With one final burst of adrenaline, I balled my hand into a fist and swung out at the closest figure. Contact.
A male voice cried out in pain. Jeanne was calling my name.
Then a light flared up. Blinded, I stumbled backward and collapsed.
Dimly, I was aware of someone still screaming. Jeanne.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. Every time I blinked, white lights flashed behind my eyelids.
The house looked a lot different now that I could see. The wallpaper still retained the barest trace of cabbage roses, and shabby lace curtains hung from every window; at some point, an elderly lady had obviously lived here. Flowery was a more accurate descriptor than haunted.
“Jeanne . . . ?” I mumbled, standing up.
She wasn’t screaming in fear anymore. She was clearly angry. It didn’t take long to find out why.
Two young men were also standing in the foyer, one of them gripping a substantial torch, its beam illuminating all the dust dancing through the air. It was hard to see much in the dimness, but they looked our age. One was taller, broader, and bleach-blond, aviator sunglasses perched atop his head. The thinner one had dark hair, almost black, and an unseasonably heavy leather jacket.
“See?” Ray-Ban said with a careless gesture in my direction. “She’s fine. No harm done.”
“Fine?” Jeanne snarled. “Fine? You nearly frightened us to death!”
“Mildenhall?” I asked. All heads swung to look at me. I think I was still dazed. “Your accent . . . you sound American. Are you from Mildenhall?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ray-Ban grinned. “Chris Shapland, from Cincinnati. Fighter pilot.”
“Ritchie,” said the other boy. “And ditto, except from Los Angeles.”
Over their shoulders, I saw a grand piano in the far corner of an adjacent room.
“It was you,” I said dumbly. “The piano and the locked door and the scratching . . . ”
Chris exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Sorry. We came here with the same idea—assuming you were hoping for a ghost or two—and were sadly disappointed. We heard you ladies come in and didn’t want you to have the same lame experience.”
“So you decided to scare us.” Jeanne’s arms were folded, her eyes dark and flashing. Except I knew her too well—she wasn’t furious at all. Well, maybe a little bit, but angry Jeanne was a very different person. She was trying to elicit another kind of apology here.
Ritchie shrugged. “In our defense, it was hilarious. Well worth the three hours of waiting.”
Jeanne told him to do something that made even me blush. He simply blinked.
I was now aware of how I must’ve looked compared to her. The sun had faded her hair and teased out her freckles, and with her fierce expression and skirts the color of the rainbow, I felt awfully dull in comparison. I mean, I was the kind of pretty that got pointed out to you by an aunt at family gatherings. The sort that polished up nicely with a bit of makeup and mousse, both of which I was lacking at the present time. My shirt was rumpled and creased from sleeping in it, and I still had Jeanne’s scarf wound round my neck. And of course, my hair, only now beginning to fade back to brown after a disastrous stint with mauve dye, completed the effect.
“You punched me,” Chris said matter-of-factly.
“What did you expect?”
He chuckled. “Fair point. Look, girls, I’m sorry. It was only supposed to be a bit of fun. Can we make it up to you?”
I caught Jeanne stifling a smirk. Jackpot.
“Our car is stuck,” I said before she could say anything. “In the morning, maybe you could have a go at fixing it?”
Chris glanced at Ritchie. “Sure. It’s only fair.”
Ritchie shrugged, then nodded. “All right.”
Chris offered us his torch, insisting they had another one, and I dragged Jeanne back upstairs. Macabre shadows created by the light were still unnerving, and curling up in a vacant bedroom, I continued to flinch every time something made a sound. Jeanne didn’t go to sleep for ages, muttering about the boys and how she’d suspected it was all a prank, et cetera, et cetera, long after I’d closed my eyes.
I woke up again at the crack of dawn to find the room bathed in a pinkish glow. Jeanne, thank goodness, hadn’t yet strayed downstairs. She was blindly fixing her hair, frowning at nothing in particular.
“It’s freezing,” I yawned, shivering. “Seriously, feel my nose. It’s like an ice block.”
“D’you reckon they have food?”
“What?”
“The boys,” she said, somewhat impatiently. “Food. I’m starving.”
Even if they did, I wasn’t sure if I wanted any. I didn’t trust them in the slightest, even if they were good looking . . .
Oh stop, I chided myself. You’re pathetic.
But they’re American fighter pilots—how much cooler can you get?
Jeanne distracted me by lacing her boots on again and strutting toward the stairs, face set in that same haughty, untouchable-yet-coy expression she’d been wearing last night. Game face.
“Morning,” Chris greeted after we’d come downstairs. The Ray-Bans were covering his eyes now, a leather jacket and a knapsack flung over a broad shoulder. “Sleep well?”
“Shockingly, much better after you two decided to stop being such prats,” Jeanne sniffed. “Although I could do with some breakfast right about now.”
“They’re fixing the car,” I said uncomfortably. “We’ll stop at a Tesco or newsagent’s instead. Don’t push it.”
“Punishment,” Jeanne whispered. “I’ll milk it for as long as I can.”
That was how we ended up eating miniature boxes of Coco Pops on our way to the car. The sunshine was warm and welcoming, completely transforming a landscape that had seemed so threatening in the darkness. Despite the early morning chill, it was shaping up to be a scorcher.
“So,” Chris asked, “where are you two ladies from? You,” he focused on Jeanne, “don’t sound local.”
“Wales, originally. We’re both from Castle Acre.”
“That’s a long way to come to visit a condemned shack.”
“It wasn’t part of the plan,” I grumbled.
Chris laughed, tossing his head so the sun glinted off his white hair. Like Jeanne, I was certain he knew exactly what he was doing down to every last twitch. Moving with a saunter, speaking with a drawl, challenging us to suggest anything he did wasn’t pure gold.
The car was parked, completely illegally, in the middle of the lane. There were tire marks indicating somebody had squeezed around it overnight.
Ritchie raised an eyebrow, looking from the car in all its old purple-paint-and-wood-trimmed glory to Jeanne and back again. A ghost of a smile played across his lips before vanishing into a scowl again.
Chris whistled. “That’s pretty, uh . . . vintage. Whose is it?” We stared, and he conceded, “Okay, stupid question. Little Miss Wales, I’m supposing.”
“Jeanne,” she corrected. “And yes, mine.”
We stood in the shade of the trees, watching as the boys circled the car curiously.
“It’s stuck,” Ritchie said.
“God, you’re a genius.” Jeanne sighed. “Of course it’s flipping stuck.”
Ritchie’s face reddened.
In the end, they determined that mechanics had nothing to do with the car’s predicament. So all four of us gathered around the rear of the vehicle and leaned our weight against it, pushing and pushing until it rolled out of the pothole. Jeanne fired up the engine (which, it turned out, was nearly out of petrol) and triumphantly drove forward.
“There’s a pump in Newmarket, if you can make it that far,” Chris added.
“How did you get out here?” Jeanne asked, in lieu of thanks.
“Motorcycles.”
I fiddled with the tape player, waiting for Jeanne to drive forward. I’d said goodbye already.
“You know,” she said, more awkward than usual, “you’re welcome to come with us. The more
the merrier, after all.”
Oh please, no. Or yes. I had a very strange feeling inside.
They looked at each other.
“Where are you headed?” asked Chris.
“Stonehenge. Summer solstice.” She was testing the waters. Gauging if they would be turned off by that, as though the skirts and ’60s Morris Traveler hadn’t been enough of a hint. “We’re stopping once more on the way, probably in London.”
Pretending to stay occupied with the cassettes and the maps, I avoided checking their reactions. The silence seemed to stretch on forever.
“I can call a mate if we find a telephone,” said Chris, slowly. “He’ll take the bikes back in his trailer. What do you think, Ritch?”
“I suppose it’s an English thing we haven’t done yet,” he replied without enthusiasm.
Should I have said something? Pointed out that they didn’t have spare clothes, or that riding in the rear seats was nothing short of torture? Elbow Jeanne and remind her that this was supposed to be a fun thing for just the two of us friends? They’d change the entire mood of the trip; Jeanne would keep acting to impress them, laughter would be replaced with embarrassment if anything went wrong, and I’d be stuck gaping at Chris’s arms instead of the scenery.
“We’re on break now,” Chris said. “Just finished six weeks of intensive training. We were planning on road tripping around anyway, weren’t we?”
Ritchie shrugged.
Of course, this entire charade was also all for show. They were going to come. With a girl like Jeanne at the helm, why wouldn’t they jump at the chance to get on board?
Feeling as though I wasn’t quite awake, I found myself getting out of the car so the boys could climb through to the back. Then, with a rather excessive revving of the engine, we were speeding down the lane toward the horizon.
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG TO CLEAR THE LANES AND finally reunite with the motorway. The sky was a watercolor of pinks and faint blues, not a cloud in sight, and the road stretched in front of us without even the suggestion of a traffic jam. Our tank was full, we’d sorted out provisions, we were on a clear course to London . . . and yet, as I’d predicted, these things were pretty much just background noise.
Things weren’t as awkward as I’d expected. They liked the same music as us, seeming somewhat relieved when Jeanne put on regular pop. They had the same sense of humor—well, Chris did. Ritchie simply looked less moody every now and then. Chris would crack jokes whenever the car acted up, and even called Jeanne out on her wacky driving when she kept switching between motorway lanes.
“You ever tried slalom skiing?” he asked. “Basically what you’re doing, but on skis and going downhill.”
“You see any hills around here?” she retorted, still swerving.
“I think he was kidding, Genie.”
“Not entirely.” Chris pulled a face. “It takes talent to do what she’s doing and not vomit. You must be immune by now, Tree.”
“Impossible.”
He laughed. “I get it. So, anyway: Stonehenge. What gives with that?”
Jeanne smiled at no one in particular. “I saw pictures of last year’s solstice in one of my magazines. It looked ever so magical. Like, there were quite literally real witches and stuff everywhere, and apparently you could feel the magic in the air . . . ” She sighed. “It’s going to be such an amazing experience, you wait and see.”
“Is it going to be crowded?” Chris asked.
“Doubt it. Not many people are into this sort of stuff anymore.”
“I wonder why,” Ritchie muttered, speaking for the first time.
“You know, Ritchie here holds the record for the fastest biker at Mildenhall.” Chris leaned forward, resting his arms on both of our seats. We were driving down an exceptionally unexceptional piece of road with nothing whatsoever to look at, so I found myself clinging onto his every word. His accent was almost hypnotic. “Round about a hundred miles an hour, wasn’t it?”
“Easy,” Ritchie scoffed through a wad of gum. I’d noticed he only chewed on the left side of his mouth.
“How do you know he was the fastest?”
“There’s a stretch of road by the base,” Chris explained, pleased by my interest, “that ends in a sharp bend. So all the guys with bikes—and that’s a good few—set a timer to see how long it takes the other riders to get from the beginning of the road to clearing the corner. Most slow down ’cause they’re scared of skidding, but not Ritchie. Nearly scraped his ear, the bike was so close to the ground.”
Jeanne whistled. “That’s a really stupid way to get killed.”
“True,” Chris laughed, “but not nearly as stupid as the timer. Someone has to play passenger so they can hold the stopwatch.”
“And that’s you?”
“Of course.”
It was easy to picture. Ritchie in his black leather jacket, screaming down a lane on a bad-boy motorcycle, and Chris wearing his Ray-Bans, laughing as he held on with only one hand at a hundred-plus miles an hour.
“You girls will have to come with us one day.” He glanced at Ritchie for confirmation. “See what real speed feels like.”
I shuddered. “I’ll pass, thanks. I can barely stomach roller coasters.”
Chris nodded, as though I’d confessed something odd but admirable, and said, “I’ve always been a speed junkie. That’s why I became a pilot. Well, that wasn’t always the plan, until . . . ”
The stories kept on coming. Tales of encounters with Russian fighters, near-death experiences, harrowing mechanical failures, and performing for the Queen on her birthday. How he’d met Ritchie after they’d both been stranded at Heathrow Airport, alone in a new country, and been best friends ever since. They’d been to the Live Aid concert; they’d spoken with several leading pop stars; they’d been extras in an episode of a popular soap opera; they’d ridden bicycles to Land’s End, the most westerly point of England, and back . . . the list went on and on. By the time Jeanne announced we were stopping for snacks, I felt like I’d lived another, more exciting life through them. Mine was so boring in comparison I was almost embarrassed.
“It’s eleven o’clock, leaches,” Jeanne announced. She’d adopted the endearing name after none of us coughed up for petrol. “Do we just want snacks, or lunch?”
Approaching London meant that towns were becoming a much more common sight, so we decided to grab a meal while we were stopped and pick up essentials—i.e. crisps and cola—later on.
We were now in Essex, a county bordering north-eastern London, although the village could have easily fit into the Norfolk countryside. Typical flint cottages, winding streets, quaint little schoolhouses and churches, and, naturally, a selection of pubs. Jeanne liked the look of one called the Crown and Thistle, a ramshackle sixteenth century free house offering cheap meals and beer.
“Go ahead,” Ritchie said as we made to go in. “I’ll catch up with you.”
Chris raised a white eyebrow. “Need to get some shopping done?”
Ritchie rolled his eyes.
The pub was nothing unusual. Oddly low ceilings, beams thicker than my legs, and a carpet that was a faded green and red, so rucked up in places that it was a wonder anybody could walk through without tripping. There were only a few tables clustered around the main bar, a massive wooden centerpiece made in a very medieval style with a barman who looked old enough to have carved the cupboards himself.
“It’s so charming,” Chris said after we’d taken our seats. “There’s nothing like this in America.”
“Charming?” Jeanne wrinkled her nose. “Your restaurants are so much cooler, though.”
“Cheap burgers and soggy fries,” Chris dismissed. “Nowhere near as good as—” he glanced at the menu “—battered cod and chips. Or sausage and mash. What are you having?”
I started, realizing he was directing the question at me rather than Jeanne. “Um . . . fish and chips, I think. Always a safe bet.”
Ritchie returned and we all ordere
d the traditional fish and chips, with the exception of Jeanne, who asked for a very untraditional platter of calamari. The food took ages to arrive, so to pass the time, Chris told more stories about his adventures and misadventures as a pilot. Jeanne piled in with stories of her own that I’d never even heard before.
“Smile,” said Ritchie when a less-than-apologetic waiter brought over our now-cold food nearly an hour later. “No, not you. These three.”
“Only if you demonstrate,” Jeanne winked, spurring a laugh from me and Chris.
Ritchie, naturally, remained deadpan. It turned out he’d purchased a cheap camera and several rolls of film from a local shop earlier, a gesture I found somewhat surprising. Ritchie fondly recollecting memories via a photo album was a weird concept.
“You with the purple hair,” he snapped. “Smile.”
“Oh.” I blushed and smiled. There was a blinding flash, Ritchie nodded his approval, and we took that as a go-ahead to eat our lukewarm meals.
Purple hair. Compared to the sheen it had been, it almost looked brown again to me. I was too scared of messing up again to re-dye, but moments like this made me wish I had anyway.
The fish tasted like deep-fried cardboard, though the chips were greasy enough to redeem them. Chris declared they were still better than anything he’d eaten in America, using that as a platform to launch into a tale of how he’d been forced to catch and eat frogs after getting lost in the fens during a training exercise.
“You think that’s gross?” Jeanne countered, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand—clearly we’d toned down the flirting by now. “Laverbread. Traditional Welsh breakfast dish. Seaweed and oatmeal. It literally looks like someone ate their own crap and vomited it up again.”
“You have a way with words,” remarked Ritchie, airily. “Remind me to try it before we leave.”
Leaving the village, Jeanne stalled a grand total of three times. Instead of getting flustered, she laughed it off with the guys. We cruised through more farmland, prying all the windows open and bearing the pungent, agricultural air in return for relief from the heat. Chris begged us to stop outside a parish called Widdington so he could take a picture with us by the sign, citing that it sounded comically like “widdle,” an English slang term he wanted to remember when he returned to the USA. Jeanne and I both scorned at how immature that sounded, but spent a good ten minutes posing with him anyway.
Shooting Lights Page 3
