The Three Day Rule

by Emlyn Rees

  The darkness seemed to crowd in all around her. She shut her eyes, but the fear wouldn’t go away. If no one found her, then she’d die without experiencing true lasting love, without seeing half the places in the world she wanted to, without being brave and taking the future into her own hands, without having any faith, without having her own children, without growing old . . .

  She forced herself to concentrate on relaxing, because if she carried on shivering so violently, it would exhaust her even more. She had to think about something good. Something positive.

  Ben.

  She rested her forehead on her knees. In her ears, the forgotten iPod suddenly burst into life with what must be a hidden track on an album. It was a sad acoustic guitar number that she’d never heard before.

  Suddenly, a movie was playing in her head and she saw herself photographing the seals with Ben; she saw their snowball fight, and her singing karaoke in the pub; she saw his silly banner and the Christmas lunch he’d made for her. And in every shot she was smiling.

  Then she saw them this afternoon in bed, and she remembered how she’d felt, how he’d made her feel – he’d made her feel as if she was being absolutely herself. He’d made her feel as if he’d wanted all of her. And she’d wanted to give all of herself in return. Everything. Her thoughts, her feelings, her hopes, her future. All the things she’d never given Elliot.

  She put her face in her hands and accepted the truth.

  She’d blown it.

  She let herself go, her tears turning into pitiful, heart-wrenching sobs.

  Then suddenly she became aware of something grabbing her.

  She screamed. Terrified.

  There was light.

  Then the earplugs fell out of her ears.

  There, as if he was an angel, was Ben crouching down in front of her, holding her arms. The flashlight was on the floor beside him.

  ‘Oh Jesus, you’re OK. I thought you’d gone further into the mine. I thought you were dead.’

  He was real. He wasn’t a dream. She cried out with relief and shock, leaning into his arms.

  ‘Are you OK? Are you hurt?’ he asked.

  She nodded her head, then shook her head, hardly able to speak. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Simon came to rescue you. Didn’t you hear him calling out for you?’

  Simon. She thought back to the way he’d begged Taylor to let Kellie go.

  ‘He came here?’ she asked. ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘He’s fine. He’s with his mum and dad.’

  ‘How did you find me? I don’t understand. I thought nobody was going to find me, ever. I thought . . .’

  She shuddered, too upset and relieved all at once to speak.

  ‘Michael confessed all,’ Ben said.

  Kellie took a deep breath. It had happened then. One of them had cracked.

  ‘He told you why they locked me in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. Oh God.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh Ben. I’m so sorry. I’m so ashamed.’

  ‘Yes, well . . . I guess it was just as well you weren’t there. Elliot’s wife had a few choice words to say on the subject . . .’

  ‘You must hate me. For lying to you. I wanted to explain. I wanted to tell you.’

  Ben didn’t say anything. He helped her to her feet. Her legs shook.

  ‘Come on. Let’s get you out of here,’ he said.

  But she didn’t want to go. Not yet. Not until she’d had a chance to explain. This was too important.

  ‘No Ben, listen, you’ve got to listen. I’ve got to explain. You see, when I met you, I started to realise that I’d made a terrible mistake with Elliot, and I told him today that it was over for ever, but the kids, they got it all wrong. Because they didn’t hear me telling him it was over. But it is. This afternoon . . . I . . .’

  She looked at him, her eyes still brimming with tears. She couldn’t bear it that she’d lost him. But if she had blown it, as she knew she had, then she had nothing to lose. She had to try and make him understand.

  ‘The thing is, I know I’ve only known you for a little while, but today I thought I was going to die, and all I could think about was you and how you make me feel,’ she paused. ‘And I know I’ve totallyutterlyfucked it up between us, but –’

  Ben stopped her, putting his finger gently on her lips. ‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘I think totallyutterlyfucked up would be going a little far.’

  She stopped. Staring at his face. Could he really mean that? Could he really have forgiven her?

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I was thinking about it on the way here, too. You haven’t lied to me. You just didn’t tell me the truth. And yes, that’s something you need to work on. I had no idea you were hiding something so big. God, you’re good at subterfuge. You must be one hell of a lawyer.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Look at where it’s got me. The whole thing. Oh Ben,’ she sniffed and wiped her face on the cuff of her coat. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘Hey, you know what? I think you might have been punished enough.’

  He pushed her hair out of her face and smiled at her. She felt her heart leap.

  ‘So I haven’t totallyutterlyfucked up then? Or utterly-totally? I can’t remember which it is.’

  ‘On this occasion, I’d say, only partially.’

  She flung her arms around his neck. ‘Oh Ben, oh Ben, thank you,’ she cried.

  She lifted her face and kissed him, and then he held her tight and kissed her back. She felt as if he was kissing her soul, warming her right from within, and she knew that she would never let him down again.

  Finally, he took her hands from his neck and warmed them in his.

  ‘You know, all I wish is that we’d just stayed in that hut,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t. I wouldn’t have got to see you naked,’ he teased.

  ‘You don’t regret that now, do you?’

  ‘Hell, no.’

  ‘Good. Because I don’t. Not at all. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me. Apart from you being here right now.’

  She kissed him again.

  ‘So what’s going to happen now?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to get out of here and then get as far away as possible.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I want to go home. To Australia. And then . . . then to everywhere else.’

  He laughed. ‘Sounds good to me.’

  ‘You mean you’ll come with me?’

  ‘You don’t think I’d rescue the girl, only to miss out on flying off into the sunset, do you? Isn’t that how all good movies end?’

  ‘Believe me. This is much, much better than a movie.’

  ‘Hello?’

  They both turned at the sound. It was David.

  ‘Thank God. Is everything OK?’ he asked, stepping out of the dark into the mouth of the cave. He was shining a bright flashlight at them.

  ‘Oh yes. I found her at last,’ said Ben.

  ‘Yes you did,’ Kellie said.

  A New Day

  Chapter 33

  Michael stared down through his bedroom window. The sea ice had melted. The icicles had dropped from the gutters, and only patches of snow now remained on the land, translucent against the tarmac, grubby with mud on the flowerbeds. The sky was clear and blue, and sunlight twinkled on the choppy brown harbour waves.

  His room was as hot as a beach in summertime. The heating had been on full blast since the morning before, when Roddy, with the help of an engineer from St John’s, had finally managed to fix the generator which supplied the pub’s power.

  The final seconds of ‘New Born’, by Muse, thumped out from the speakers behind him, before ‘Yesterday’ by the Beatles began. The room was transformed into a cradle of comfort and it now seemed impossible to imagine the night before last, when Michael had led Ben and the others to the mine’s escape tunnel. He already found himself unable to grasp the series
of events as a whole. He could only face up to it as fragments, as flashes.

  Flash: he remembered the walk to the mine through the snow, with Ben, David and Stephanie, never slackening, never letting up. Flash, flash: over the hill top; through the ghost village; on past the engine house and down the hill. And then Simon: a bundle of brightness, slumped up against the wall of the tunnel entrance like jumble outside a charity-shop door. Then another flash: going deeper into the mine. The death of the wind. The echoes of Ben’s voice, calling out Kellie’s name. Torch beams plunging down into the pitch-black nothingness of the gaping crack in the tunnel floor . . . Then later . . . Kellie . . . back here at the pub. Ben telling Roddy and his mother the news.

  What had been distilled from the whole night was this: Simon was alive. Simon was alive. Simon had lived. Simon and Kellie and all of them had lived.

  Even now, butterflies stretched their wings in Michael’s stomach at these thoughts. His heart clenched around them, as if holding on to hope. Simon and Kellie had lived. Neither of them had even been injured. All yesterday, all today, Michael had kept catching himself thinking of how it could so easily not have turned out right. Simon could have fallen on his way to the mine, or he could have gone further in and been devoured by the mine itself. He could have plunged down into its gullet, never to be seen again. Kellie could have gone the same way, and Ben as well, when he’d gone in to bring her back.

  And then what? Where would Michael’s own life have been then? Over. Truly. Over and out. Because he’d been a coward. Because he hadn’t stood up to Taylor. Because he’d helped her to do the things that she’d done.

  But the fact remained – thank God! – that no one had died. They’d lived. And, ultimately, that had been thanks to him. He’d led Ben and the others to the mine in time. He’d made amends for his earlier weakness and cowardice. He had, hadn’t he? He’d made up for helping Taylor to lure Kellie into the mine. And he’d made up for being too scared of losing Taylor to stand up to her. And he’d made up for not being brave like Simon, who’d gone out into the storm on his own to set things right. Michael couldn’t change these things, and would have to live with them, but at least he’d wiped clean a slate that would otherwise have been covered in blood. At least he’d finally done the right thing, by confessing to Stephanie before it had become too late.

  He’d made amends for Kellie, but a different guilt altogether haunted him still, because he knew that Taylor had been right as well, when she’d called him a traitor. She’d asked him to choose, between her and them. And he hadn’t chosen her.

  Michael’s mother and Roddy blamed Taylor. Roddy said Taylor was crazy. He said she needed help. Taylor blamed Kellie. Isabelle blamed Elliot. Elliot blamed Michael.

  They’d reacted like a pack of circling dogs, each one of them snapping after the other’s tail. No one had wanted the responsibility for what had happened. Each had accused the other instead.

  Stephanie and David, however, had kept their silence. There’d been no accusations from them, no recriminations, and no threats. In the moment they’d got their son back, it had been as if he’d never been gone.

  Of all of them, Michael supposed, it was Ben and Kellie who should have wanted justice the most – Ben as a victim of deceit, Kellie as one of revenge – but they’d chosen not to press charges. No one had been hurt, Kellie had told Ben, and Michael’s mum. She’d not wanted the police involved. She’d wanted this part of her life left here. And Ben had agreed, because Ben was now part of the new life she’d started to build.

  Michael had watched their faces as they’d emerged from the mine. He’d seen their fingers intertwined. Kellie was leaving all this behind her for the simple reason that she could leave all of this behind her, because she had somewhere else to go, and someone else to go there with.

  Michael and Taylor had been wrong about Kellie as much as they’d been right. They’d been right to suspect her of conducting an affair with Elliot Thorne, but wrong to think she hadn’t finished it. She had and, in the same breath, she’d started another. They’d been right to think she’d fallen in love with someone on the island, but they’d got the wrong man.

  Kellie and Ben had re-emerged from the depths of the mine together. Stephanie had checked Kellie over, but had waved away her attempts at apology. In turn, Ben and Kellie had declined Stephanie’s invitation to return to the Thorne house. The snow, by then, had stopped falling. Kellie and Ben had elected to return to the village with Michael instead. Michael had known even then that none of them would ever set foot in the Thorne house again.

  He had tried making his own apology to Kellie, not then, but later, outside the Windcheater, before they’d gone in to confront his parents. He hadn’t done it for forgiveness. He hadn’t even done it to ease the anger which he’d known would soon rise up inside the pub like a typhoon. He’d done it because he’d known that what he’d done had been wrong.

  ‘We all do stupid things,’ was all Kellie had told him, ‘but the only truly stupid thing is not to try and put them right.’

  He hoped he had. He hoped he’d continue to do the same. He’d set out with Taylor to teach Kellie a lesson, but he’d ended up learning one himself. He’d watched Ben and Kellie leave in Ben’s boat yesterday. Kellie had turned and waved at him. He thought he’d seen her smile.

  He opened the window now and looked out. He could see them there, the remains of the Thorne family, grouped together by the harbour slipway, waiting for the boat to arrive to pick them up. Old Mr Thorne was leaning against his green Land-Rover. Stephanie and David and Simon and Nat were standing at the top of the cobbled slipway, facing the sea.

  Simon looked so suddenly young, standing beside his father. David lifted him high into the air, as if he was made of polystyrene. Simon’s laughter reached up to Michael like the cry of a gull as David spun him round. Then Stephanie picked up Nat and took a step towards her husband. The gap between them shortened, then vanished. They leant into each other, with their children in their arms.

  The only people missing from this outdoor family portrait were Elliot, Isabelle and Taylor. Two silhouettes were hunched in the back of the Land-Rover: Taylor and Isabelle, Michael guessed. Elliot had gone back to the mainland the day before. He’d travelled on the rival boat-taxi service to the one owned by Ben’s dad, and he’d travelled alone.

  Another high-pitched shout rose from Simon, and Michael looked out to sea. There was an approaching red RIB, bouncing across the waves. Michael took his binoculars . . . a fat guy with greying hair, whom Michael didn’t recognise, was at the wheel. He panned the binoculars back round to the harbour, in time to see David and Simon unpacking bags from the Land-Rover, while Isabelle stepped out.

  Michael thought of Isabelle and the baby inside her. Once more, he pictured her naked, up in her room, as she’d studied herself in front of the mirror. He saw now what he hadn’t seen then, that she already knew that she was pregnant, that she was observing herself with the knowledge that she was about to change. Had she been crying because of the child? Or because she’d already suspected she was losing Elliot – because she’d been frightened the child, rather than calling him back to her, might drive him further, and faster, away?

  Then Michael forgot about Isabelle. He only had eyes for Taylor. He zoomed the binoculars in on her as she emerged from the car and walked to the slipway. He wondered if she’d turn, and if the sunlight might flash on the binoculars and give him away. But she didn’t turn back to look at where she knew he must be.

  She was still beautiful. He could see that, as she stood side-on to him now, but she was no longer his Taylor, the perfect girl with whom he’d hoped to end up one day. The whine of the RIB’s engine rose as it nosed in through the harbour entrance.

  Michael knew he should stay where he was. He’d been forbidden to go near the Thornes by his mother – not that he would have, even if he could, not in a million years. But at the same time, he felt the urge to get closer. Something was happening. H
e could feel it in his blood. It was the same feeling he’d had the day his father had left, the same feeling he’d had the day Roddy had moved in, and the same feeling that had hijacked him when he’d walked out of his primary school gates for the last time. It was the feeling of the present becoming the past, right in front of his eyes.

  He hurried downstairs and out through the back door. He stopped at the front of the house, near where he and Taylor had hidden on Christmas morning, drinking their stolen alcopops and cigarettes. He stepped back under the branches of the holly tree, so that he couldn’t be seen.

  Everything would have been so different if they’d smoked their cigarettes somewhere else, and had never seen Elliot and Kellie walk into that shed. Everything, that was, apart from now, because Taylor would still have been leaving today, and Michael would still have been left. The world would have kept on turning. He suddenly saw that. No matter what they’d done, the two of them would still have been torn apart.

  He had never got round to telling Taylor about his mum and Roddy putting the pub up for sale, about how he’d soon be leaving the island himself. And now he never would, because he knew that once he was gone, he’d never come back. Now he’d lost her, there was nothing else for him to come back to.

  He stayed there, as the branches of holly swayed around him in the wind, trailing their spiked leaves across his ears and clothes and through his hair, like the fingernails of tiny hands. He remained motionless until the boat carrying the Thornes left the harbour and set out across the open sea.

  Only then did he break cover, and run, skidding and sliding, past the cobbled slipway, past old Mr Thorne’s Land-Rover, careless now whether he was seen or not. He rushed on past the boatsheds and clambered up on to the harbour wall, clawing and scrambling, startling a cormorant and sending it shrieking and wheeling into the air.

  He stood and watched the boat begin to speed across the waves. His whole body tensed, as if he was an athlete, loading up energy, preparing to run, preparing to leap into the air and join them.

  He wiped away the single tear which ran down his cheek. He wouldn’t cry for Taylor. There’d be other girls. It might not feel like it now, but there would. He thought of Kellie and Ben – but mostly he thought of Kellie, how she’d come to this island to see one man, only to leave with another, how she’d stumbled out of a mine one night, only to disappear over the horizon the following day.