by Knight, Ali
‘What’s happening?’ she cried.
‘There’s no fuel.’ The useless sound of the engine not engaging carried through to her. ‘He’s cut the fuel line!’ The plane was slowing down, gliding not flying, drifting inexorably towards the ground. The French coast came closer as they drifted earthwards. ‘Not again!’ screamed Greg. ‘We never got to Le Touquet. My first flight as a qualified pilot and I didn’t do the proper safety checks. We ran out of fuel. We were coming down and I didn’t think we’d make land. There was only one parachute—’
The parachute! Nicky cast about wildly for the parachute that Lawrence had taken off before he jumped, and saw it at her feet. She picked it up and gripped it tightly. ‘We have to jump together.’
‘No! The one not in the chute would be ripped away when it opened.’ Greg shook his head. ‘Lawrence wants me to choose. He’s a cunning old bastard!’ The plane wobbled again in the wind. ‘You’re staying here with me, Nicky. You’re not going out there! You see, I made Cathy put the parachute on. She wanted to stay with me, but I didn’t think we were going to make it. I forced her to jump because I thought it would be safer. I crash-landed on the beach and . . .’ He paused, fighting for breath. ‘I walked away without a scratch. They were running across the sand towards me, so many people, and I was screaming Cathy’s name, shouting at them to find her.’ He stopped talking as they passed over the beach into France.
‘It took them twelve hours to find her. Her parachute never opened, or maybe she never tried to get it open. I basically pushed her out to her death. I was called the miracle man, the luckiest man in Dorset. And the woman I loved had free-fallen thousands of feet to her death. If she had stayed in the plane with me, like she begged to do . . . she would have lived.’ Greg gave a sob and held his head in his hands. ‘And so would the others!’
‘Greg, this is not your fault.’
‘But it is, Nicky! Don’t you see? It’s entirely my fault! She died because of decisions I took.’
‘It was an accident! You are not to blame for the others!’
‘I haven’t been in a cockpit since that day. Like so much other shit in my life, it all started then! I walked away from that life, the people I knew. I walked off into the sunset, but it followed me, it stalked me every day that came after! He took everyone I loved from me! Every single one . . .’
Nicky reached out and put her hand on Greg’s arm. ‘But he didn’t take me.’
Greg glanced at her and looked away. ‘Lawrence murdered Francesca and Grace because those were the people I was closest to. He knew their loss would hurt me the most. Nicky, what were you doing with Adam?’ The plane was dropping lower and lower, rooftops and cattle visible through the rain, the grey strip of the runway at Le Touquet tantalizingly far away. ‘I can’t do it!’ He was starting to panic again.
‘Yes, you can, Greg! Francesca and Grace were snatched from you – I am still here, I am still here. I am not perfect. I did so many things wrong; I am as flawed as you are and I’m sorry. Lawrence wanted your one mistake to colour your life for ever but he’s gone. And he was wrong. It’s over. It’s finally over. For their memories and for Cathy’s, land this plane!’
‘I’m too low!’
Nicky sat rigid as the plane coasted closer to the runway. They just missed the top of a low outbuilding and somehow, with the help of a gust of wind, rose over a chain-link fence. Greg tried to ease them down to earth but they didn’t have the force to carry them to tarmac and they hit the rough grassy ground before the runway. The wheels bumped down and the plane sheared sideways, forcing it airborne for a few seconds before it slammed down on its opposite wing.
Nicky heard the drawn-out crunch of metal warping as Greg rammed down on the brake and began a skid towards the runway, the grey blur of tarmac sliding past inches from her husband’s shoulder through the open door. She could hear Greg shouting incoherently as the wing disintegrated, shrapnel cartwheeling away across the runway. They were spun around and thrown about as the plane bumped along the unyielding concrete, buckling and distorting with every smack, the force of which slammed up her spine and made her teeth chatter. They slid to a halt at a forty-five-degree angle in a heap of burning rubber, friction sparks and a disintegrated wing.
‘Get out, get out!’ Nicky hollered, trying to beat back visions of fire engulfing them. She heard the distant squeal of the emergency services racing towards them. She tried to push at the door next to her and get it open but it had buckled with the force of the impact and wouldn’t open. She jabbed at her seatbelt to get free, the frantic motion her reaction to finally coming to a stop. It was then she realized that Greg wasn’t moving. He lay slumped over the crumpled flight controls, his head cradled in his arms. Nicky reached out a tentative hand for the back of his head and placed her palm upon it. There was no reaction. The sirens got louder but she simply lay her head on his neck and waited.
55
Two Weeks Later
‘Circulation have told me that last week’s sales were the biggest jump in two years, so a big slap on the back for you all!’ The new editor certainly had enthusiasm, Nicky thought. Well, he should have, she reasoned; he was younger than she was. His round John Lennon glasses caught the strip lights in the conference room and made it difficult to see his eyes. His hair was already receding. ‘The Lord Chief Justice is making a statement about Lawrence Thornton today. We’ll run that on the front page, and do we have that first-person piece about the tragedy of fathers who commit suicide?’ He looked at the features editor, who slurped coffee and nodded. ‘Let’s run that big –’ he glanced at Nicky – ‘if Nicky doesn’t mind.’
‘I’ve just heard that Hayersleigh House is on the market,’ said the homes editor excitedly. ‘We could tie in a feature on country houses with grisly histories, for Thursday.’ She paused. ‘If Nicky doesn’t mind.’
‘Yes, good,’ said the editor. He turned to Bruton. ‘What’s happening on that woman who was shot at through her window at the carnival? Has she given us an interview yet?’
There was silence while they all waited for Bruton to open his mouth. ‘I’ve got the story,’ Bruton growled. He turned to Nicky and raised one eyebrow sarcastically. ‘Nicky, you mind?’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ scoffed Maria, slapping some papers down on the desk. ‘Of course she bloody minds!’
Nicky put her head in her hands. It was too early to be back at work. She should have taken more time off. They were only doing their jobs, but talking about what she had just lived through as though it was nothing more than copy to fill column inches was making her head spin. ‘I’ll just be a minute,’ she said and left the room. Maria came out behind her. ‘I’m sorry, Maria, I shouldn’t be here.’
‘No, you shouldn’t.’
‘I thought I could cope—’
‘You know, you can take all the time you need. Go and put your feet up. You look pale.’
‘Walk with me.’
They took the lift to the ground floor and paused in the lobby. ‘Things will be difficult for a while, but it will get better.’ Maria put her hand on Nicky’s arm. ‘You’ve already been through so much.’
Nicky shook her head. ‘I didn’t believe Greg, I—’
‘Don’t be hard on yourself. I’m the one who feels guilty and ashamed. I didn’t believe you, remember? And I’m sorry.’ Maria hugged her. ‘Now you go home and get some rest.’ Nicky looked at the revolving doors at the entrance. She had met Adam here, back on one of those hot days in the summer. How long ago it seemed now. ‘Nicky . . .’ She turned to Maria, her thoughts elsewhere. ‘You are going home, aren’t you? Nicky?’
There was another reason she couldn’t be at work today. There was somewhere she had to go.
The hospital receptionist had large hooped earrings and clacked the keyboard with long fake nails as she typed in the name and directed Nicky along a series of low-ceilinged white corridors to the room she needed. She came to a nurses’ station and stopped.
> ‘I’m here to see Connie Thornton. She’s been asking for me.’
The nurse pursed her lips. ‘She gets tired easily. Let me just check if she’s awake.’ She walked over to a door and looked through the viewing window, and at that moment round the corner of the ward walked Adam.
He had changed a lot in just two weeks. His face was thinner and he looked tired, a baggy jumper swamping his shoulders. He stumbled when he saw her and looked about as if for help from somewhere. They stood staring at each other as he recovered and came towards her. ‘I didn’t think you’d come.’ The last time she had seen him he was clinging to the bonnet of Struan’s car, shouting that her life had been in danger. She had accelerated away, throwing him to the dirt as she escaped. She had ignored his warnings and followed her own course. ‘Were you expecting to see me?’
‘I hoped I would.’ The words were out before she could stop herself.
His brown eyes were searching her face, trying to read what she was thinking. ‘I’m sorry for what I did. Please believe me.’
He seemed to lose energy in his legs at that, and slumped on the row of hard plastic chairs along the wall by the nurses’ station. She sat down next to him and felt tiredness overwhelm her. The contrast between the two of them now, bent and sunken under the hospital lights, and their last battle at Hayersleigh was plain to see. But neither of them had known the truth then. They had not been weighed down by it.
‘Why didn’t you tell me what was going on when we were at the house?’
He made a small scoffing noise. ‘You’d have thought I was nuts.’ He shifted on his seat and let his hands hang between his knees. ‘I’d found your photo in his darkroom. You, hidden amongst all those trees. Connie knew your name; she said you needed to be saved – that you were going to die.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I have a lot of free time and I like crazy stories, challenges.’
‘And you set out to meet me on that plane?’
‘I planned to meet you in London but your workmate was so nice and chatty, explaining all about your trip to Spain. The rest was easy . . .’ He tailed off. ‘I hadn’t expected you to make such an impression on me.’ He ran a hand through his hair and continued. ‘And then you told me Grace had been murdered, that you’d both had the same husband, and I sensed things running out of control. Connie also said you were a threat to all of us. Remember that my mother’s death had already driven a stake through the heart of my family – maybe I was trying to be a hero, acting to save what was left.’
Nicky put her hand on his shoulder in silent recognition of all that he had now lost.
‘Connie kept saying there was something incriminating at the house. I didn’t expect to read what I did.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘We were similar, you and I. You never knew your own mother, Nicky, just like me. Hearing what she really felt, reading about who she was, was . . .’ He groped for the right word. ‘Powerful. It was the closest I had ever been to her.’ After I fought Struan I became desperate to uncover the truth, I was mad to get to the truth. I couldn’t accept that my own father could be involved. He was so respected. If anything I was the wayward one. I needed to find the answers myself, at almost any cost.’
Nicky plucked at some lint on her black skirt. When truth shines a light into the darkest corners of family life, it can be blinding. Adam had done the wrong things for the right reasons. She could see that now.
‘Connie’s awake now, you can go in,’ the nurse said.
They both stood. ‘I was expecting to go to jail for what I’d done, but then you retracted. I took a lot of hope from that, hope that maybe you did believe me, that you didn’t simply think I was a psycho.’ He broke off and stared at her. ‘I’m glad I saved your life. I’m sorry that I couldn’t save the others.’
Nicky stopped him talking by grabbing his elbows. She looked into his big brown eyes, gathered him to her and gave him a hug. ‘I forgive you,’ she whispered in his ear, and they held each other for a long moment in the corridor, swaying gently this way and that. When he pulled away she saw him wipe away a tear.
‘Shall we go in?’ he asked. She nodded and he pushed open the door of Connie’s room.
Connie was propped up in a semi-sitting position, her eyes closed. She looked tiny in the huge bed, her bony fingers clutching the bed sheets. From the centre of her neck a tracheotomy tube snaked away to a machine by the side of her bed, allowing her to breathe without using her mouth or nose. Connie’s breath made a rasping rattle in her throat in the quiet room. A cannula connected the back of her hand to the IV drip by the head of the bed.
‘Her latest stroke affected her breathing,’ Adam said, moving round to the far side of the bed and pulling up a chair.
The nurse dragged another chair from by the door towards the head of the bed, for Nicky to sit on. She stayed standing. This was not a conversation to sit down for. ‘She has difficulty talking so you’ll need to be quite close,’ the nurse said. Her voice made Connie open her eyes. ‘If you have any problems, just ring the bell.’ She pointed to the emergency button hanging from the bedframe and left the room.
The two women stared at each other in silence.
‘What did you want to see me about?’
‘I want to talk to you.’ Her voice rattled in her throat.
Nicky snorted. ‘I can’t absolve you of your sins.’ Connie tried to lift her head off the pillow but she had lost the strength to do it; the tendons stood proud in her neck as she strained. ‘Greg said something when we were in that plane.’ Connie tried to gulp, her hand fluttering to her throat, the IV tube swaying. ‘He was screaming at Lawrence that a woman had phoned the hit man for him.’ Connie began to jerk in her bed, her shoulders heaving in discomfort. Nicky folded her arms. ‘It was you, wasn’t it, Connie? You gave the order for me to be killed.’
A fat tear brimmed and fell down a rivulet in Connie’s cheek. Adam sat down on the chair by the bed and leaned over his aunt. ‘Why, Connie? Why did you do that?’
Her voice when it came was a distorted and scratchy whisper. ‘I loved my brother. You and he were the only family I had. I would have done anything for him.’
Nicky felt the anger blooming inside. ‘I don’t believe you. One moment you’re telling Adam to save me while the next moment you’re trying to get me killed.’
A sound came from Connie that might have been a sob. The machine made a beeping noise and then her rattling breath came back. ‘Contradictions make a life.’ Her voice faded away and she had to use more effort to make it audible. ‘Lawrence was shattered when Cathy died; revenge for her death became his driving passion. It was what he lived for. It gave his life meaning.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this justification,’ Nicky snapped. ‘You dragged me all the way out here to this hospital to tell me this? I’d worked it out on my own. What’s really going on?’
‘I wanted him to have a reason to live, so I helped him, even though I knew it was wrong . . . At the end of your life, you look back, you start to see how well you’ve lived it. Well, my life has been a lie—’
‘I read Cathy’s diary. I found what was under the lawn.’ Adam’s head jerked up towards her. Connie’s breath was shallow and panicky, her eyes full of fear.
‘What’s under the lawn?’ Adam was staring at Nicky while his aunt moaned beneath them.
Nicky stared down at Connie. ‘It’s a photo of Greg. Let’s hear it from you, Connie: why is Greg a secret worth digging up a generation later?’
Connie’s chestnut hair twisted and tangled round itself as she thrashed her head to and fro on the pillow. She gulped and gasped for air through the tube in her throat. When she could talk again her voice was a whisper and they both had to lean close to hear her. ‘She shoved her affair in Lawrence’s face, mooning around Hayersleigh with a man half her age, shaming my brother, causing him pain.’
Nicky shook her head. ‘No, Connie! You want confessions, you want to be released from your suffering? You’re talking about Lawrenc
e but I’m asking about you. Tell me what you really felt! You hated Cathy, didn’t you? Had she stolen your lover? Is that it?’
A line of tears was flowing out of Connie’s damaged eye now, draining away into the pillow. ‘No . . . no.’ Connie plucked at the bed sheets with her ineffectual hands, her back arching off the mattress as some spasm gripped her.
‘You’re pathetic. You want to unburden yourself before you die, and you’re lying even now!’
Connie went rigid for a moment and her mouth contorted into a grimace.
‘I’m getting the doctor,’ Adam said but Connie managed to hold up her hand and collapsed down, a sagging mess in the sheets.
‘You loathed Cathy, didn’t you? She had a husband and baby and a young lover, and you had nothing, was that it? You did this because you were jealous?’
Connie turned her head to stare at Nicky and her hard, unyielding eyes made Nicky lean back. She could see the rage pulsing beneath the papery skin on her face. ‘You – women like you—’
‘Women like me?’
Connie’s anger had given her the energy to rally. ‘You think you know about passion, can understand rejection, but you have no idea.’ The endless rasp in, rattle out of every breath clung to the room. ‘Yes, I hated Cathy. I was jealous of all the things she so effortlessly had that I had never found. I craved her ability to be loved. I was forty. I’d squandered my beauty and my chances—’
‘That’s not true,’ Adam said.
But Connie, with great effort, carried on. ‘I was brittle and ageing and had nobody, doing a job which was about watching people connect and have fun, and deep down I was alone. You think you know about loneliness, Nicky? Try it for decades and see how it fits. Feel that crushing weight on your soul. Cathy rubbed it in and it made me so mad. These feelings of jealousy and hate are all-consuming at the time. I had to punish her . . .’ Connie tailed off as exhaustion overwhelmed her.
