-shirt over my head. I plucked a clean pair of panties from a drawer. With them halfway up my legs, I stopped. Almost like a blinding vision before me, all I could see were those dents and scratch marks at the front and down the side of Michael’s father’s 4X4.
My father had a knock the other day, I heard Michael say.
Had it been on the same day Jonathan Smith and his family been hit by a vehicle on the road which ran around the outskirts of Grayson Farm? I wondered.
With my hands shaking, I yanked on my jeans, and gasped, “What if...?”
What if the accident had already taken place? What if someone else had driven them off the road before I’d even got there? What if I’d just driven into the wreckage? But the other vehicle would’ve been a wreck, too, just like my patrol car had been after hitting that horse and cart.
“Not unless it had been a big car,” I whispered in shock. “Something like a four-by-four!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The sky was the colour of gunmetal when I left my apartment and headed off along the beach to the Grayson farm. With the realisation that I might not have actually been the person to drive the Smith family off the road to their deaths, I wanted to go back and have a look at where it had taken place. The wind whipped up a torrent of sand as I made my way along the shore towards the sand dunes. The waves crashed onto the beach, bringing with them lengths of black seaweed, which covered the sand like giant black cobwebs.
Reaching the sand dunes, I crossed them, found the coastal path, and headed for the crop of trees in the distance. It was just past 3 p.m. as I reached the old well. Hidden by the trees at the top of the hill, I spied on the Grayson farm. The 4X4 was no longer parked outside – did that mean that both Michael and his father were out? Or perhaps off somewhere working on their land? Then I saw Michael. He left the barn, rubbing tractor grease from his hands. I watched him approach the farmhouse, then go inside and shut the door. As I watched from my hiding place, I hoped that Michael wasn’t involved in what had happened to that family. He couldn’t have been. He had been with me. We had been on the kitchen table...I pushed the image from my mind. Not that I regretted what had happened between us, I wanted to try and keep my feelings neutral at this time. He might not have been involved in the accident, but he might be coveri
ng for his father. I hoped not, as Michael – although full on – did seem like a kind and honest man. I didn’t want him to be a bad guy. I didn’t want to find out that I had been deceived by him and he had joked with his father at how easy I had been. I turned my back on the farm.
The Buckmore Road couldn’t be seen from the house, only from this vantage point as it snaked its way back towards town. Stepping out from the trees, I made my way down the hill and towards the road.
Storm clouds lumbered across the sky, covering the pale sun, making the world look like an old black and white photograph. The wind was icy cold and it howled at me like an invisible beast as I cut across the bleak field towards the road. With my hands thrust into my coat pockets and chin resting on my chest, I stomped over the uneven and muddy ground. At the edge of the field, I looked back just to make sure I couldn’t be seen by Michael, should he have reason to look out of one of the farmhouse windows. From where I stood against the wall, the farmhouse was hidden from view on the other side of the grey craggy hill. With long, blond hair blowing about my face and shoulders, I felt secure in the fact that I couldn’t be seen from the farmhouse. All I had to worry about was if Michael’s father returned by road.
With my gloved hands, I pushed aside the thorn bushes and bracken which greedily covered the grey stone wall along this side of the field. Looking left, then right, I hoisted myself up onto the wall. The thorns snagged at my coat and the hems of my jeans. I yanked myself free, and dropped into the road on the other side.
I looked to my right, and with my back to the hill, I headed off along the road. I didn’t have to go very far before I came across the scene of the accident. It was hard at first to get my bearings, as the last time I’d been here, I’d been shaken and in shock. I saw the spot in the ditch where my patrol car had ended up on its side. The bushes and bracken there were bent over and disrupted. Slowly, I moved further along the road to where the cart and the horse and been lying. I looked down and could see rusty brown bloodstains, which hadn’t yet been washed away by the rain. I closed my eyes, and at once I could see the small boy with his bright red hair matted together in scruffy clumps. I snapped open my eyes and could see the tyre marks. They skewered across the road from the right and towards the area where the cart and the Smith family had come to rest.
I bent down and inspected them. The tyre marks where thick and black, indicating that whoever had been out on this road had braked hard in their vehicle. That certainly hadn’t been me. I was sure of that. Only if I’d seen Jonathan Smith and his family would I have hit the brakes. I closed my eyes again. I could see myself taking my eyes off the road as I reached for the glove compartment. Then my vehicle was lifting off the road and flipping through the air. My patrol car stopped, not because I had hit the brakes, but because I hit the ditch and the wall beyond it. In my mind I could see myself staring through the cracked window screen of my patrol car. It gave the world a distorted and broken look. I could see my father arriving in his police car, lights and sirens blazing, the ECILOP sign looking distorted and out of shape. My father was beside me, pulling me from the car and dragging me angrily towards the accident.
Look what you’ve done! I could hear him barking at me over the roar of the wind.
I’m so sorry, I cried out.
I could see the blood again, black and congealed in the road, that little boy’s hair thick with it...
“The blood,” I whispered. “The blood!”
However painful it was, I closed my eyes and pictured that horrendous scene in my mind again. I could see the blood beneath the wheels of the upturned cart. I could see the blood down the front of the man trapped by the wheel, the woman with it on her face, the boy with it in his hair, and that flap of flesh hanging loosely from Jonathan Smith’s face. All of the blood was black, sticky and congealed.
“None of the blood was fresh,” I breathed, snapping open my eyes.
Now, I knew blood congealed fairly quickly and it had been cold that day – but there was no way the blood would have thickened within a few minutes. Those people had been lying out on this desolate stretch of road for at least...what? Ten minutes, maybe or more. With my heart racing in my chest, I knew it couldn’t have been me who had killed those people. Someone else had killed them, then fled the scene.
With my heart racing in my chest, I felt angry and hurt that I’d been punishing myself for something I hadn’t done. I wanted to scream and tell the world that I hadn’t killed Smith and the rest of his family. It felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my chest and I could at last breathe again. I felt a sudden flash of seething anger towards my father. If he hadn’t of been so quick to blame me, yet again, then cover for me, he could have done a proper investigation for once in his life and found the true culprit. Was it too late for that now? I wanted to march straight into town and tell him and the others I was innocent. I wanted to scream at those townsfolk who had stared at me, rolled their eyes, thinking that I had fucked up again. Could the clock ever be turned back? Would my father’s lies be revealed? Would he be ruined? Could I do that to him?
As I stood in the middle of the road fearing that I might never be able to prove my innocence, I suddenly felt a hand fall onto my shoulder.
“What are you doing all the way out here?” a voice said.
With a high-pitched gasp, I spun around.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I could ask you the same question,” I said, staring at Vincent.
“I’ve been searching for you,” he said, dismounting from an old-looking push bike.
“No patrol car?” I asked with a half-smile.
“They are a bit short of them back at the station,” he said. “The one you were driving is still out of action and another has also gone in for some repairs.”
Vincent pulled the collar of his police coat up about his throat and shivered. “I’m frozen,” he groaned.
“Quit complaining,” I said. For the first time in Vincent’s presence, I wasn’t sure how to act. I hadn’t seen him since last night, when he had kissed me, then held me all night in his arms. Did he feel awkward, too? I wondered.
There was an uncomfortable silence, filled only by the howl of the wind as its cut across the open fields and circled us. “Did you sleep okay?” Vincent finally asked.
“Great, thanks to you,” I said, looking at him.
“It was nothing...”
“Thanks,” I said.
“No...I didn’t mean it meant nothing,” he started to flounder to find the right words again. “It was nice...it was more than nice...it was wonderful...”
He did look kinda cute as he shifted from foot to foot in front of me, looking awkward and uncomfortable.
“I’m just teasing,” I said, taking one of his hands in mine. “You are cold,” I added. His fingers felt like brittle sticks of ice.
“Maybe you could warm me up later,” he said, then quickly added, “Want I meant to say was, perhaps you could buy me a cup of tea...”
“When are you gonna quit with this act?” I asked. “You and I both know exactly what you meant. Why don’t you just say what you mean?”
“Didn’t I do that last night?” he said, staring back at me, the collar of his police coat flapping against the wind.
“Yes, you did,” I smiled. “And was it so bad?”
“I guess not,” he said.
“You’re not like any guy I’ve met before,” I said, trying to figure him out.
“Is that a good thing?” he asked, his eyes still fixed on mine as if reading my thoughts.
“I’ll let you know,” I smiled.
“How?”
“If I let you hold me in your arms again tonight, that’s how you’ll know,” I said softly, dragging away my hair which the wind had blown across my face.
“Did it work?” he asked.
“Stop the nightmares, you mean?”
“Yes,” he nodded.
“You kept them away,” I told him, squeezi
ng his hand in mine. “Thank you.”
There was another short silence, which Vincent filled by saying, “So what are you doing all the way out here?”
“My head felt clear this morning,” I started to explain. I told Vincent how I was beginning to remember what really had taken place during the accident. “I don’t think it was me who drove the Smiths off the road and killed them.”
“What do you mean?” he frowned.
“Take a look at these,” I said, kneeling down in the road and pointing out the tyre tracks.
“What about them?” he said, propping his push bike against the wall and leaning over me.
“These were caused by someone braking hard, right?” I said, staring up at him.
“Right,” he nodded thoughtfully.
“I never applied the brake of my patrol car. I wasn’t even watching the road, I was searching through the glove compartment,” I confessed to him. “I didn’t even see the horse and cart and Jon...”
“So what you’re saying is that you collided with an accident which had already taken place,” Vincent breathed, straightening up.
“You’ve got it!” I said, jumping to my feet. “There was another car out on this road that day. It was that car which collided with the...”
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