by T. M. Logan
Smoke drifted between the trees, stinging my eyes. It was getting thicker.
There.
A child, shouting. High and terrified.
I felt a fear I had not felt for years, not since he had been born, tiny and silent and blue-lipped, slick and motionless in the arms of a maternity nurse, the cord lifted away from his neck. Willing him to breathe, willing to trade my life for his, just to hear him cry. To hear him breathe. A visceral fear that clutched at my heart, squeezing and squeezing until all the blood was gone and I couldn’t catch my breath because the terror was so close, so close I could feel its hot breath on the back of my neck, the fear that maybe this was the moment when my world would go dark. Silence. Doctors and nurses working fast, skilled hands desperately trying to tether my baby to life. But silence, still. Only silence. Please let him cry. Please let him be OK. I will do anything to hear him cry. Anything. And finally, wonderfully, he had: a fierce gargling cry that pierced me with a shaft of pure love as I lay exhausted in the bed, tears hot on my cheeks. And then he was in my arms, tiny and perfect, his face screwed up and purple and crying hard, the most beautiful sound, his voice strong and high and bursting with life.
He was crying now.
‘Mum! Mum!’
I turned towards the sound of my son’s voice, leaving the path and plunging blindly into the woods on my right. My eyes streamed with tears from the smoke.
‘Daniel! I’m coming!’
‘Mum!’ he shouted again, his voice taut with panic.
There was movement to my left, people in the smoke near the clearing, but they were adults. They were not my concern, not right now.
Daniel was straight ahead. My son. My boy.
And then he was there, stumbling through the trees towards me, his face dirty and streaked with tears. I grabbed his little hand tightly and we ran, both of us coughing and hacking in the smoke, through the trees and back out into the vineyard.
‘Come on!’ I shouted, pulling him as he stumbled along by my side. ‘We have to get higher up!’
Halfway up the hill, well away from the smoke and flames, we stopped to catch our breath.
‘Where’s your sister?’ I said, puffing hard. My throat was raw. ‘Where’s Lucy?’
‘I don’t know, didn’t see her.’
‘Are you hurt?’ I knelt down next to him, checking him over, brushing his hair back off his forehead and checking his head and arms for any obvious injury. ‘Does anywhere hurt?’
‘My throat’s a bit sore.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No.’ He looked at the ground. ‘We – we left Odette in the fallen tree trunk.’
‘What?’
‘We were playing sardines but Jake said we should do a trick on her, make her hide and then not bother coming to get her.’ His words were tumbling out, falling over each other. ‘We knew where she was but pretended we didn’t and she was in a tree trunk near the gorge. Is she all right? I haven’t—’
Sean burst out of the smoke, bare-chested, his T-shirt tied over his mouth and nose.
He was carrying Lucy in his arms, her head resting against his shoulder.
‘Sean!’ I shouted. ‘Over here!’
He ran up the hill to us, laying our daughter gently on the ground. One of her sandals had come off and there was a line of cuts on her arm. She was conscious, but her mouth was tightly closed against the pain.
‘Lucy,’ I said. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Twisted my ankle.’
Sean pulled the T-shirt down off his mouth.
‘Did someone call the fire brigade?’
‘Alistair.’
‘How many are still down there?’
‘I don’t know. But Daniel said Odette’s hiding in a fallen tree trunk – have you seen her?’
As if in answer, a woman’s voice reached us from within the smoke.
‘Odette!’ Rowan’s scream was raw and desperate in full-fledged panic. ‘Odette! Where are you?’
Sean stood up.
‘I’m going back,’ he said to me. ‘Look after our babies.’
He pulled the T-shirt back over his nose and plunged downhill into the smoke.
68
I watched my husband disappear into the rolling grey cloud of smoke that enveloped the bottom of the estate. The smoke was getting thicker as the fire spread, long flames licking quickly from branch to branch, fanned by a warm wind coming out of the south.
Be careful, I should have shouted as he ran back into danger, as he put his own safety at risk to search for someone else’s child. But I didn’t shout that. I don’t know why. I didn’t shout anything. I just sat and watched him go, fearless, heedless of the consequences, back into the woods where everything was hidden from sight.
I wondered if it would be the last time I saw him.
Please be OK, Sean. Whatever you’ve done, whatever has happened between us, whoever you’ve chosen over me, I don’t want it to end like this.
From somewhere over towards the village, the wailing two-tone siren of a fire engine reached us.
Hurry up.
The fire danced on, smoke darkening against the blue sky. The wind shifted for a moment, pushing clouds of smoke back towards us, burning throats and making us blink back tears. My head began to pound from breathing it in.
It can only have been a minute, maybe less, before there was movement again at the edge of the smoke, coalescing suddenly into real flesh and blood. A figure. An adult.
Russ stumbled out of the smoke with Odette clutched tight in his arms.
Rowan ran behind him, holding her T-shirt to her mouth and nose, following them up the hill until all three of them collapsed next to us in a heap of panting, crying, coughing relief. Rowan tried to gently loosen Odette’s grip on her father to check her over, but Odette was attached to Russ like a limpet, as if her very life depended on it.
Sean was the last to appear, an arm out in front of him against the choking smoke. He staggered up the hill and collapsed, exhausted, next to me, pulling the T-shirt down from his mouth.
‘Is everybody out?’ he gasped, trying to catch his breath. ‘Did everyone get out?’
‘Think so.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘You all OK?’
‘We are. Just need to get some water for the kids, and Lucy will need to have her ankle looked at.’
I turned to look at him properly. His face and torso were smeared with dirt and shiny with sweat, his eyes wild and bloodshot, and both his knees were cut and bleeding. There were small vertical scratches on his chest and high up on his right cheek.
He coughed hard and spat on the ground.
‘Sean?’ I said more quietly.
Staring hard into the flames, eyes wide, he didn’t seem to hear me.
‘Sean?’ I said again.
His head snapped around to look at me.
‘What?’
‘Are you OK? You’re bleeding.’
He waved a hand dismissively and I noticed that he was shaking with adrenaline.
‘It’s nothing. Fell into a bloody bush, couldn’t see where I was going. Can barely see your hand in front of your face down there now.’
We stared at the fire for a moment, mesmerised by the flames.
‘Christ,’ he said under his breath, ‘how the hell did it all start, anyhow?’
‘Good question.’ My throat was raw and my head was pounding so hard I could barely think straight. But I remembered now what had struck me when I first saw the flames – I just didn’t know what it meant. Not yet.
*
Jennifer brought a pack of mineral water bottles down from the villa and we sat, sluicing the smoke from our throats, as the fire brigade went to work.
The sapeurs-pompiers, in their blue protective suits and red helmets, played their hoses over the remains of the fire, damping down the smouldering trees and three lines of vines that had been ablaze only minutes before. They had come from the volunteer station in Magalas, the next village alon
g from us, nosing their rescue vehicle around the side of the garages and into the edge of the vineyard from the far side, with Alistair guiding them and talking to the crew chief as his men tackled the fire quickly and efficiently.
Daniel watched with the kind of awed fascination that young boys reserve for firefighters.
‘Is there going to be an ambulance, too?’
‘These guys can do that as well, Daniel,’ I said.
‘Sick.’
The senior fireman, a tall, severe-looking Caporal, who introduced himself as Bernard Lepine, brought out a first-aid kit and checked the children over. Rowan, who was the most fluent French speaker, acted as translator while he gave Lucy a heel strap bandage to support her ankle, then applied a dressing to a small burn on Alistair’s arm. Sean waved away treatment for his cuts and scratches, insisting he would clean them up himself.
Lepine packed up his kit and strode down the hill to inspect his crew’s work. The fire was out now, all the woods and surrounding area thoroughly soaked to prevent any lingering sparks from restarting the flames. Crewmen tramped through the woods, checking their work, making sure the seat of the fire was well and truly extinguished. The storm had yet to break and the afternoon heat was still brutal, a furnace of humidity that seemed to press down into the top of your head and push against you from every side.
Lepine returned a few minutes later, talking and gesticulating at Rowan at some length. From the rapidity of his speech, and his grim expression, I guessed that she was being given a talking-to on French fire safety measures.
Eventually, Rowan turned to the rest of us with a rueful smile. ‘He says not to have barbecues or discard cigarettes anywhere outside. Not to allow open fires, not to discard glass bottles anywhere apart from in the recycling, and to keep children away from matches, lighters and cigarettes.’
‘Of course,’ I said, giving the fireman a nod.
‘Oh,’ Rowan added, ‘and he’s asking if everyone in our party is accounted for.’
In all the panic and confusion of the last twenty minutes, I realised that had slipped my mind. I was so wrapped up in making sure my children were OK, the drama of the sapeurs-pompiers arriving and the disorienting effect of breathing in smoke, that it had not occurred to me to check. Good thing he’d asked.
I did a quick headcount to make sure all twelve of us were present and correct.
Counted once.
That can’t be right.
Counted again.
Eleven.
69
I shook my head to clear it.
Only eleven of us. Not twelve. Must be in the villa somewhere?
The radio on the breast pocket of Lepine’s uniform crackled into life, a young voice, breathless and urgent, calling his name over and over. Lepine answered it and was met with a torrent of French from one of his crew members. He fired two questions back. Two quick answers.
Rowan’s hand flew to her mouth.
Lepine gestured to her to come with him, quickly. I stood up too, icy fingers starting to curl around my heart.
Daniel took my hand, as if to come with me.
Lepine waved a finger and shook his head.
‘Non, madame,’ he said. ‘Pas avec le garçon.’
Not with the boy.
The world felt as if it was falling away beneath my feet.
Daniel looked at me uncertainly. ‘What did he say?’
‘You stay here for now,’ I said, my voice shaky. ‘With Daddy.’
I let go of Daniel’s hand and followed Lepine down the hill towards the blackened woods, scorched by flames and soaked with water, the nearest small trees twisted and black. The Frenchman led the way, with Rowan, Alistair and me following close behind in single file.
My legs were rubbery and weak. With every step over the uneven ground of the vineyard, I thought they would give way and buckle under me. Our footsteps, sandals and flip-flops crunching over dirt and stones and leaves, were the only sound as we made our way into the woods. There were no running men, no more sirens, no beating rotors of an approaching helicopter; no sounds of desperate activity, no life-saving urgency.
Just the three of us with Lepine walking stolidly ahead, a tarpaulin in a sealed plastic bag under his arm.
Here was the worn dirt path that wound around the big oaks and sycamores, here was the dip, the hollow, then up and around again, past the big rock and the fallen tree where Odette had hidden. The sign stuck lopsidedly into the ground, ‘ATTENTION’ in faded red lettering. We reached the clearing and the edge of the bluff, let Lepine lead us down the steps carved into the limestone cliff face, my legs threatening to buckle all the way. I realised, absently, that this was the first time I’d been down into the gorge since we got here.
I didn’t know what the fireman had said to Rowan, I didn’t know much French, but at the same time I knew. Against my will, against every fibre of my being, I knew what we would find. Ahead of me, Rowan was already sobbing softly, her shoulders hitching up and down as she walked, arms crossed tight over her chest. Seeing her, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. My tears started when we were halfway down into the gorge and by the time we reached the bottom I was sobbing too.
The youngest of the firemen was there, his hat in both hands in front of him. He couldn’t have been much more than eighteen, his face ghost-pale. He looked close to tears himself.
He cast his eyes down and stepped aside as we approached.
‘Madames,’ he said, his voice choked.
She was there. Arms outstretched against smooth rock, at the foot of the cliff.
Motionless.
Izzy.
70
She lay on her back, her head encircled by a dark halo of blood.
Her eyes were open, staring up at nothing. One leg was tucked under the other, both arms flung out to the side, on one of the flat slabs of rock that formed the bottom of the gorge. Blood dripped slowly from the back of her head, down the edge of the rock and into the stream gurgling below, deep red drops diluting and mixing and disappearing, carried away downstream by the mountain water. A fly buzzed around her, settling next to the blood dripping down her grotesquely bent arm until I waved it angrily away, swatting at more flies circling her head.
Rowan spoke to Lepine in rapid, urgent tones, staccato questions one after the other. But he simply looked at her and shook his head slowly, apologetically. Izzy was gone.
Alistair stood back, his face frozen in shock. Rowan and I approached her body slowly, arm in arm, not wanting to see. To see would make it real. Make it permanent.
Our friend.
‘Oh God.’ My voice sounded weird, disembodied, not my own. ‘Oh no.’
Rowan was shaking in disbelief, a hand over her mouth, deep, racking sobs that echoed off the walls of the gorge. I hugged her and we held on to each other for a few minutes, crying and trying to give comfort even though we both knew there was none to be had. Not any more.
‘How could . . .’ Rowan started through her sobs. ‘How could she have fallen?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t believe she’s . . .’
I couldn’t finish the sentence. It felt as if I was floating above the scene, not part of it. I’d seen dead bodies before in the course of my job – it was an occasional but inevitable part of what I did – but never anyone I knew. Never anyone who had meant so much to me, shared so much of my own history, my own past. My own life.
Lepine cleared his throat and spoke quietly in French, Rowan nodding and answering in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. From what I could make out, he was asking her to identify the body. Rowan nodded again and said something else in French, her voice cracking.
Lepine put a hand lightly on her arm, his severe features softening.
‘Je suis vraiment désolé, Madame,’ he said.
He unfolded the tarpaulin and laid it gently, carefully, over the body.
I couldn’t bear to look at her broken body but I didn’t want her to be covered, either
. It seemed so impersonal, so final, that she was beyond us and beyond all hope of help, beyond the bond of friendship that had bound us together for half our lives. Without thinking, I knelt down and stroked her outstretched hand. It was cool to the touch, the skin waxy, but still warm to the touch.
My friend. Little more than an hour ago I had faced her across a table, trying to contain my fury, clenching my hands in my lap to stop myself from lashing out at her.
And now this.
Somehow it seemed as though it was my fault, my responsibility. My suspicion and ill-will and anger towards Izzy had sent her over the edge of that cliff.
I’m sorry, Izzy. Truly, I am.
‘We need to get in touch with her family,’ Rowan said, her voice shaking. ‘Her brother. Ring the Irish consulate.’
‘I think the police will take care of that.’
‘Madame?’ Lepine said, with an apologetic smile. He was gesturing for me to move away from the body.
‘Of course.’ I stood up. ‘I’m sorry. Pardon.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Rowan asked.
‘I don’t think we’re supposed to touch . . . anything here.’
‘Oh. Of course.’
The fireman spoke to her again, Rowan translating for my benefit.
‘He’s going to put a call into the regional Police Nationale office to report what’s happened,’ she said. ‘One of his men will stay here until the police arrive. Stay with . . . Izzy.’
Alistair spoke for the first time, his voice flat.
‘Shouldn’t we take her up to the villa? We could make a stretcher out of something, perhaps put a couple of the—’
I cut him off, my professional instincts kicking in.
‘No,’ I said.
‘We can’t just leave her down here!’
‘They have to preserve all the evidence, and the police will want everything left as it is.’
‘Evidence?’ He sounded confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Because . . .’ I hesitated, not wanting to say it, hating myself because I knew I had to. ‘This is a potential crime scene.’
