by Victoria Fox
Kevin’s fingers were covered in blood. They rested across the slumped back of Jacob Lyle. He nodded. ‘I’m scared,’ he rasped, ‘to look.’
Angela climbed down, finding her feet on the cracked back of a skewered cabin table, and manoeuvred herself beneath the sack-like body. Jacob’s eyes were closed. His face was thick with charcoal, beyond which it was difficult to assess the extent of his burns—but it looked bad. He had been the one to access the hold, when they had tried to put it out. The luggage flap had seeped dense, billowing fog. Jacob had been thrown, crushed by a flash of aggressive, blinding smoke.
Fire.
She felt his wrist.
The fuselage groaned, its angle shifting so the pool of light beneath them tipped and swayed. With a stomach-flipping jolt, they dropped. Angela was thrown, her head smashing against plastic, and this time she caught a hanging belt, pulling the skin from her palms as it shot through her grip, but she managed to hold on.
Kevin screamed. The plane settled, creaking to a still.
Nobody moved.
‘I need your help,’ she told him. ‘We must be quick.’
The hold was a graveyard. Angela found the remainder of her case, its ends charred to hard, gluey nodules. It brought to mind a picture she had once seen, of a woman who had burst into flames in her house, and all that had been left was a pair of legs, blackened at the knees, the shoes and socks still on, resting in a mound of ash.
In the front flap she found what she was looking for: a penknife.
Flicking the blade, she set about severing the belts.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Making a rope. You know how to tie it?’
Kevin began shaking, muddling the cords.
‘Like this.’ She wrenched the ends. ‘Tight, like that, OK? Eve goes first.’
‘I want to go first,’ Kevin blathered. ‘I don’t want to die.’
‘I need you here—to help me. We can’t leave him.’
The plane squealed, plummeting once more.
Kevin lost himself to dread. ‘I’m jumping!’
Angela grabbed him, surprised at her strength. A lifetime spent dragging boys into order, punching her brothers when they teased her, kicking out against them when they pissed her off. Same girl. Different place. ‘You’re not.’
‘Let go of me!’ His lip trembled.
‘Pull yourself together,’ said Angela. ‘You can cry later.’
She picked her way back through the cabin, through singed remains and strewn belongings. Ignoring Kevin’s snivels, Angela secured the harness first around Eve and then, her hands shaking, her heart full in her throat, convinced with every movement that the capsule was about to give and send them crashing to the ground, she strained to loop the other end around a tree trunk an arm’s reach away, knotting it tight.
She was hot—dead hot. The eggshell cabin was heating up like a greenhouse. Sweat pricked her brow. Her vest stuck to her shoulders. Six a.m.? Seven maybe? No way to tell. Her watch was smashed.
They needed to locate their cells and find a signal—that would be the first thing. Rescue was on its way. Rescue would come. They would be found.
Short goals, Angela told herself. Get down. Use the phones.
Eve gripped her hand, squeezed it. ‘It’s not just me.’
‘I know,’ said Angela. She had known at Jakarta. ‘I promise it will hold.’
She helped Eve unstrap herself. ‘I won’t let you fall. Keep your eyes on mine.’
Eve nodded. She betrayed no fear. She would not show Angela the naked terror that, despite what care they took now, she had already lost it.
‘I’m going next.’ Kevin rushed forward. ‘Put me on next.’
Angela watched as Eve worked down the cable, holding the trail between her legs. Dappled light swallowed her, the top of her head growing ever more distant.
A bird cawed. There was a whistling, rattling sound. The plane moved again.
‘Strap me in,’ said Kevin. ‘I’m next.’
With Eve safely landed, Angela hauled in the rope.
‘The hell you are. Take this. Get it round him.’
‘He can’t do what she just did.’
‘You and I are supporting him, got it?’
‘He’s half dead.’
‘He’s half alive.’
She shouted down to Eve. ‘What can you see? Can you see anything?’ But the return cry was muted in the heat. The fuselage groaned again.
Lowering Jacob was arduous. In a state of unconsciousness his body was brick-heavy, the belt scraping and chafing and shredding between their clenched fists. Each time the rope rushed, their load plunged, swinging dangerously, and Kevin would let go, crying in pain, leaving Angela splitting under the pressure.
Kevin followed, scrambling like a monkey, and when he reached the ground he curled up in a ball and started to wail. Angela went last. She was mindful of the frayed belt and ominous sounds from above, one hand after the other; gently did it. When her feet touched down, she was grateful for this small but significant victory.
She looked up. From the forest floor the wreckage was a gaping catastrophe. The cabin wheezed and whined a closing time before dislodging, snapping then finally falling. The creepers that had been holding it broke like twigs.
‘Run!’
Dragging Jacob, they hauled him into the trees. Angela stumbled over knotted roots, blinded by flies, the heat so close and hard she could have bit into it.
Behind, the remains of the stricken aircraft crashed to solid ground. Its impact was booming. Creatures squawked and shrilled. The dense sky ruptured.
They turned.
A jagged, forsaken line of survivors, faces blackened and clothes torn.
‘What now?’ said Kevin.
Angela jammed her jack-knife into a tree. ‘Now we find the others.’
32
America
On the morning the news broke, Noah Lawson woke up in his married co-star’s bed. Normally he clicked on NBC while he showered and brushed his teeth, but today, foaming last night’s tell-tale secrets from his body, he enjoyed the thrash of water in silence. It was summer in New York, and, for the first time since Angela Silvers had walked out on him, he didn’t feel like drawing the blinds and shutting out the world.
He wrapped a towel around his waist. In the bathroom cabinet he caught his sleep-deprived reflection, sandy hair tousled, blue eyes weary but sated.
Old habits died hard. Screwing around, the same old story. He’d tried for a relationship with the woman he loved and look how that had wound up.
She was still naked when he returned to the bedroom, sprawled on the king-size, her long legs and pert breasts invitations to slip back beneath the sheets.
‘Shouldn’t you get dressed?’ Noah teased, as she pulled him down, spreading her hands over his chest. Twenty minutes till her husband came home.
‘It turns me on,’ she murmured. ‘Knowing any second we might get caught.’
Noah hauled himself off, dragging on faded jeans that sat uncomfortably on his erection. OK, sleeping with his Broadway leading lady wasn’t the wisest idea, but he was discreet enough to keep it under wraps—so long as she was, too.
‘Next time.’ Noah leaned in to plant a kiss, first on her knees, then the tops of her thighs, her belly, her ribcage, and finally the delicate plane between her breasts.
She giggled, gunning the remote at the plasma TV.
‘Whoa,’ she said immediately, sitting up. ‘What’s this?’
The screen was filled with colour and chaos, wildly edited frames of a clip of an aircraft, a head-shot of Kevin Chase and a wrecked Asian coastline. A reporter was delivering urgently to camera, mic in hand, pressing her earpiece for updates.
Hysterical crowds churned in the background. Multitudes were sobbing. Signs were held aloft: The End is Nigh, The Rich Must Fall, Apocalypse Now!
Noah’s first thought was terrorism.
The scene was one of panic and confusi
on: a montage of disaster. At the foot of the broadcast ran a crimson banner:
BREAKING NEWS—SEVEN MISSING IN JAKARTA AIR DISASTER. SENATOR MITCH CORRIGAN, TAWNY LASCELLES AND ANGELA SILVERS AMONG THOSE ON BOARD …
‘Holy shit,’ she said.
For a few seconds, Noah was numb. He watched, listened, waiting for the instant when something would click and he could take it in. He couldn’t. He could not take it in. Even when Angela’s picture flashed up, he could not take it in.
‘Noah, are you OK? You look like you saw a ghost.’
‘We understand the jet lost radio signal around two a.m. local time, approximately three hundred kilometres northwest of Papua New Guinea. It is believed to have come down in or surrounding the Palaccas Archipelago, a region of islands en route to Salimanta, the flight’s intended destination. Sources have since confirmed that all seven figures were indeed on board the aircraft. At present we are unable to corroborate the cause of the incident. A search effort is underway …’
Noah tore open the door. Ignoring his lover’s enquiries, he shot downstairs, half dressed, stumbled into the New York sunshine and started running.
In a suite at the peak of the Parisian’s gold tower, Dino Zenetti was treating himself to an early-morning blowjob. It was his favourite time of the day. The broad was hot, a bigtitted, red-haired stripper he had summoned to his den at two a.m. Her lips were plump and soft and sticky with gloss. Dino lay back against the pillows, arms folded behind his head, and watched as his cock drove in and out of her mouth.
What was a guy supposed to do? His fiancée sure as shit wasn’t putting out—and now Angela had skipped town, leaving him high and dry. He had hoped Donnie Silvers’ croaking might have made her putty in his hands, because there was nothing hornier than a sobbing broad, but sadly no. The heiress was proving a hard nut to crack; meanwhile Dino’s own nuts doubted whether they’d ever get cracked again.
Until Angela came to her senses, he would get it elsewhere. He had to. Dino harboured a theory that if his balls didn’t get quenched at least once a day, he’d wind up getting prostate cancer. He came fiercely, pounding against the girl’s tongue. She would leave a happy customer. Getting to pleasure a Zenetti was a privilege indeed.
While he was in the bathroom, the phone rang. Mid-piss, Dino ignored it.
As he was dressing, it rang again.
‘Yeah?’ He snatched it up.
‘That how you answer all your calls?’ came a sharp voice. Carmine.
‘Course not,’ Dino said hurriedly. ‘Thought you were someone else.’
‘You seen the news?’ asked Carmine.
‘No.’
‘Then get on it. Cos you and I just hit a big fuckin’ jackpot, son.’
Joan Chase was giving Trey the dachshund a bath. Trey didn’t like it, he was all shivery and quivery until she wrapped him in his best towelling robe and dried him good as new, but she was sure that if Kevin were here he’d be pleased.
She wondered how her son was getting on in Salimanta. Her own return flight had been interminable, especially when they got held up in customs because Trey lost his passport. She hoped Kevin was faring better.
Joan planned to stay in Kevin’s pad while he was away. She would do his laundry, clean his bedroom (already she had unearthed his stack of pornography while changing the sheets—it was just like the old days!) and cook some food to put in the freezer. Also, Trey was happiest at home and it wouldn’t do to disrupt his routine.
Lifting the pup from the tub, Joan rubbed a flannel across his soggy fur and adorned him in a bespoke robe, the letters TC emblazoned across the breast pocket, though what exactly Trey would keep in his breast pocket was beyond even her.
It was as she was fixing breakfast—pancakes and syrup for her; chicken Chewa-Bunga for him—that Joan registered that something was wrong. She could hear a faint, frantic din, and when she peeled back the blinds that opened onto Kevin’s drive, she saw, down at the gates, a band of desperate-looking people.
Joan frowned. She closed the blind. The din grew louder.
Trey blinked up at her, licking his nose.
The pan on the stove was starting to burn. Butter hissed and spat.
Joan went to the plasma. Her thumb hovered over the power. In the split second before the screen lit up, by some terrible thread of motherly instinct, she sensed that life, as she knew it, was about to change for ever.
Melinda Corrigan rose from yet another athletic night, picked her way downstairs and poured a huge cup of sweet white coffee. The kids had left for school and the mansion was blissfully quiet. Her body ached pleasurably from Gary’s keen attentions.
Melinda bit her lip. She was being naughty. It was naughty to be sleeping with her neighbour’s husband, and to be cheating behind her own husband’s back. It was naughty the things they got up to and the positions Gary put her in. It was naughty to rent a motel room on the road out of town, and creep back here in the depths of night.
As far as she was concerned, Mitch could stay away as long as he liked.
The promise of the morning played out. First she would take a long, luxurious shower, then venture out for a lazy day of shopping. Maybe she would pickup those lilac panties, the ones with the crotch cut out, and treat Gary to the full works tonight.
Mitch had used to love that sort of thing—these days, he couldn’t give a crap.
Humming to herself, she padded upstairs.
Her cell bleeped. It was Oliver.
Don’t panic. Call me.
The coffee churned in her gut—panic about what?
Melinda dialled his number. He picked up straight away.
‘Oliver?’ Her voice was shrill. ‘What’s going on?’
Orlando Silvers got the call during a meeting with the board. Partway through his presentation on the year’s profits, which would have been an uncomfortable analysis at the best of times, his secretary burst into the conference room without knocking.
‘Forgive my interruption, Mr Silvers.’
Orlando bit back annoyance. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she was shaking, ‘but this is urgent.’
The assembly shifted in their seats. Directing a smile, Orlando said easily:
‘Please excuse me. This won’t take a moment.’
Out in the lobby, his secretary’s expression was one of abject horror. Orlando forgot his anger. He had never before seen, nor would he ever again, an expression quite like it. It was an expression too old for her twenty-six years.
‘What is it?’ The question tasted horrible. ‘What’s happened?’
‘There’s been an accident.’
For some reason, he didn’t think of Angela. She was his baby sister: nothing bad could happen to her. ‘Is it Mom?’ he pressed. ‘Luca?’
He wanted to say another name, but it never reached his throat. His secretary wouldn’t know anything about that anyway. Nobody knew about that.
Eve was his cross to bear: Eve, and the life inside her.
‘I’m sorry,’ his secretary began, ‘I’m so, so sorry …’
33
Day 1
Eve Harley staggered into the thicket. She found a ditch and slid into it, pulling down her jeans, her fingers trembling. She checked her underwear. She felt her stomach.
She waited for the pain, but it didn’t come. The scarlet gush of blood: the certainty that what had been made was lost. It didn’t come.
You’re still here, she thought, knowing it surer than she knew her name. You’re still with me.
Her vision swimming, one eye stained red, stinging liquid when she blinked. Alone, she flinched at the sounds and snaps that crackled in the foreign, backwards world, frightened she had tricked her fate and it could still be stolen from her. She heard her father’s voice seep out of the trees, Terry sighing her name as he had at her bedroom door all those years ago—’Eve, are you in there …?’—and she spun round, breathing hard. Only leaves, the vibration of heat.
&nbs
p; Are you in there …?
Orlando’s name sailed through her, a paper boat on a stream.
She remembered a night they had spent together; moonlight spilling into his London townhouse, his gentle breathing and the hand he had kept in hers all night.
So far, so faint: another universe.
I want you here. Why aren’t you here?
She started to cry and hated herself for it.
Kevin Chase lurched through a fresh door in his nightmare—and it was a nightmare, no question, because he had been here before. Only before it had never gone this far, it had always ended, the smash but never the detritus, and now the corridors were multiplied, the horrors doubled, new scenes playing out with no end or beginning.
He squeezed his eyes shut and told himself to surface. It was a dream, just like the others. The crash had been a dream. The fire and the screaming and the plummet through the trees had all been a dream.
Wake up wake up wake up …
No dream.
His bedroom, back in LA—curtains blowing, the radio on …
Wake up! For God’s sake, wake up!
Trey would be licking his face. Joan would be pissing him off. Sketch would be calling, about another promo, another gala, another junket … Kevin wanted it to be real so much that it was a physical pain, a throb that only at the last moment identified itself as an actual thing, the ache in his side where Jacob’s bulk smashed into his.
Kevin could not sustain the other man’s weight for much longer. He could barely stand himself. His feet tripped and staggered, his arms stung, his head banged.
Angela, on the other side, heaved them both. Kevin wondered what she would say if he gave up and lay down, refused to move from this spot, just sat and waited for his mom to come get him: Joan, with her big hugs and her soppy kisses.
You are coming … aren’t you, Mom? Please come.
For all the times he had wished her gone, he only wanted one thing.
Home.
Kevin’s face crumpled in misery. Home. His people. The world he knew and hated and loved—living, sparkling, plentiful, safe. Mom, I want to go home.
Tawny was screaming. She didn’t know how long she had been screaming, only that her screams weren’t working, because normally if she screamed something happened—anything happened—to make the bad things go away.
