47
The fire blazed. Taking solace in the heat, James took healthy gulps from a bottle of Jack Daniels, his head growing muffled and fuzzy. There were no clouds, only a star-studded sky.
Descending into intoxication, his body relaxed for the first time in days. Gibson had been wrong, he was not the hope these people needed, he was not their strength. He was lucky if any of them listened to him at all.
While the rest of the survivors slept, he’d opted to take watch for what remained of the night. Without a distraction he could not switch off, so many blank spaces where solutions should fit perfectly. He believed Sol’s drug story, and to a degree he believed Sebastian. His own morality was not unstained either. Nobody here really knew him, nor did they need to.
Movement in the camp stirred his groggy interest; somebody was awake.
‘Is this what constitutes keeping watch?’ Abbey yawned. She smoothed a patch in the sand and took a seat. ‘Getting wasted on Duty-Free and counting stars?’
‘A drink seemed appropriate,’ he replied wryly, handing over the bottle.
He watched the graceful arc of Abbey’s throat as she raised the bottle to her lips and took several long burning swallows. He didn’t avert his gaze until she wiped her mouth and handed the bottle back.
‘Can’t sleep?’ he asked.
She shook her head slowly. ‘I keep capturing the scene over and over. Elaine just kneeling there, defenceless. Oh, James, the way she fell. What kind of a person does it take to do something like that to another human being?’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Abbey,’ he assured her gently. ‘I don’t know why Elaine was out there so late, but she must’ve had her reasons. If somebody was lying in wait, she wouldn’t’ve stood a chance.’
Abbey smiled weakly.
‘That kind of detachment,' James went on, 'that level of blankness, he’s probably killed so many times it no longer has any meaning for him. It’s how some soldiers turn in the middle of a war zone. His country says it’s okay for him to kill his enemy, so in war murder is authorized. It’s bullshit. A personally tailored justification is a more accurate description. In the end, taking a life harbours no more emotion than drinking a cup of coffee.’
Taking back the bottle, she murmured, ‘Where was Elaine’s God? All her life she’s devoted herself to some higher purpose, some belief that good things will happen if she’s a good person. You heard the stories, she’s had to work hard to be happy, and then she winds up going out like that.'
Tentatively, James reached over and retrieved the bottle. ‘How do you even know it was Elaine?’ he questioned. ‘You never saw her.’
Focused on the breakers, she replied, ‘Then where is she now?’
Perhaps a minute passed in silence, when something occurred that James never thought he would see. Abbey began to cry.
‘Don’t look at me,’ she sniffed.
Glowing under the pallid moon, she seemed so defenceless. He wanted to move closer, throw an arm around her, hug her, kiss away her tears. He stayed where he was, instead handing back the bottle.
She accepted it graciously, took a small sip. ‘We’re never getting off this island, are we?’
‘We have to. I have to return some DVDs before next Friday.’
Abbey snorted. 'I think you're as scared as the rest of us.'
‘When you first found me,’ he said softly, ‘I was paralysed, remember? As I lay there drowning, I kept thinking, why? You know, why can’t I move? When I came around from the impact, there was this…screaming. I can still hear it now, this awful sound coming from somebody in so much pain. It was a woman’s voice. When I found her, I recognised her. She was the stewardess who’d served me earlier. Her nametag said Heather. Her leg was trapped beneath a stanchion…’ he paused for a pull on the whiskey. ‘…I tried to calm her down, but she fought me every step of the way. Delirious, she could barely feel her leg and the water was rising around her. If you’d seen her face, Abbey, she was so frightened.
‘I promised I’d get her out, promised her she’d be fine, but the stanchion wouldn’t budge, not even an inch, and I figured if I couldn’t move the stanchion I’d have to move her. So, I grabbed her under the arms. As I pulled she moved with me, came free easily. At first I couldn’t understand how it’d been so simple, where her pain had come from. But she was still screaming. Just screaming. When I looked down, her leg was completely detached from below the knee. The stanchion had gone right through.’
‘My God,’ Abbey muttered, closing her hand over his.
‘The screaming died off as the shock took over. I could see blood escaping the wound. In the water it looked like ink. I dragged her through the carriage, out into the sea. Halfway to shore, she went limp. I don’t know if she was dead. I thought she was, but there was no way to be certain. I couldn’t hold on to her anymore, the waves were getting the better of me, so you know what I did? I let her go. I let her go so I could save myself.’ He felt his hand being squeezed harder.
‘It was a night of impossible decisions for everybody, James, not just you. You did all you could for that woman, and if there was the smallest chance she was still alive, she wouldn’t have lasted a day without proper treatment. One life saved is better than two lost.’
Taking another long swig, he said, ‘I couldn’t move that night because I was punishing myself. I think in some twisted way I wanted to die, to make amends for failing that woman so badly. My brain just shut down. If you hadn’t come along when you did…’ The sentence ebbed away with the tide.
‘The guy I was travelling with, Milo,’ she said, ‘he had this word-of-the-day thing on his phone. Since we’ve been on the island, I’ve been thinking up new ones. Maybe you should take today’s.’
Gingerly he laid back and picked out a star. ‘That’s easy,’ he whispered. ‘Coward.’
Heart pumping furiously, she said, ‘I’d better have that bottle back.’
‘I’ve tried to forget that night,’ he went on, ‘no matter how ingrained. But I’m slowly coming to terms with it because I don’t have a choice. No matter how distant the light, Abbey, there is still a light.’
She looked sideways at him. ‘One of your mum’s sayings?’
‘One of mine, actually.’
Falling silent, she left her hand on his and peered into his clear blue eyes. Her tears began to well again, the tension hanging densely between them.
Neither dared look away.
They moved closer, their lips mere inches apart. He could feel the soft pulse of her breath against his mouth, the cool evening breeze gliding over them, comforting them in anticipation. As he leaned in slowly, the quiet desperation lingering over them, she glanced away embarrassed, the green of her beautiful eyes clouded with shame.
‘I’m sorry, James, I just can’t.’
‘It’s okay,’ he whispered, his lips hovering over her ear. ‘I understand.’
He could feel her warm breath against his chest. ‘Abbey, look at me,’ he insisted.
Slowly she lifted her head, fresh tears glistening on her cheeks.
‘It’s okay,’ he said again, wiping the damp marks from her face.
As silence fell weightily between them, they went back to the stars. After a while she leaned over and placed her head comfortably on his shoulder, allowing thirty minutes of serenity to linger. Finally she detached herself from him and climbed quietly to her feet. Without a word, she walked away.
*
Another hour passed uneventfully, the bottle half empty. Thankful for the lack of excitement James narrowed his eyes towards the marginally brighter horizon, the booze encouraging his shut down. He couldn’t think of anything but Abbey. The way she’d held his gaze, the feel of her breath against his chest. Never in his life had he wanted to taste another’s lips like he did hers.
Reaching for the bottle, he twisted the cap closed and set it down in the sand. ‘Room for another?’ said an unfamiliar voice.
Startled he sprang ba
ck, surprised his body still worked. Standing coyly before him was the girl, shabby brown dress torn up the middle and tied off above the thighs to make shorts.
‘Sure,’ he muttered, hiding his astonishment.
Taking Abbey’s seat timidly the girl stared at him, tired eyes brimming with wisdom.
‘My name’s Danielle,’ she said croakily, her accent broad South African. ‘If you were wondering.’
‘Danielle,’ he repeated. ‘Nice name.’
She smiled. ‘Hopefully everyone will stop calling me “The Girl” now.’
‘I think we can probably come to some arrangement,’ he smiled. ‘How come you’re up so early?’
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
‘Yeah, it's going around...'
Shuffling a little, she said unexpectedly, ‘You like Abbey, don’t you?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’ve seen the way you look at her.’
‘Hang on,’ he said warily. ‘Am I being counselled?’
‘If we never get home, her husband could remarry or start a new family. Then what?’
‘Is there nothing else you’d rather talk about, Danielle? Seriously, first words out of your mouth and you choose to lecture me. You want to give a drunken man a break?’
Probing no further she fell mute again, James no longer finding the silence comfortable.
‘Who were you on the plane with?’ he asked quickly.
‘Nobody.’
‘Aren’t you a little young to be flying alone?’
‘Aren’t you a little old to be getting drunk alone?’
‘Last I checked...no,’ James countered and took another swig.
Danielle frowned. 'If you must know, a friend helped me through the process. I needed to get away.’
‘Away from where?’
‘Just away.’
Pushing no further, he asked, ‘What’s in New Zealand?’
‘My brother, Neil,’ she said quickly. ‘He lives in Hamilton. Probably thinks I’m dead.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. They won’t write us off that quickly.’
‘I don’t mean the crash,’ she said. ‘He thought I was dead a long time ago. The two of us grew up in an orphanage after our parents died. They were doing the New York tourist thing on September eleventh, 2001. Never came home.
‘Anyway, Neil got out of the orphanage a few years ago, too old to stay. Legally he couldn’t take me with him, and so two years ago I ran away.’
‘For what reason?’
‘It was a Catholic orphanage. I'm not a Catholic. The place was state-run so they couldn’t kick me out. I refused to adopt Catholicism, so they treated me like garbage, a real outsider.’
‘You didn’t report the abuse?’
‘Their word against mine. Who was going to believe one kid over an entire Catholic organisation? Besides, I found a better life on the streets. They never looked for me. Probably glad I vanished, but I forgive them. They strayed from God’s path, it wasn’t their fault.’
Astounded by Danielle’s shrewd maturity, he waited for her to continue.
‘Eventually I was taken in by a family,’ she went on. ‘Well, a man named Dominick and a couple of other vagrants he’d taken in. We worked for him on his banana plantation in return for food and shelter. He was kind to us, and for the first time since my parents died, I felt truly safe again. The plantation became my haven. Nobody knew I was there, nobody cared, but that didn’t matter, I found my smile again.’
James began digesting. Danielle hadn’t talked in four days, he hadn’t even known her name, and now here she was, pouring out her soul like she’d known him for years. He needed more. ‘What happened in the orphanage that made you run?’ he probed gently. ‘Did they hit you? Was there abuse?’
‘Hit me?’ she frowned. ‘The years after Neil left I suffered a broken arm, two broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, several bouts of concussion and a chipped cranium. This from the carers and other children alike. I wasn’t safe anywhere. At the hospital I was just passed off as a clumsy kid. No matter how much I begged, no matter how long I wept, it just kept on coming. When I began working in the plantation, I healed properly for the first time in years.’
James swallowed hard. The effects of the whiskey wearing thin, he twisted the cap back off the bottle and took a long swig. Finally he said, ‘So did you talk to anyone, a friend or something?’
‘I did. I gave a detailed report to my closest friend.’
‘Who?’
‘God, of course.’
Feeling stupid, he said, ‘What did God do?’
‘It wasn’t a question of what God did for me. It was more a question of what I was able to do through keeping my faith. God doesn’t perform acts like that, He merely points the way. He led me to the banana plantation, He led me to Dominick. Without Him I would’ve been truly lost.’
Danielle’s behaviour in the clearing now made perfect sense. She’d resisted leaving because she felt safe there. The parallel to her current situation was astounding.
‘James?’ she muttered. ‘Eric told me something yesterday. ‘Something you should probably know.’
Sitting up straight, James tried to focus.
‘It’s about the guy in handcuffs,’ she added. ‘He told me who was wearing them.’
48
London, 1992
Gradually, the faces of his family evaporated into a funnel of light. He reached out as he raced along, tried to slow down. There was nothing to grip. Piece by piece the bright tunnel transformed into daylight and as suddenly as his journey began, it ended.
Over the precipice of a sheer drop he looked down at his dangling feet, nothing below but rocks and shale. He recognised the place. He’d been there many times before.
Raising his eyes, the rest of the expanse honed into view, awe-inspiring and vast.
‘Remember this place?’
‘The quarry,’ Nicolas York mouthed. ‘I loved this place growing up.’
‘You did. No matter how much we were warned to stay away, we would always come down here.’
Without replying, York took in the enormity of the abandoned quarry. The place was condemned, a hazard, and so no one stepped foot in there. It was guaranteed solitude; no alcoholic and bickering parents, no demanding teachers.
‘Do you remember what happened here, Nicky?’
York nodded slowly.
‘This is where you lost your grip on reality, if only for a while.’
Images began seeping steadily through the cracks of his mind: lying alone on his side in bed, crying himself to sleep for months; in class at school, unable to concentrate, freaking out in blind panic in the middle of lessons; thirteen years old, mind fractured.
‘Two years you spent in that hospital. But they pulled you back, and you got on with your life as best you knew how. I don’t know if you did it intentionally but you successfully blanked out your depression, pushed it down deep. It’s been down there ever since, manifesting, thriving on your failures, your losses, your self-destruction.’
‘I…I don’t feel it,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t feel anything.’
‘That is your demon, Nicky, buried deep in your subconscious. And the sooner you remember, the sooner you can deal with it.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to deal with it,’ he replied. ‘Maybe it’s become so dug-in, there is no way to deal with it.’
‘What happened that day wasn’t your fault. It was me, Nicolas, I was to blame. You blanked everything so effectively you convinced yourself you were somehow responsible.’
‘I…I…’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Nicolas. I was reckless, showing off. ’
‘But I…’
‘It wasn’t your fault, I’m telling you the truth…God's honest truth.’
Gradually the voice faded away, filtering into the crumbling image of the quarry. Then…
*
…eyelids like rusty hinges, York prized them open. He coughed, and p
ain erupted through his side like…he’d been stabbed.
‘Welcome back,’ said a woman’s voice. It sounded like Mason. ‘Whoa, whoa, don’t try and move. You’ll rupture the stitches.’
Slowly the room came into focus. It smelt like the Dungeon. He was lying in a bed of crisp white linen, a bare fluorescent tube hanging blindingly overhead. In the bed to his right was an elderly man coughing, grumbling in his sleep, and to his left was Mason sitting on a plastic visitors’ chair, her vaguely masculine features eying him stonily.
‘You couldn’t get me a room to myself?’ he muttered sleepily.
‘They wanted to give you one,’ said Mason, ‘but I told them you’d be much more comfortable in here with Cliff Richards.’
York rolled his head to the sleeping man. ‘That’s not his name.’
‘It’s what his chart says.’
York grinned, which hurt like hell. ‘How long was I out?’ he grunted.
‘Couple of days, you lost a lot of blood. Who was it?’
York glanced away.
‘That’s what I thought. What happened?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘We’ve checked out the CCTV from the café and some from the high street, but all we can tell is you were in pursuit of somebody. No image is clear enough to make him out.’
‘Shocker,’ York muttered.
‘Yeah,’ Mason agreed. ‘Who was he?’
‘He was he, Judy, our Mr Valentine.’
She nodded slowly, unsurprised. ‘So fill in some blanks for me. How did you go from jumping into that alley to having a knife in your back?’
He took an aching breath, trying to remember. ‘I…I talked to him. Then we fought, and I lost.’
‘I figured that much.’
‘He was strong, Judy. I mean strong, strong. And he had a knife…I couldn’t…wait, how am I still breathing?’
‘You don’t remember?’
Hunting Abigail: Fight or Flight? For Abigail, it's both! Page 26
