The Three Day Rule

by Emlyn Rees

Taylor began crawling forward, further into the ice sculpture of fern. Michael reached out to hold her back, but she pushed him away. She slithered away from him like a serpent, leaving an icy green tunnel in her wake.

  ‘– you’re not listening to what I’m saying –’ It was Kellie again, louder than before.

  The dog started its whining again and Elliot shouted at it to shut up. There was a yelp and the dog fell silent. Elliot was talking, softer now, more urgently, but Michael couldn’t make out what it was he had to say. He edged to his right, pressing up against a fallen, rotting log. A trumpet of fungus rested against his face. Through the crisscross of foliage ahead of him, he saw Elliot and Kellie, as if through bars.

  ‘– love –’

  The word was unmistakable, but Michael wasn’t sure who’d said it. Rufus barked, jumping now, jerking against the lead. He’d sensed something in the air. He knew something lay hidden nearby. If Elliot were to unleash him, he’d be on to them in a flash.

  But Elliot and Kellie ignored the dog. Their faces were only inches apart. Both of them were talking again. Elliot was gesticulating with his hand, cutting her off, driving home whatever it was he had to say, like a lawyer in a court room movie, Michael thought. Elliot’s words, shouted and impassioned, now hit Michael in a rush.

  ‘– and last summer, all those days, across that bay and back. Because I wanted to be with you. Because we love each other –’ His voice faded momentarily, like the signal of Michael’s radio in his room back home. Then it came back strong. ‘Tomorrow. On the mainland. I’m telling Isabelle, her and Taylor . . . that I’m leaving them . . . that –’

  A twig snapped. Rufus barked, suddenly rigid, his snout jutting out towards Michael and Taylor. Michael ducked down flat. Had they seen him? Or Taylor? Footsteps approached. Michael rolled so slowly on to his side that he felt his body creak like a branch. He rolled over again, deeper into the foliage, inch by inch.

  A shaft of sunlight lanced down between the treetops, smiting his face. He saw Taylor’s trainer, there in the bushes ahead of him and to his left, then his forearm, a knot of sinew and tendons. It was streaked with mud.

  Michael kept dead still as a final footstep fell beside him. His back flexed rigid as he held his face off the ground and a glistening tongue of ivy lapped at his brow. He pictured steam rising off him as if from a hard-ridden horse. He refused to breathe out. He could feel Elliot behind him, so close that Michael knew that if he were to kick out now, he’d surely connect.

  Michael closed his eyes.

  Elliot and Kellie had been having an affair. This thought loomed even larger in Michael’s mind than his fear of imminent discovery. Elliot was going to walk out on Isabelle and Taylor, so he could be with Kellie instead. Taylor’s dad was planning on leaving her for good.

  A gust of wind blew. The dog began to howl.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ Elliot called out.

  His footsteps retreated. Michael breathed out. He let his head fall to the ground.

  Then came a crackle of ice beside him and he saw Taylor. Her face was red all over, as if she’d swum through boiling water. She was slithering backwards, away from him. She didn’t even look at him. He followed her back, away from Elliot . . . two yards . . . five . . .

  And then ten.

  She got to her feet behind the wide trunk of a sycamore, and then she ran, back towards the Thorne house. She ran like she didn’t ever want to stop.

  Michael caught up with her by the back door. She was panting, her face as pink as a stick of gum.

  ‘I’m so sorry –’ he began to say.

  She kissed him, hard, pushing him up against the door. This time there was no mistaking what she meant, not like in the mine.

  She spoke against his face. ‘You’ll help me,’ she told him. ‘You will. You’re going to help me make this right.’

  She kissed him harder still. Her lips were freezing against his, her tongue wet and strong inside his mouth. He closed his eyes and felt her whole body flex against him, as if it was a single muscle. She ground her hips hard on his.

  The door rattled behind them. Someone shouted. They moved aside and the door sprang open. Simon was standing there. Michael needed to sit. He slumped against the wall by the door.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Simon asked. ‘I’ve been looking every—’

  Michael and Taylor ignored him. They were staring at each other

  ‘What’s going on?’ Simon asked again. ‘What have you been doing? What’s going on?’

  ‘That woman,’ Taylor said. ‘She’s been sleeping with my Dad. Fucking him. She’s been fucking him behind my mother’s back.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Shut up, Simon,’ Taylor said.

  Simon looked wildly between them.

  ‘I’m going to tell Mum,’ he said. ‘Right now. You’ll see. And I’m going to –’

  Taylor grabbed hold of him by both arms. ‘You tell anyone,’ she told him, ‘and you’re dead.’

  Simon looked terrified, but he didn’t move.

  ‘What then?’ Michael asked.

  Taylor let go of Simon and pulled Michael to his feet. She gripped him so tightly he nearly cried out.

  ‘We’re going to deal with this ourselves,’ she said.

  As he looked into her eyes again, and again saw that burning fire, he knew he would do anything for her, anything at all.

  Chapter 25

  Kellie couldn’t believe she was standing in a wood, in the freezing cold, having nearly died twice in the past three days. Well, perhaps it had taken a whack on her head to bring her to her senses. Kellie felt as if she was seeing Elliot Thorne for the first time – and to think that she had thought that, by today, she’d be about to spend every day of the rest of her life with him. It seemed almost laughable now. Her dream of being with Elliot had been like a house of cards – and from the second she’d agreed to take the trip with Ben, she’d started to put one too many cards on the stack. She’d believed that she and Elliot would work, that their love for each other would be triumphant, but when she’d met David last night, she’d felt the whole stack start to wobble. Then, when she’d woken up in Simon’s bed this morning, they’d started to topple. And once she’d met Isabelle, her dream had collapsed spectacularly. Now, any vestige of hope that her relationship with Elliot could work had vanished.

  She’d found out something that she’d never suspected. That Elliot Thorne was a lying, cheating bastard.

  ‘No, Elliot,’ she said.

  ‘But –’

  ‘I said no. I can’t do this.’

  ‘What? Kellie . . . darling . . .’

  ‘This is just a game to you, isn’t it?’

  He looked flustered, panicked even. The dog started to howl. ‘Fucking shut up!’ Elliot yelled at it.

  She stared at him. What was worse? That she’d fallen out of love with Elliot, or that she’d let herself down so badly? How had she been suckered in so readily? How had she allowed herself to fall for Elliot’s charm? She’d managed to get herself from the other side of the world, into a top corporate job, and made herself a life in London. How had she then made such a whopping mistake? She thought back to what her friend Jane had said about Elliot fucking his cake and eating it. She’d denied it so furiously, ditching all her friends to be with Elliot, but Jane had been right. That was exactly what Elliot had done.

  She shook her head. ‘Elliot, I’m standing here in your wife’s clothes.’

  ‘I know. They suit you.’

  Kellie stared at him. He was pathetic.

  ‘No,’ he said, misreading her, ‘that’s not what I meant. I meant that they look even better on you than they do on her.’

  She let out a yelp of frustration. ‘You don’t get it do you? It’s not about who looks best. Or maybe that’s exactly what it is about to you. To me it’s about being humiliated, Elliot. Because that’s how I feel. Your family took me in, and all I’ve done is lie to them. And what was all that shit you
pulled in front of your father?’ She bitterly quoted his own words back at him: ‘We’ll probably find out that we’ve got absolutely stacks in common. Did you think that was funny? Did it amuse you, having a good old snigger at your father behind his back? Do you have any idea how excruciating that was for me?’

  She thought back to Gerald, to how kind he’d been, to the fact that she’d looked in his face and only been able to think how like her dream father-in-law he was, and what a lying fraud she was in return.

  ‘He’d hate me so much if he knew why I was here,’ she said. ‘And Stephanie? Your sister tucked me up in bed like a child, for fuck’s sake. Don’t you see what position that puts me in?’

  ‘They’re just family. They don’t matter.’

  ‘They do. Don’t you get it? I hate being the liar you’ve turned me into.’

  ‘Darling, you’re just getting upset, because you hit your head.’

  He put his hands on her arms. She shook him off.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’

  ‘Kellie, stop this. It’s you I want. We’ve got something so special –’

  ‘How can you say that? You lied. You can’t stop yourself. You’re even lying now. I’ve met your wife.’

  ‘I’m not lying. I swear it. Isabelle. She . . . you don’t know how hard it is. You think you’re seeing her how she is, but she’s not like that . . .’

  ‘The joke is that I’ve been faithful to you,’ she continued. ‘All this time that you’ve been leading a double life. What kind of man gives his wife and his mistress the same necklace for Christmas? What did you do, Elliot? Get two for the price of one?’

  Elliot stepped back from her. ‘Oh, oh, I see. I know why you’re doing this. It’s because of him, isn’t it? That Ben guy.’

  ‘Don’t you dare turn this around on me. There’s nothing going on with me and Ben, you idiot.’

  ‘So why is he behaving like there is?’

  ‘I don’t have to justify myself, or Ben, to you.’

  But Elliot looked at her suspiciously. He suddenly tried a different tack. ‘So I bet this was all some kind of plan of yours, to catch me out,’ he said, nodding slowly, as if he’d cannily uncovered the truth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, isn’t it a bit odd that you got so drunk, you fell over, and the only doctor around was Stephanie? Did you make David and Ben bring you here in the middle of the night, when you knew I couldn’t object?’

  ‘You are not seriously suggesting that I did this deliberately? Have you gone out of your fucking mind?’

  Elliot stared at her. Then, to her amazement, he exhaled, as if she’d passed some kind of test.

  ‘Then there’s no reason for us not to be together. Come on,’ he said, before untying the dog and starting to march down the hill towards the house. ‘Christmas is over, and you’re here now. Let’s just sort this out. I’m going to tell Isabelle.’

  Was he serious? She stared at him aghast, as he walked away from her. Did he really think . . .

  He did.

  ‘No, Elliot!’ she shouted. Then she ran after him. ‘I don’t want you to.’

  She pulled his arm and turned him around to face her.

  ‘You’re not listening to me,’ she said. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘But this is what you want,’ he said.

  ‘No. It’s not. What I want is for you to stay with your wife.’

  He looked at her, aghast. ‘But what about us?’

  ‘I’m not in love with you, Elliot. I’m not. Not any more.’

  There. She’d said it. And now that she had, she realised how true it was. The man she’d been in love with was gone. The more she’d learnt about him this Christmas, the more she’d come to understand that he’d never really existed at all.

  She shivered and folded her arms. Elliot stared at her for a long time. His arguments had all run out. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Well, it seems that you’ve made up your mind,’ he said. His face was hard. He stared at her like the subordinate she was. Had he been bluffing, she wondered, when he’d threatened to tell Isabelle just now? It didn’t matter whether he had been or not. She’d had enough of Elliot keeping her guessing. She’d had enough of his games.

  ‘I would appreciate it if you could leave my father’s property now,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry. I intend to.’

  And she did. She wanted to get as far away as possible. She’d had a rollercoaster of a Christmas, but now, finally, she could get off this crazy ride. It was over. It was time to get out of these clothes, get off this island, and get back to who she was. Back to who she was before she’d got involved with Elliot bloody Thorne.

  ‘Perhaps, as one final courtesy, you would agree not to tell Isabelle about us?’

  ‘Just go back to them, Elliot.’

  There was no goodbye. He glanced at her briefly then, calling the dog, strolled away, as if she was no more than a stranger he’d just met whilst walking in the woods.

  She watched him go. She wondered whether he’d turn back, but he didn’t. She realised that she had no idea how he was feeling. Would he have regrets? Or would he do what she suspected he’d do and pretend it had never happened at all?

  A moment later, he’d disappeared through the trees. She waited for the onslaught of emotions she should feel after such an ignominious end to their affair, but all she felt was relief. She’d finished with Elliot, and she was safe. Nobody had found out about them. The whole, horrible, sordid affair was over.

  She waited a moment more. Waiting to feel sad, but instead she was smiling. Suddenly, she was running as fast as she could back to the village.

  Chapter 26

  Ben was naked, wet and shivering from the shower he’d just taken, which had been cold, thanks to the power still being off. At least it had woken him up and washed his sleepless night out of his head. He was in the tiny bathroom next to the bedroom at the top of the stairs in the annexe. He wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror and stared at his reflection, which was split in two by a grubby, jagged crack running from top to bottom down the centre of the glass. It reminded him of the symbol used for theatre, the shield-shaped mask, divided in two, with one half happy and the other half sad.

  One face, two people . . . was that what Ben now was, as well? That’s certainly how it felt, because he didn’t know whether to laugh or to frown from one minute to the next. Kellie had turned his head into a washing machine where his thoughts now spun round like clothes, tied up and knotted, overlapping and confused.

  He was simultaneously happy and sad. He was happy she was still near, but sad that she’d soon be gone. He was happy that she liked him, but sad that she didn’t like him enough. And he was happy that he’d found her, but sad that he’d lost her as well.

  He knew, of course – not least from the counsellor he’d visited a few times in the wake of his discovery of Marie’s affair with Danny – that happiness wasn’t something you found in other people, but in yourself. He also knew, however, that it was Kellie who’d helped him rediscover his capacity for joy. She’d woken up feelings inside him which before had lain dormant, buried like seeds in the dirt. She’d been his springtime, his catalyst for growth. It was because of her that he now felt so alive.

  He started humming ‘Keep on Moving’, as he shaved, because that’s what he was going to do. He wasn’t going back to the deadbeat, scruff-bag persona he’d adopted in the run-up to Christmas. Not ever again.

  Kellie’s rejection of him hurt, but he was determined to keep positive, no matter what, because what had happened these last few, insane days was positive. If he’d never made that decision to quit smoking and get involved with his life again, he’d never have asked Kellie to take a ride with him on the boat. And if he’d never done that, then he’d never have discovered what he now knew: that he still did have the wondrous ability to fall in love with someone who wasn’t Marie – and to fall in love harder than he ever had done before.

  He could
still do it. He still had it in him. Life could still be an incredible place. This knowledge, this certainty, had given him a strength he’d previously lost. Kellie had ended his winter. Even without her, he’d go back to London and continue to grow.

  He finished shaving and washed the stubble down the plug hole. He checked out his reflection and this time the whole of him smiled back. He was still a young man. He still had so much to give. He was grateful he’d realised it before it was no longer true.

  Then he started. He’d heard the cottage front door open downstairs. Now it slammed shut.

  ‘Ben?’ Kellie shouted. ‘Ben! Are you here?’

  He grabbed his towel and wrapped it hurriedly round his waist.

  ‘What?’ he shouted, stepping out of the bathroom and on to the small landing.

  His first thought was that something bad must have happened, another accident perhaps, but as Kellie stepped into view from under the stairs, from where she must have been looking for him in the kitchen, it immediately struck him that nothing looked wrong. Quite the opposite, she looked radiant, as if she’d just got back from a workout at the gym. The clothes she had on were fashionable and clean and made him stare. She was smiling, too, staring up the stairs at him. Then the smile faltered and faded, and was gone.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She advanced uncertainly up the stairs and stopped.

  ‘You know that moment that always happens in romantic movies . . .’ she said, ‘ . . . when one person decides that they want to be with another person . . . only they don’t know if that other person is interested in them, or how that other person is going to react when they find out . . .’

  ‘Like in As Good As It Gets,’ he said automatically, ‘or An Officer and a Gentleman, or –’

  She pushed her forefinger against his open mouth to silence him. ‘Or any one of a thousand other movies,’ she said. ‘Well, this is that moment. This is that moment for me. I don’t know if this is what you want,’ she said, ‘but I hope it is, because I know it’s what I want.’

  Then she stretched up on tiptoe and pushed her face close to his and kissed him softly on the lips.