by Carys Jones
Amanda started to climb. She yelped with every step, grimacing against the pain. By the third step something changed. The brittle morning air of a dull day was replaced by the hungry fires of a furnace. Amanda felt like she was being boiled from the inside out. Her right hand released the banister to tug at her clothes. She was so hot in them. If she could just take them off and cool down a little she’d feel better. Her right hand fumbled at one of the few remaining buttons on her dress but before she could undo it her head sagged against her chest and then she dropped against the staircase and everything went black.
*
‘Daddy, aren’t you coming to bed?’ Amanda hugged her little rag doll to her chest and looked up at her father who was leaning against the kitchen sink, his eyes focused on the little window before him. Amanda lifted her gaze to see what held her father’s attention so raptly. She saw only darkness, without the guiding light of the moon, the sea and the sky bled together into one indecipherable mass.
‘I’ll come up soon, sweetheart.’ He briefly abandoned his vigil to give his daughter a gentle smile.
‘What are you looking at?’ Amanda hopped onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table and continued to watch her father with interest.
‘Did you hear on the news?’ He nodded at the radio which was plugged in on the far side of the kitchen countertop, lit up and emitting a low murmur of voices. ‘A fishing boat went down four miles out. Choppy waters out there tonight. Treacherous.’
‘Will the fishermen be okay?’ Amanda tightened her grip on her dolly.
‘The lifeboats have headed out to them,’ her dad gave a tense nod. ‘Hopefully they’ll get there in time.’
‘And if they don’t?’
Her dad slowly turned away from the sink, his shoulders sagging. ‘Remember how Mummy and I are always telling you how dangerous the ocean can be?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And how important it is to be a strong swimmer?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But sometimes being a strong swimmer isn’t enough. If the lifeboats don’t reach the men in time it won’t matter if they’re the greatest swimmers in the world. The cold will get them.’
‘The cold?’ Amanda’s eyes bulged in her head. The cold was everywhere. Especially in winter.
‘At this time of year the water is icy cold. Spend too long in it and you’re at risk of hypothermia.’
‘Hyp-no-turn-in-her?’
‘Hypothermia.’ Her dad’s stony expression softened with a brief smile. ‘It’s when your body has been exposed to the cold for too long and your core temperature starts to drop.’
‘What happens?’ Amanda scooted forward, to the edge of her seat.
‘Well,’ her dad looked back towards the window, ‘I’m telling this to help you understand, not to scare you, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘When you reach a certain level of cold, your body actually starts to think it’s too hot. People with severe hypothermia can start shedding their clothes as their minds become irrational. Of course, that’s the last thing they should be doing as it just quickens the process of freezing to death.’
‘They die? From the cold?’
‘From prolonged exposure to extreme cold, Amanda. It couldn’t happen here at home where you have access to warm fires and nice thick clothes. But out there…’ he was gazing at the dense darkness beyond the window. A drama was unfolding that was hidden from his eyes. ‘The fishermen, they don’t have much time,’ he concluded sadly.
‘So why aren’t you coming to bed?’
‘Because when they are rescued, and God willing they will be, a few of us will head over to the lifeboat house with hot drinks and warm food for the rescuers. The fishermen will be sent over to the hospital.’
‘And they’ll get better?’
‘Yes, sweetheart, they’ll get better.’
‘Daddy why aren’t you out there with the lifeboats helping?’ Amanda wondered innocently. She watched his shoulders tense, his head bow slightly.
‘I’m not a strong enough swimmer,’ he admitted with a sigh of regret. ‘My bad knees, they always held me back.’
‘Oh.’
‘That’s why it’s important for you to work hard in your swimming lessons, Amanda. To listen to what Mrs Maddox says. That way, one day, you can be out there helping those in need, just like I wish I was.’
‘You wish you were out there?’ Amanda looked beyond the window, horrified. She’d much rather be tucked up warm in bed than out on the icy sea.
‘There’s no nobler cause than helping others, sweetheart. Of course I wish I was out there trying to save the fishermen. I’d try and save everyone if I could.’
*
A seagull shrieked. Its pitched cry forced Amanda to open her eyes. She was crumpled against the step, one hand still on the wooden rail. Her body was still burning. She gasped, feeling every nerve in her body fiercely protest. A feral sense of self-preservation told her to keep moving. Amanda tightened her hand around the rail and forced her beaten legs to straighten. She screamed out as her knees felt too raw in their joints, like she was grinding bone against bone and wearing her own skeleton away.
The steps loomed ahead of her, snaking their way up the cliffside. Maybe there’d be a road at the top. Amanda could flag down a car and ask for help and—
She braced herself as she took the next step and then the next. She didn’t dare look down at her haggard appearance. Would anyone even stop for her? Or would she look too horrific for even the kindest strangers to slow down?
She needed to happen upon someone like her father. Someone who was always putting the needs of others before their own.
He’d have stopped you falling.
Amanda repeated the truth she’d clung onto for so many years.
He’d have always saved you.
If her dad were there now he’d scoop her up into his arms and carry her the rest of the way. But he was gone. So was Will. And Shane would have no idea how to find her, where she’d gone.
The wind pummelled against the side of the cliff, challenging Amanda’s endurance. It scratched at her cheeks, trying to bring her back to her knees.
I can do this. I can do this. She played the mantra on repeat in her mind as she took the steps one at a time.
Finally she reached the top. How long had it taken her? An hour? Maybe two. Because the ache in her bones told her that it had taken a lifetime. She’d never been so tired, so strung out. Holding her limp left arm at her side with her right hand, Amanda looked about. She was on an open stretch of road that turned off onto bracken-laced highlands. Everywhere was still. There wasn’t a car in sight. The only movement came from the wind which blew in off the sea and tumbled over the battered landscape.
‘No,’ Amanda wilted in defeat. She’d come this far. How could she be expected to go any further? Maybe she should just lay down in the middle of the road and wait for someone to find her?
Numbly she tottered along the road, feeling light-headed. She felt like she was walking in a dream as her heartbeat became weaker and weaker.
Then she saw it. It stood beside the road, its glass surfaces smeared by time and salty air. A phone box. An uneasy mix of euphoria and nausea swirled within Amanda as she staggered towards the phone box, hoping it worked. When she sealed herself within its small glass walls she didn’t even care about the overwhelming stench of urine. She fumbled for the receiver and looked uncertainly at the keypad. Her instinct was to punch in her mother’s number, to call home. The landline number for the little cottage had never changed, the numbers were etched into Amanda’s soul. But Corrine couldn’t help. She was miles away. Amanda began dialling a mobile number after requesting to reverse the charges. Her teeth were chattering so much that she wasn’t sure she’d even be able to speak. She called Shane. But would he even pick up? He was supposed to be waiting for her somewhere on a roadside. She didn’t even know where she was now.
Amanda clutched the receive
r with her right hand and leaned against the phone booth. There was a poster above the phone, full of emergency numbers and, at the top of it, a name. A location. The letters tensed together, trying to prevent Amanda from reading them. She frowned at the poster as her call connected and she heard the first ring drag out.
‘Ot…’ Amanda tried to form the letters. Her tongue was loose in her mouth, it sat there thick and useless. ‘Ot-ter…’
‘Hello?’ Shane picked up after the second ring. He sounded desperate. And afraid.
‘Ot-ter-well…’
‘Amanda, Amanda is that you?’
She couldn’t respond. Not properly. It was taking all she had just to pronounce the name of the damn place.
‘Amanda, Christ, I’ve been going out of my mind here! Are you okay? What happened? Where are you?’
So many questions. Amanda’s head pounded with the delivery of each one.
‘Ot-ter-well Bay,’ she spat out her location finally and sagged within the booth.
‘What?’
She groaned. She didn’t have the strength to say it again.
‘Otterwell Bay? Is that where you are?’
‘Hmpf.’ She was losing her ability to speak. Her head throbbed and her body burned as if coated in an invisible fire. ‘Come,’ she pleaded as her knees buckled. She fell to the floor of the phone booth, the abandoned receiver hanging just inches away from her.
‘I’m coming!’ Shane shouted out to her. ‘Just stay where you are, Amanda. I’m coming.’
Amanda closed her eyes. She was so very tired. She thought about her father keeping a restless vigil at the kitchen window on a dark night and wondered if the lifeboats ever did reach those fishermen in time.
17
‘Amanda, Christ, what happened?’
‘Look at you, did he do this to you?’
‘You’re shaking. Amanda stay with me.’
Shane’s voice was distorted. Amanda felt like she was still underwater. He sounded so far away.
In his arms she felt like she floated over to his waiting car. The landscape started to tilt, like she’d just stepped off the waltzers at the local fair.
‘Just take deep breaths, okay. You’re going to be fine, I promise.’
He was bundling something around her, something which glistened in the fragile morning light. Amanda looked down at the foil blanket which had been draped around her shoulders and tucked against her sides. If her mind was more tethered to her body she’d have teased Shane for being so obsessively prepared. Only he could have a foil blanket in his boot as part of his roadside kit. The boot of Amanda’s car was sparsely filled. There were running shoes, some plastic boxes for when she did the food shop and a bag crammed full of energy bars and a soft blanket. The bag had been Will’s idea.
‘In case you break down,’ he’d explained simply as he dropped the bag into her boot.
‘Will.’ Amanda whispered his name through cracked lips.
‘No, it’s me, Shane. Will’s… Will’s gone, remember?’
‘Gone?’
The car pulled away from the side of the road as a sledgehammer connected with Amanda’s head. Her eyes snapped open wide as she shifted frantically within her foil blanket.
‘Just rest, we’ll be at the hospital soon.’
‘No,’ her chest ached as she forced out the protest. ‘No hospital.’
‘Amanda, you’re very badly hurt. You need medical attention. This isn’t up for debate.’
Will was gone. Dead. McAllister had been the puppeteer who executed the order to kill him. And now he’d tried to kill Amanda.
‘No. No hospital,’ she wheezed out the words.
‘You’re bleeding and I’m pretty sure you’re hypothermic. You need to see a doctor.’
‘He can’t know I’m alive.’
Shane slowed the car and watched her from the corner of his eye. ‘Who can’t? McAllister?’
Amanda did her best to nod. Why was her body being so unresponsive? All of her senses were dulled. She shivered beneath the foil. The fire against her skin had gone, leaving just an icy sensation that continued to cling to her.
‘Why can’t he know you’re alive?’
‘Because,’ Amanda winced at the pain in her chest. How much of her had been broken when she was pushed off the edge of the cliff? ‘Because he tried to kill me.’
*
The motion of the car rocked Amanda to sleep. She closed her eyes and sat shivering under the silver blanket, her skin breaking out in sweat. She slipped past the point of caring where she was going. If Shane insisted on taking her to the hospital then so be it. She imagined one of McAllister’s lackeys slipping in after visiting hour was over and pouring something deadly into her drip. Amanda would be powerless, forced to sit and wait for the poison to be fed into her system. She was so tired. Too tired to care anymore.
‘Amanda!’
Her eyes opened. The car had stopped. Shane’s face was directly in front of hers, pale and concerned. He clapped his hands again, just centimetres from her nose.
‘You fell asleep,’ he was hurriedly scanning her face, taking in all of the damage on display. ‘You can’t fall asleep in case you have a concussion.’
‘I’m fine,’ Amanda grumbled, nuzzling against her seat as the words began to come a little easier to her. She wanted more sleep. Sweet, blissful sleep.
‘You have two choices,’ Shane told her sternly. ‘Either you stay awake or I take you straight to the nearest hospital. Your call.’
‘He pushed me himself,’ she recalled dreamily. ‘He toyed with me and then—’ She winced as a searing sharp pressure bloomed behind her skull, the memory too painful to conclude.
‘He pushed you? Pushed you where? If he did this to you, I swear to God, Amanda, I’ll kill him myself. With my bare hands if I have to.’
‘Don’t,’ Amanda pulled in a ragged breath, ‘don’t take me to hospital. Don’t give him chance to finish the job.’
Shane lingered beside her, reluctant to move. He cupped her face with his hands. He was so warm to the touch, Amanda shuddered at how good it felt. It was like she’d forgotten how it felt to just be warm. She only remembered being either on fire or frozen.
‘I won’t let him hurt you again.’ He said the words with such sincerity. ‘If it’s too dangerous to go to hospital then fine, we’ll just return to the hotel.’ He kept holding her face but dropped his gaze. ‘I’ll help you as best I can, but if you deteriorate in any way, if you show symptoms of internal bleeding, we’ll have to take a chance with the hospital, do you understand?’
‘If he knows I’m alive he’ll kill me,’ Amanda whispered the brutal truth. McAllister needed to believe that she’d died in the icy waters beneath the cliff. She’d have to use the darknet to plant a false story online about her body washing up on some beach. Just like Will had done, she was going to have to fake her own death.
‘Okay, okay.’ Shane released her and shifted back into the driver’s seat. It was raining beyond the car. A curtain of drizzle gathered before them, obscuring the road ahead.
‘Just take me back,’ Amanda pleaded. ‘To the hotel. I’ll be fine.’
*
‘We will stay awake all night if we have to,’ Amanda’s eyes were bright with excitement as she stood in her garden upon her freshly laid lawn and looked up towards the velvety blackness of the sky.
‘All night?’ Will grumbled as he carried the telescope out through the French doors. He was tucked up inside a white woollen turtleneck jumper Amanda had bought him the previous Christmas.
‘Well, the reports said that the meteor shower could happen anytime between two and four.’
‘Couldn’t they be more specific?’ Will placed the telescope beside Amanda on the lawn and eyed the night sky dubiously.
‘Between two and four is pretty specific.’
‘Some of us have to actually leave the house tomorrow to go to work.’
‘You can go to bed if you want.’ Ama
nda bent her knees and peered into her telescope. She carefully adjusted its angle so that she was looking upon the cratered face of the moon. ‘I just figured you might want to witness such a special cosmic event.’
‘I could just catch the footage on TV later.’
‘Do you want to be a spectator in your life or a participant?’
Will gave her a lopsided smile. ‘Sometimes I think you should have been a politician.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. You’re pretty good at talking people into things.’
Amanda stepped away from the telescope to allow Will to peer through it. ‘Wow,’ his breath fogged around him. ‘I never realised how beautiful the moon is.’
‘Now you understand why I wanted to spend a thousand pounds on a telescope.’
‘Sadly, yes.’ Will straightened and reached for her, tucking her against his side like it was where she belonged. They slotted together so perfectly. Amanda sighed wistfully. ‘Seeing the moon like that, it does kind of make the big spend seem worth it. Though I hold to the fact that a thousand pounds is a lot to spend on anything other than a car.’
‘Do you think they’ll look like balls of fire or shooting stars?’ Amanda looked between Will and the sky. He smelt of home. She nuzzled against his jumper.
‘Shooting stars, I guess.’ Will tightened his arm around her. ‘I mean, that’s what shootings stars always were, right? Meteors.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So will you make a wish?’
Amanda giggled and leaned back to look up at her husband. ‘Make a wish?’
‘What’s so funny? It’s a shooting star, people make wishes on them.’ The darkness concealed most of the blush which was creeping up Will’s neck.
‘People,’ Amanda raised her eyebrows, ‘but not Will Thorn. You’re too pragmatic for that.’
‘I make wishes from time to time.’
‘My dad used to say that wishes were just dreams with wings.’
‘So will you be making one, a wish?’
‘Will you?’
‘I asked first.’
