by J. M. Hewitt
In the pitch-black of night-time, I promised myself that I would never return here.
* * *
At the station, I sat in the waiting room, surprised at the number of passengers who came and went in the middle of the night.
I didn’t know much, I realised there in that cold, dank room. I knew very little of the world. The things I knew were unacceptable: the dosage of heroin and how pure it needed to be; the filler ingredients to look out for that would likely kill you. How to get blood and shit and vomit out of a carpet; how to dodge a man who seemed docile but could easily be violent and savage and sexually predatory.
My eyes were dry, but I was sad.
I picked myself up, like I always had. I didn’t know nothing. I knew enough to get me into one of the top universities in the United Kingdom; I knew how to work my backside off while keeping a household running and a mother alive.
The 7:04 to Edinburgh rolled into the station. I raised my chin and tried to smile as I stepped onto the train that would take me to a new life.
* * *
I had a room in halls, sharing with two other girls. I forced myself to smile as they came in together, arms entwined, and threw me a friendly greeting.
My jaw hurt from the unnatural action. My muscles were rigid with tension, waiting for the attack. But none came; this wasn’t school. These girls were older, kinder, here to get trashed for the next few years and have as much fun as they could.
I never went out with them, politely declining their offers to come and ‘get wasted’. Instead, I took care of them when they returned in the early hours, vomiting after too much rum and Coke. In return for the care that I’d become accustomed to giving, they shared their food with me, and their clothes and shoes and make-up. It was a stunning way to live; being appreciated was a whole new world to me.
I got a job in the uni bar, and having my own money was another breathtaking experience. I didn’t have to pay for heat or gas or electricity or water. I could buy food – and I didn’t have to go to the supermarket near closing time to get the reduced stale bread or vegetables that were already on the turn. I could go to cafés and restaurants and eat freshly cooked hamburgers or melted cheese toasties.
My life and my body filled out to proportions I had never dared to dream of. I had spent so long living in a controlled environment that with no responsibilities, I went crazy. I wasn’t accustomed to living this way, and it scared me as much as it thrilled me. I needed to claw back some control, starting with the way I looked.
I didn’t have enough willpower to deny myself food, but I found how to purge it from my system. Soon enough, despite hating myself a little, I found a way to control one small area of my life.
For the first term, I kept mostly to myself. I observed this strange new world and the people who inhabited it: the goths with their dark clothes, studs and piercings; the artsy girls in their flowing bohemian dresses, the sexy, pouting students; the tomboys and the rockers. Back home, if you didn’t have the right clothes or the newest brand of trainers, you were a loser. It didn’t work that way at uni. Here, you could be anyone you wanted to be.
I looked at my own clothes, the jeans and unlabelled jerseys and jumpers, and thought about who I wanted to be. It wasn’t a difficult decision. I wanted to be something that back home, could never, ever happen. I wanted to be sophisticated, classy and chic. A million miles away from the girl I actually was.
I scoured charity shops for cast-off clothes from the rich women of Edinburgh. I borrowed from my roommates, who with their double-barrelled surnames never had to pretend. Time and time again I thought of Rebecca Lavery, the way she had escaped and rebranded herself into a poised, beautiful young woman. The way I had fought her – even without her knowledge – to take the place here that was rightfully mine. I remembered the way she walked, the way she wore her clothes, the glances she gave, the slightly snooty air. I put my mind to it; I became Rebecca.
I saw that the men here – well, they were boys, really – were nothing like those I had known in my life to date. I moved past my fear and I tried them all: the nerds, the bookish types, psychology students. On the plus side, they were attentive, kind and generous. But they were also inquisitive, nosy even. Where did I come from? What did my parents do? Could they meet my family?
I shuddered and gave them the cold shoulder. Why were my family so important? Why couldn’t they just enjoy me? Would I ever be able to leave my past behind?
But then came the athletes. The ones who hung out in the bar I worked in, and who liked to talk about themselves rather than me. And there was one in particular.
He never asked about my past or my future. He told me all about his: the powerful father, the dutiful mother, the fact that he was adored above everything and anything. He talked about the future; he had it all mapped out. He was perfect.
And then one afternoon, the phone in my halls rang. There was one communal landline for the whole floor. I never answered it. I never got calls.
‘It’s for you.’ Laurie, my roommate, put her head around the door. ‘It’s your dad.’
I didn’t correct her assumption that I had a father. As I approached the phone, I felt like I was walking to my death. For a moment I thought about hanging up without speaking, but he would call again.
‘Hello?’
I could hear him breathing, shallow whispers down the line.
‘It’s your mum,’ he said. ‘You need to come home.’
I clutched the receiver tightly and closed my eyes.
‘Did you hear me? You need to come home.’
I breathed in and out slowly, in an effort to slow the build-up of panic in my chest.
‘Okay,’ I said.
I hung up the telephone and returned to my room to pack.
Chapter 23
Paula had no idea where she was headed when she found herself swept off the Ruby Spirit. All she knew was that she needed to get away from her husband and his lies. She knew him inside out, knew that he wouldn’t come after her, that he would have enough confidence that she would be the one to give in, to return to him just as she always had in the past.
Things were changing, though, and she wasn’t sure if it was him or them or just her.
She latched onto the outskirts of a small group of people from the ship. They smiled at her as they organised themselves, and she saw they were heading out for a walk.
Fine, she thought. I’ll walk with them.
As they moved off and as she followed, she wondered what Anna was doing. She had looked ready for a professional hike, with her backpack and boots. Paula darted a glance at the people with her and relaxed slightly once she’d confirmed none of them were Anna.
But what if Anna went after Tommy?
She rolled her shoulders and forced her feet to keep walking. Let him do whatever he wanted with the skinny bitch. Clearly it didn’t matter whether Paula stuck close to Tommy or not. Those two had a kind of feral magnetism to each other.
‘I deserve better,’ she whispered to herself, but her tone was doubtful, disbelieving.
She glanced up, hoping nobody had heard her talking to herself, and blinked in surprise as she saw that the group of hikers had moved a good couple of hundred yards in front of her.
Abandoned yet again.
She felt her face twisting in bitterness as she slowed to a stop. In front of her was a main road with three lanes. Beyond it she saw trees, greenery and hills that undulated up and down. The sky was slightly cloudy, but clear enough; no sign of that promised storm.
When the traffic came to a halt, Paula crossed over and stood beside the trees that lined the road. Then, taking a deep breath, and with a single lingering glance behind her, she batted aside the branches and stepped into the forest.
She didn’t notice anyone watching her.
She didn’t see anyone following her.
* * *
It seemed like hours later when Anna pulled a bottle of water from her backpack and
drank greedily. Her breath came in short, uneven bursts and what felt like a lead weight had settled in her chest.
Never had she imagined that Paula would be able to walk this far, and at the speed she was going, she could easily have stuck with the professional hikers. The woman’s stamina was disconcerting. Her own lack of it was worrying.
She paused at a rusted signpost and ran her fingers over the lettering.
Ellidavatn.
She removed her glove with her teeth and entered the place name into her phone. A lakeside town, she saw, part of the Heiðmörk nature reserve. It was seven miles away from the harbour.
Sunset was almost upon them now, and the sky was a strange yellow colour, with heavy hints of grey that held the promise of snow. The storm was brewing, and the captain of the Ruby Spirit had issued stern instructions to everyone that the ship must set sail no later than five p.m. or they would be stuck in the harbour overnight.
She dropped her backpack by the roadside and sat down heavily on it. Paula could be left out here; the ship might sail without her. And for Anna, that would mean a return journey with Tommy.
She shook her head. Tommy could be mean and nasty and was very good at belittling his wife, but surely he wouldn’t let the Ruby Spirit commence its return journey without her?
No, Anna would push on; she would continue tracking Paula. And when she returned to the ship – alone – she would go back to England. If by some slim chance the ship had sailed, she would make her own way back and look Tommy up when she got there.
She locked her phone and pushed it into her backpack to nestle alongside the stolen waxed jacket. The pink beret caught her eye and she pulled it out. She needed to begin discarding the items that could be used as evidence against her. And not all in the same place.
Pulling out Mark’s iPhone, she used it to dig a shallow hole and dropped the beret into it. She kicked snow over it until it had vanished.
When she was done, she hoisted the backpack onto her shoulders and began to walk.
* * *
At first, Paula thought it was a mirage, a shimmering, glittering pool of ice. She scrubbed at her head, at the pain that jangled at her temples. The throbbing intensified when she breathed in, and she closed her eyes.
Mirages only happened in the desert, or in really hot places, didn’t they?
She opened her eyes. It was still there. And because she had no other options, she decided to walk towards it.
It was further away than she’d thought, and the condensation of her own breath and the snow that came in sideways obscured her vision. But it remained there, and didn’t falter, and finally she came to a stop.
So, not a mirage, but a real lake, as wide and long as any she had ever seen. The bank was crusted with snow studded with gravel and sand. Bending down, she took her glove off, shoved it in her pocket and scooped up a handful of water. It burned her palm, and in some far-off part of her mind, she wondered if this was one of the thermal lakes Tommy had mentioned. But no, as the water trickled out between her fingers, she realised that it only felt warm because her skin was so cold.
She scooped up another handful, and raised it to her mouth, wondering if it was safe to drink, swearing a little at this fact being just one more thing she didn’t know.
Tommy would have known.
She drank it anyway, then pulled out the almost-empty drinking bottle from her shoulder bag and filled it up. The world spun a little; she swayed, let the feeling take her and landed hard on her backside.
A half-hearted push in the snow with her hands behind her sent her staggering to her feet. Ahead, a solitary bird with a patch of red on its breast shrieked, shattering the silence, then took flight. Almost immediately the clouds opened up above her, and the sky shimmied, becoming lighter and darker all at once.
She held her breath, feeling the shift and the change, and kept her eyes focused on the sky. With a shudder it burst into life, and she released her breath in a long, drawn-out sigh.
A night-time rainbow. The Northern Lights. The reason for being here. Those magical elements that had so far eluded her. She drank them in, wondering what they meant.
A new beginning, perhaps. Or the end of something. Which made sense, because to have a new start, something had to come to an end.
The sound of footsteps had the same effect as shattering glass.
Reluctantly, she dropped her gaze from the sky and took a single step forward. The presence behind her mimicked her movement.
The rainbow flared, flickered and faded.
‘Hi,’ said a voice.
She ignored it at first. A part of her hoped it was a hallucination caused by dehydration and hypothermia. Her thoughts were very matter-of-fact, as though this was expected; what she deserved.
More footsteps now, crunching on gravel and snow.
Slowly, her body stiff now that she had stopped moving, she turned around.
Anna.
A flutter of fear, but so much less than she’d felt on the boat when she’d looked into her eyes. Just muscle memory, because the woman might have killed the man she was supposed to be looking after, but then again, perhaps it had been an accident.
Bruises on his face… airways blocked.
Paula nodded dully to herself. No accident.
‘I’m lost.’ Her voice had a strange echo. ‘Are you lost too?’
‘I’m not lost.’ Anna smiled and moved closer.
Paula tried to back away as Anna approached, but there was something that made her freeze. Suddenly she was back on the deck of the cruise ship and someone was coming at her, and she couldn’t move quickly enough, and that person was going to crash into her—
Instinctively she put her head down, flinching away from the oncoming figure.
But Anna moved on past and pointed out to the lake.
‘The harbour is just there, do you think the ice will hold us?’
Paula looked at her incredulously. ‘The harbour isn’t there,’ she said. ‘That’s a lake!’
‘No, beyond it, look,’ said Anna. ‘I should know, I just came from there.’
Paula moved a few steps to the side. The wind flung the snow at her, and it stung now as it bounced off her face. The snow on the ground was whipped up into a circle that rose and fell. She watched it, fascinated, before looking across at Anna.
Anna shrugged. ‘I’m going back anyway. The ship is due to sail soon and I don’t want to miss it.’
With that, she began to walk, her boots splashing through the shallows before crunching as she moved through the snow and onto the ice-covered lake.
‘Come back,’ Paula called. ‘It’s too dangerous!’
But Anna paid no heed, and there was no sound from her footsteps now as they slid across the ice.
‘Shit,’ Paula swore. She squinted hard in the direction that Anna was walking. Were there lights there, twinkling across the icy lake?
She looked back the way she had come, remembering how long it had taken, battling through the pines, grabbed and scraped by their snow-covered branches. She was freezing now, desperate to get back to the Ruby Spirit. If she could take a shortcut, she wouldn’t hesitate.
But she was hesitating. Did she really want to be trapped on an ice-covered lake with Anna?
No, but neither did she want to risk getting lost in the woods behind her and having the ship set sail without her on board.
She looked at the lake again. Making her mind up, she took two steps forward, the gravel crunching under her feet. With a gulp, she walked out onto the ice after Anna.
As she moved forward, she glanced up at the gloomy sky. The sun had been out earlier, making the temperature just about bearable. Surely the ice wasn’t thick enough to walk on; wouldn’t the sun’s rays have weakened it? Beneath her, it shifted ever so slightly. She gasped and looked up again. She couldn’t see the lights of the harbour, nor the shapes of ships. But it didn’t mean they weren’t there. Visibility was poor, that was all.
If she
were to make this crossing, she needed a distraction. She sped up as much as she dared, and when she was within touching distance of Anna, she called out to her.
‘What were you doing with Tommy last night?’
Anna turned, and regarded her with narrowed eyes. ‘We watched the Northern Lights,’ she said, her voice a thin whisper on the wind. ‘You might as well know, Paula, I’m going to have him for myself.’
Paula barked out a laugh at the absolute nerve of the woman. But Anna’s expression didn’t change, and she wondered if she’d misheard her. Who would actually say that?
She coughed, feeling it deep down in her chest, and lights flared in her head as the motion sent another wave of pain through her temples.
‘Excuse me?’ she said, and her voice sounded weak and pathetic. ‘I-I didn’t hear you.’
Anna edged towards her until she was close enough to touch. Paula looked around, her mouth suddenly dry as she realised she couldn’t see the shoreline any more than she could see evidence of the harbour. She swayed as the ice beneath her feet seemed to shift again, her arms automatically going out towards Anna for support. The other woman didn’t move, and reluctantly she forced her hands down by her sides again.
‘You heard what I said. And it means you’ll have to go, of course.’ Anna’s eyes glinted dangerously in the twilight. ‘There’s not room for both of us.’
Run.
The instruction was brutally clear in Paula’s mind, but her feet refused to move. She looked down at them, then across the lake, desperately seeking dry land, but her sense of direction had deserted her.
‘You killed that man.’ She didn’t know why she said the words; it was as if she couldn’t hold them back, but for some reason she wanted Anna to know that she knew exactly what she’d done.
