by Carys Jones
‘Fine,’ Amanda leaned towards the telescope. ‘I’ll wish for more of what I have. More time with you, in our gorgeous home.’
‘That’s a nice wish.’
‘And you?’
‘I’ll wish…’ Will focused on a distant star. His eyebrows knotted together and for a moment he looked lost against the sheer infinity of the universe. Then he shook his head and the moment passed. ‘I can’t tell you what I wish or else it won’t come true.’
‘Oh, no fair, I told you mine.’
‘Nope, not saying. You need to allow a man to have some secrets.’
‘We have no secrets,’ Amanda started to realign the telescope, not wanting to miss a moment of the meteor shower. ‘I even know about that disgusting thing you do with your toenails.’
‘Which is what?’
‘You chew them. I’ve seen you. In some countries that is grounds for divorce, you know.’
‘Damn, my darkest secret and you figured it out.’
‘I’m a smart girl,’ Amanda quipped.
‘Hence the telescope.’
‘Hence the telescope,’ her lips curled into a smile as she stepped back from her expensive purchase, satisfied that the alignment was just right.
‘Okay, well, it’s one now,’ Will lifted his wrist to check his watch. ‘If this celestial event is occurring between two and four we’re going to need a shedload of coffee to make it through the night so I’d best go and put some on.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Because you’re not falling asleep on me.’ As he doubled back towards the welcoming glow of the house, he pointed towards Amanda, ‘We’re in this together, you and me, we’re making some wishes tonight no matter how tired you get.’
*
The traffic thickened as they drew closer to Glasgow. Amanda bowed her head against her chest, unsure which hurt more – her injuries or the ache she felt in her heart whenever she thought of Will.
‘How are you feeling?’ Shane’s hands were tight against the wheel.
‘Tired.’
‘Just tired?’
‘And I ache. I ache badly.’
‘Drink this.’ Shane handed her a bottle of water.
‘Can’t I have something warm?’ Amanda slowly unscrewed the lid off the bottle. Her fingers felt bloated and awkward. ‘Maybe we could stop for coffee or something.’
‘You need to warm up properly first. Once I’m satisfied you’ve regulated your core temperature you can have coffee.’
‘Coffee would be good,’ Amanda held the bottle to her lips and drank deeply from it.
‘We could still go the hospital, you know.’
‘No,’ she shook her head in defiance. ‘I’m relatively in one piece. I can’t risk going to hospital, I can’t risk him finding me.’
‘You said he pushed you?’
‘Can we just get back? I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted.’
Time passed in a ribbon of roads and grey skies. Amanda’s eyes fluttered open just as the car began to slow.
Shane turned into the multi-storey car park that their hotel used. He slid into an empty space and killed the engine. ‘Are you sure it’s even safe to be here?’ He leaned forward and searched the darkened corners beyond the dashboard. ‘I mean, don’t you risk him coming to look for you?’
‘He thinks I’m dead,’ Amanda coughed, reaching for her door handle. ‘We just have to keep it that way.’
‘Wait.’ Shane sprang out of his seat and powered around to the other side of the car. He opened Amanda’s door as wide as it would go and looped an arm around her waist, helping her up onto her feet.
‘Jesus,’ she winced as she stood up. She felt like during the journey into Glasgow the metal of the blanket had sunk into her skin and fused with her skeleton. She was so stiff. Her joints painfully ground together as she staggered away from the car.
‘Can you walk?’
‘Barely.’
How far was it to the lobby? To the lifts? To Amanda’s battered legs it felt like a million miles.
‘We can’t risk someone seeing you like this,’ Shane desperately looked around. His body tensed as he settled on something. ‘We need to take the stairs.’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry, Amanda. But if someone sees you in the lift, or the lobby, they’ll call an ambulance. I didn’t spot any CCTV cameras on the stairs. It’s our best option.’
A dry sob bounced over Amanda’s sore lips. ‘How…’ She tried to balance most of her weight against Shane, ‘how bad do I look?’
‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘Okay. Well,’ Shane drew in a breath, ‘your face is caked in dried blood. There’s a gash on your forehead that keeps weeping, your arms and legs are covered in bruises, your clothes are all ripped up and you’re white as a sheet. Other than that you look great.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And,’ Shane began pacing towards the door marked with a sign for stairs, ‘from the way you’re carrying your left arm, I reckon you’ve dislocated your shoulder.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Ouch indeed.’ Keeping Amanda held against his side, Shane struggled with the door and eventually pulled it open. An endless maze of metal stairs criss-crossed above them in a dizzying spiderweb.
‘We can’t do this,’ Amanda gazed up at the stairs and tried to shrink back towards the door.
‘We can and we will. We just have to take it one step at a time. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
The stairs seemed endless. Amanda feared that she had no energy reserves left to call upon. She did her best to power through her pain. Shane helped her as much as he could but she had to use her own legs, had to place one bloodied foot in front of the other.
‘Just keep going,’ he intermittently whispered to her, ‘you’ve got this.’
He pushed me. The words echoed through Amanda like a heartbeat. She kept climbing the stairs, kept going ever upwards.
He pushed me.
In McAllister’s mind her broken body was probably still being tossed around by the tide. Was he back behind the walls of his mansion now, enjoying a dram of whisky beside a roaring fire? Had he toasted his success? Laughed with his goons about how they’d taunted Amanda until she’d wet herself with fear.
‘How much… farther?’ Amanda’s lungs burned. She wanted to just collapse in a heap. She didn’t care if anyone saw her. But no one came. No one else was crazy enough to use the never-ending network of metal stairs when there was a perfectly good system of lifts located in the lobby. Had they taken the lift, then Amanda would be in her hotel room by now, sprawled out on the soft bed. Her bones throbbed with longing.
‘Nearly there.’
Shane kept giving the same response. Nearly there.
They seemed to perpetually be nearly there. Amanda felt like she were trapped in some nightmare where she was constantly trying to find an exit but one never presented itself. She was always just nearly there. She was reaching her threshold for tolerance, for pain.
Amanda dropped down onto all fours, her right hand pressing against the grid of the metal step whilst her left hung limply at her side.
Shane kept climbing the stairs. His footsteps rang out around her.
‘Here,’ he called back breathlessly. ‘It’s this door. This is our floor.’
Amanda tried to get up but there was no tension in her arm, no power to push her up. She’d turned to jelly. ‘I can’t,’ she admitted tearfully. ‘I just need to rest. Just for a minute.’
‘You can rest all you want once we’re back in the room. Come on.’ Shane retraced his steps to her. She expected him to haul her back onto her feet, to keep up his mantra about how she could do it. Instead he lifted her off the ground, carefully placing her damaged body over his shoulder. Amanda tensed as her chest burned and her bones ground together to sing a symphony of agony. But the fireman’s lift was better than walking. Shane panted and slowly ascended towards their
floor. He thrust open the door and staggered out into the corridor. It seemed strange to suddenly be in such plush surroundings. The walls were painted a soft shade of grey, the floor covered in plush carpet and music was playing like a delicate whisper.
‘Nearly… there,’ Shane grunted as he pressed on. Amanda rested against his back, seeing their journey from a bizarre perspective. She looked along the corridor which was thankfully empty.
Shane kept moving, not daring to stop even to draw in a necessary breath.
It was what Will would have done.
Amanda stiffened in surprise at her own thought. But she knew she was right. Will would have scooped her up, hauled her over his shoulder and carried her up the stairs, just as Shane had done. Sure, with Will it would have been more effortless, he’d been a hulk of a man. But the thought process would have been the same – they both would have wanted to save her. Shane was doing everything he could to save her; he’d even ignored his instincts and not taken her to hospital at her behest.
Finally Shane was opening the door to their room. Amanda felt relief wash over her as they went inside and left the rest of the world out in the corridor. Shane carried her over to the bed where he carefully lay her down. Amanda looked up at him, she could feel her eyelids starting to swell. Would she be sporting one black eye the next day or two? She didn’t dare go near a mirror, she imagined she looked horrific.
‘Thank you,’ she breathed as Shane began searching his luggage for the first aid kit he’d inevitably packed.
‘Of course.’
‘No, really,’ she rolled onto her side, grimacing as she felt her injuries constricting and ripping, and reached out for Shane with a shaking right hand. She noticed that her fingers were caked in dirt and blood. ‘You saved me.’
Shane looked at her and he didn’t seem to see any of her injuries, just the girl he loved beneath them. He gave her a tender smile and then went back to his search.
‘You saved me,’ Amanda repeated as she dropped onto her back once more and stared up at the ceiling.
Maybe Shane’s hand hadn’t reached out over the cliff edge at the crucial point when she fell, but he was still her hero. He’d still saved her.
18
Amanda drifted in and out of sleep. In her waking moments she saw Shane hovering over her, mopping her brow with a wet flannel or renewing the dressings on her cuts. She ran a fever. At the height of her delirium she saw Will standing at the end of her hotel bed. His skin was grey, his eyes sunken and his clothes were caked in leaves and mud.
‘Will.’ She tried to sit up, tried to reach out for him, but there was an awful pressure upon her chest, keeping her pressed against the bed. ‘Will.’ She choked on his name. He said nothing, he just lingered at the foot of the bed, his gaze vacant.
The room started to smell of rot. Amanda was certain that it was coming from Will. He was haunting her, punishing her for leaving his body alone in the woods like a dead animal.
‘I had to,’ Amanda’s lips trembled as she flitted between being too hot or too cold. ‘I had to save your s-son. S-stop looking at me… like that. Will, s-say something.’
But he never spoke, he just stood, and to Amanda that was worse. She wanted to hear his voice, even if he was yelling at her, even if he was telling her that she’d let him down. At least he’d be saying something.
‘I did this for you,’ Amanda told him repeatedly. ‘For you. And for your son. You can’t hate me for that.’
On the third day Amanda’s fever broke. She woke up to sunshine streaming in through the window and Will was gone.
‘How are you feeling?’ Shane was instantly by her side, he looked gaunt and deep shadows gathered beneath his eyes.
‘Um,’ Amanda looked down at herself. She wore the nightshirt she’d previously packed. Pulling back the covers, she saw her legs. Red welts were turning blue as they bruised. The swelling on her knee had started to go down. ‘I feel more like myself, I guess.’ She looked to where Will had been standing. Particles of dust danced in a beam of sunlight.
‘You got sick,’ Shane leaned over and placed his palm against her forehead. ‘I got all the medicine that I could from the chemist and it seems to have worked.’
‘Thank you.’ The words didn’t seem enough but they were all Amanda had.
‘I dressed your injuries as best I could. Really you need a shower to thoroughly clean them all out, if you’re up to it?’
‘Yes.’ Amanda closed her eyes at the blissful thought of a shower. She yearned to have the caress of warm water running down her battered back. ‘A shower would be amazing.’
‘Okay, but first,’ Shane dropped his hand and looked at her left shoulder. ‘Your shoulder is still dislocated; I didn’t dare try to reset it while you were battling the fever. But, Amanda, it does need resetting.’ His voice was calm but there was an edge to it, like he was delivering a warning.
‘Then, reset it,’ Amanda shrugged and turned, directing her left shoulder at him.
‘It’s going to hurt.’
‘Okay.’
‘A lot.’
‘I said okay.’
Shane didn’t seem satisfied by her response. He got up and began rummaging around the room.
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ Amanda assured him. ‘I’m already in a lot of pain, what harm could a bit more do, so—’
‘Bite down on this,’ he thrust a hand towel at her.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Extremely. You have to trust me on this, Amanda. It’s going to hurt like hell and I can’t risk you screaming the place down.’
Amanda shoved the hand towel into her mouth, clenching her teeth around it. ‘M-kay.’
‘I’ll do it on three.’ Shane stood beside the bed with one leg raised up on it. He placed both hands around Amanda’s left shoulder, holding on tight as though he were about to take part in a game of tug of war.
‘Readme,’ Amanda’s words were muffled against the towel. A dagger forced its way through her skull, driving itself into her brain. Tears pooled in her eyes. She was back in the boot of McAllister’s cars, back listening to the soundtrack of her own muffled anguish.
‘One.’
Amanda tried to blink away her tears and the memory.
‘Two.’
She could feel the rumble of the engine. Her heart beat echoed in her ears.
‘Three.’
The pain sent the memory up in flames. The boot was gone. Amanda screamed against the towel, letting the fluffy fabric absorb all her agony. Her left shoulder burned as though Shane had just driven a hot poker through it. Flames fanned out down her arm, burning her, crippling her. She spat out the towel, panting.
‘Okay, it’s done. I’m sorry for the pain, but it’s done. Are you okay?’ Shane stroked her hair back from her damp brow.
‘Fuck,’ she still couldn’t catch her breath. ‘You weren’t kidding when you said it’d hurt.’
Regret pinched at Shane’s face. ‘But at least now you can shower and use both hands,’ he offered by way of consolation, reaching out and helping Amanda stand up.
‘Did you happen to pick up any pain meds from the chemist?’ She rubbed at her aching shoulder. Her bones were so sore, they felt brittle and worn down.
‘Some.’
‘Good, because I’m going to need them.’
‘You’ll feel better once you shower.’
*
Amanda stood beneath the hot water until her skin turned pink. She washed the seawater out of her hair, the sand from beneath her nails. She washed away the shame, the suffering which McAllister had caused her. Then she just stood with her face upturned to the shower head and let the warmth flow over her. It felt good to be warm. To be clean. The small hotel bathroom filled with steam and still Amanda didn’t get out. She wanted to stay in the shower cubicle forever, hot and safe.
The door was ajar and some of the steam was trickling out. Shane raised his voice to be heard over the force of the water, ‘Hey,
you okay?’
Amanda moved to lean against the smooth tiled wall, letting the water forge a river down her back.
‘Do you need me to help you get out or anything?’
He was treating her like an invalid. Which, Amanda looked down at her battered limbs, she supposed she currently was. She turned off the water. ‘If you don’t mind, then yeah, that’d be great.’ Stepping out of the cubicle, she saw Shane nervously lingering on the edge of the steam. ‘Can you hand me a towel?’
He nodded and quickly thrust a hand towel at her.
‘Something… bigger?’ Amanda prompted.
‘Crap, yeah, sure.’ He sounded nervous.
Amanda pulled the sheet towel from his grasp and began to dry herself. But it wasn’t easy. When she tried to bend or turn, her bones throbbed, pleading with her to restrict her movements.
‘Um, can you help dry me?’ Amanda shyly extended the towel back towards him. ‘I’m…’ she looked down at her pink flesh, at her feet which had turned red. ‘It’s a struggle. I’m still in a lot of pain.’
‘Yeah, of course, absolutely.’ Shane began to tentatively pat at her skin. He didn’t roughly run the towel over her like she were a wet dog, he just kept patting and dabbing away as though she were made of porcelain.
‘Dry me, don’t paw me,’ Amanda teased. She noticed Shane’s pained expression and she was about to remark that there were worse jobs in the world than having to towel-dry your ex but then she saw what troubled him. Her whole body was a patchwork quilt of cuts and bruises. The large mirror on the far wall was becoming unfogged with steam and revealing her tarnished reflection.
Her legs were scratched and bruised, along with her arms. When she turned, Amanda saw the dark shadows on her back, creeping their way up her spine. But it was her face that troubled her the most. When she locked eyes with her reflection she slunk back. The blood had been washed away but the blue bruises remained. Both of her cheeks were engulfed in them like some sadistic war paint. She had a matching pair of black eyes and a cut lip that was just starting to heal. A long gash ran across the length of her forehead, releasing a faint trickle of blood which traced a line down to Amanda’s chin.
‘He did this.’ Amanda stared at herself in disbelief. It was like looking in a fairground mirror at the funhouse, only instead of being taller or really squat Amanda got to see the broken version of herself.
