‘What will?’
‘Kiruna.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘The area will one day be swallowed up by Kiirunavaara.’
‘Kiirunavaara?’ She imagined a monster gulping down the small mining town.
‘Kiirunavaara is the mountain,’ he continued. ‘It has one of the world’s largest iron-ore mines, but the ground below is becoming rickety.’ He took his hand off the steering wheel and mimicked a rocking gesture.
‘Oh God.’ Her startled eyes met his in the rear-view mirror.
He laughed. ‘It’s fine right now,’ he said, continuing to chuckle. ‘It will be many years before we need to worry – long, long time before that happens.’ He laughed again, throwing his head back. ‘You see, I’m a good tour guide, yes?’
‘You are indeed,’ she said, smiling and making a mental note of all he’d told her for her book.
Apart from the roads, the whole area was buried under eight feet of snow, but the taxi driver seemed oblivious to the weather conditions, driving at a fair speed. At home in the UK, a sprinkling of snow caused havoc, Isla thought, and yet here he was, taking it in his stride.
They pulled up in front of Camp Arctic, a sprawling one-storey, wooden lodge, in Abisko. The driver unloaded her case, and she paid him.
‘You want more good tour, you call and ask for Erik, yes?’ he said with a smile, pocketing her generous tip.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, as he got back into the taxi, leaving her alone.
Inside the building, she stomped her booted feet at the entrance to shake off the snow. Two huge, shaggy dogs bounded over to greet her, their claws clattering on the wooden floorboards. She ruffled their heads with gloved hands.
‘Bry dig inte om dem, de inte bita,’ a woman with wiry, red hair called from behind a small, wooden counter, although Isla had no idea what it meant. ‘Tindra! Max!’ The woman slapped her thigh, and the dogs scooted off and disappeared behind the counter.
Isla collected the key to her room from the woman, who told her the timings for breakfast and dinner.
Her room was tiny, reminding her of the hostel in Sydney. Her parents had sent extra money back then, so she didn’t have to share a dorm. ‘It will be safer,’ her mum had said. The irony hit her now, but she battered down the memory.
She turned on her phone, noticing the battery was low. After heaving her case on the bed, she opened it, hunting for the charger.
‘Crap,’ she muttered, as she rummaged further in her case, realising she’d forgotten it. She picked up her mobile and, with the phone’s last breath, texted Jack and her mum, telling them she was a numpty, and if they needed her in an emergency to call the hotel. She would attempt to borrow a charger, but needed them to know all was well, in case they worried.
She tugged her teddy bear that she took everywhere from the case and sat it on the bedside table.
Wasting no time, she grabbed her camera, and made her way back to reception, where she hired a snowsuit, thermal gloves and a pair of boots from the red-headed woman. She pulled them on, and dived out into the frosty air.
After walking for half an hour, the silence and sheer peace clearing her head a little, and the pleasure of snapping photographs soothing her senses, she spotted someone in the distance. The sun glanced off the snow making it hard to see. She stopped, pulled down her goggles and squinted, trying to make out the figure standing against the whiteness wearing a dark snowsuit and holding walking sticks.
She looked about her. There was nobody else around. It’s just a tourist, she told herself, but with everything else that had happened, a desperate need to turn back, to run, was overpowering.
The figure lifted a snow stick, as though greeting her, and she spun round and attempted to walk at speed. Her boots were heavy in the deep snow, like walking in treacle, but she kept on going, looking back every few seconds. Whoever it was didn’t move; just watched as she ploughed on, snow crunching under her feet, her emotions on hyper alert.
As the figure grew smaller in the distance, another figure appeared, dressed in pink. The two figures appeared to talk for a few moments, before turning, and moving off in opposite directions.
Once back at the lodge, Isla almost fell into the doorway out of breath.
‘Is everything all right?’ the red-headed woman asked. She was large, with a rather bohemian look.
‘Yes,’ Isla said, feeling ridiculous, and angry with herself that he was still there – even in the quiet of Abisko – Carl Jeffery, messing with her head. How had he done that? How had he crawled back under her skin and set up home?
Chapter 29
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Wednesday, 9 November, 9 p.m.
My brain races too fast, rushing past what’s happened. It’s as though everything is sunny and perfect on the other side of a window, but the glass is covered with frost. I can’t see through, so I rub my hand over the glass. The ice burns my flesh, and I cry and cry in pain, helpless as the ice thickens, getting colder and colder.
The only person who can save me now is Andy. He has to come on Friday, or I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe I’m going crazy. Maybe I imagined someone outside my window that day, or at the supermarket, or at Millie’s party. Is it possible nobody else can see him but me? That he was never there at all? That Carl Jeffery is haunting me from the other side of the world, lodged in the workings of my mind for ever, deep inside my head, mocking me?
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Chapter 30
Thursday, 10 November
Isla knelt in the snow, and zoomed in the lens of her camera for a close-up shot of Nomad. The husky’s eyes were velvet-black. White fur bled into grey.
‘You’re absolutely gorgeous,’ she said, rising and ruffling the dog’s head, as his tail swished to and fro. She brushed snow from her knees, aware the minibus was waiting for her. The other guests from Camp Arctic, all wrapped in snowsuits, seemed to scowl at her from the iced-over windows. They’d been on a husky ride, and clearly wanted to head back. Isla hadn’t joined them on the ride, instead taking pictures of the dogs, and the surrounding countryside and wildlife.
Earlier she’d spent time with Sami people, learning about their culture and history, while sitting in a tepee around an open fire eating game soup. It had briefly helped to free her mind.
Snow began to tumble from the pale sky, flakes stinging her cold cheeks.
‘Please come now,’ the minibus driver called, pulling his white, woolly bobble hat further down over his ears and stomping snow with heavy boots.
‘Coming – sorry.’ Isla tucked her camera away, and hurried towards him, almost slipping over. She climbed aboard, sensing a hostile environment. ‘Sorry for holding you all up,’ she said, as a young man looked at her from the back seat. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, scrambling into a seat, as they set off.
The woman next to her finally smiled. ‘Did you have a good day?’ she asked, her American accent strong. ‘Beautiful here, isn’t it?’
Isla nodded and smiled back. ‘Yes, yes it is.’
The minibus’s temperature gauge registered minus-seventeen Celsius, and the windscreen wipers, despite whipping across the glass at speed, were no match for the falling snow. Out of the front window, she could just make out the road stretching ahead of them, chalk-white.
Back at the hotel, the reception buzzed with people leaving and arriving. Cases were everywhere, and a suffocating feeling of chaos replaced her earlier sense of wellbeing. Jittery, she pushed through the throng, and headed past the reception desk.
‘How was your day?’ the red-headed woman called to her, smiling, before turning back to her computer screen.
‘Good, thanks.’ She itched to open the door that led to the sanctuary of her room.
‘What are your plans for your stay?’
Isla placed her hand on the doorknob. ‘I’m going to the Aurora Sky Station tomorrow night.�
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‘You’ll enjoy that.’ The woman’s eyes were still fixed on the screen in front of her. ‘Make sure you wear thermals.’
Please stop talking. ‘I will.’
Isla eased open the door and stepped into the corridor, the woman’s voice trailing after her: ‘The weather conditions are looking good for the Northern Lights, so you might be lucky.’
Isla spent the next few hours jotting down the string of things she’d done and seen that day, before heading for the restaurant, where she sat alone. She ate herring-three-ways, and drank two glasses of wine, while writing up more notes, and somehow managed to block out any unwanted thoughts.
It was around ten o’clock that she returned to her room. But despite the day being full, tiring her to the point of exhaustion, she couldn’t sleep. Her brain whirred, and Carl Jeffery darted into her head like a phantom. She couldn’t switch off.
At midnight the wind got up. She squeezed her eyes shut, listening as it howled and whistled, ebbing and flowing outside her window like a roaring waterfall. She imagined snowflakes twisting and turning in the black night, whipping up like a tornado. It must have lasted an hour before silence resumed.
Her brain finally began to close down, and she was in a place between asleep and awake, when there was a tapping sound on her window. Her eyes shot open, her body drenched with sweat as her mind tumbled back to that terrible night.
Six years ago
Isla’s eyes sprang open. It was the tapping sound again.
Carl had laughed the day before. Said she worried too much. That the sound was nothing more than a tree branch moving in the light breeze, brushing against her ground-floor window. Or perhaps she was imagining it. That’s what he’d said too.
But this was the second night it had woken her, and last night she’d felt sure someone was out there in the darkness. Just like Bronwyn had mentioned. It couldn’t be her imagination.
She threw back her duvet, too hot in the Australian climate anyway, got out of bed and padded to the window. Hands shaking, she eased open the blind.
Thank God. Maybe Carl had been right – that the nearby tree, silhouetted against the night sky, was the culprit. But, as she peered closer, a full moon brightening the area, she knew the branches couldn’t reach her window. And, as she peered closer to the window, she saw a movement. Someone was out there, standing twenty feet away, where the hostel grounds morphed with the neighbouring forest. A place she’d spent so much time taking photographs of the wildlife.
She squinted into the darkness, trying to make out the figure. He was standing so still. A hat pulled low over his forehead and a scarf wrapped around his face, despite the heat of the night. She closed the blind and rushed back to bed. It was all very well travelling to India, New Zealand and Australia alone, independent, but what happened now? What happened when fear crept in?
She’d already decided that she would go home, that she’d had enough. The last six weeks had been great with Carl; she liked him, but it was nothing serious. And Bronwyn’s death still played heavy on her mind – especially as there was an ongoing inquiry. The police no longer believed it was suicide. The thought had made her uneasy.
Her final trip to Canada could wait. She’d already booked her flight home and would be leaving in a few days.
The tapping stopped, but it was several hours before she drifted into a doze, and it was almost eight o’clock when the chattering laughter of a kookaburra startled her, and the sun’s rays burned through the blind. She forced herself to get out of bed and into the shower, and was lost in the bliss of the soapy water, when the knock came on the door of her room.
‘Are you ready, Isla?’ It was Carl. He hadn’t really been the same since she’d told him she was going back to England. That she missed her family. Said he thought she might stay. Be with him for ever.
She turned off the water, wrapped her towel around herself, and raced to open the door.
‘Not ready yet?’ he said, coming into the room. ‘I thought we’d agreed eight.’
She smiled, as he perched on her bed. ‘You OK?’ she asked.
‘Yep, just thought you’d be ready.’
The truth was, apart from knowing he worked and lived in Sydney, she knew little about him. They’d never really got to the place where they told each other their life histories, mainly having fun – and great sex.
‘Sorry. I did say eight.’ She stepped towards him, bent down and kissed his lips. He smelt of sun cream, and the musky, distinctive aftershave he always wore. ‘Give me five minutes. I’ll be right with you.’
Carl dragged his fingers through his hair as he watched Isla dash around, putting on her pants and bra, a pair of khaki-coloured shorts and an orange vest T-shirt. She tied her hair into a ponytail, and slapped sun cream onto her face, shoulders and arms.
‘Ta da! Ready,’ she said with a bright smile, putting on sunglasses and grabbing her camera. But he didn’t smile. He was acting odd. She hated seeing him this way.
He’d promised to take her to the Blue Mountains, as she desperately wanted to go before she returned to England. ‘I know a great place,’ he’d said. ‘You’ll get some great shots of the Three Sisters.’
Outside the hostel, the sun burnt down from a clear blue sky at around thirty degrees, despite it still being early. They climbed into Carl’s truck, and he stepped down on the throttle, and sped along the highway. Should she tell him she’d seen someone outside the window? But then he’d been dismissive before.
‘I heard it again,’ she said finally, her voice small.
He changed gear, his shirtsleeves hugging his muscular forearms, the tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock of the indicator seeming loud, as he slowed to swerve round a corner.
‘Sorry, what?’ he said, as though he didn’t understand, looking at her from the corner of his eyes.
She leant back, the headrest vibrating under her head, as he sped up again along the straight, lonely road. She turned to look at him. He seemed relaxed, one hand on the steering wheel; the other fiddling with the CD player, finger jabbing through tracks until he reached Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Tthing’.
They continued for some way, before Isla tried once more. ‘Someone tapped on my window.’ Why had her voice taken on a timid tone? She wasn’t timid. She had never been timid. Was it Carl? Was he making her uneasy?
He twisted to look her way. ‘Isla, you couldn’t have.’ He smiled. ‘Who the hell would tap on your window in the night? It’s like I said before – a tree, I reckon.’
‘There is a tree outside. I looked.’
‘There you go then.’
‘Except it’s too far away from the window.’
He gave a grim laugh. ‘You’ve been watching too many thrillers.’
‘No,’ she said, the makings of a foggy headache nagging at her temples. ‘I never watch thrillers.’ She sighed. ‘Carl, there was someone out there,’ she continued. ‘Or at least I think there was.’
‘You think. Can you hear yourself, Isla?’ He took both hands from the wheel and threw them in the air in a shrug. He turned to face her. ‘There’s nobody out there, Isla,’ he said. ‘You’ve got an overactive imagination.’
He pulled off the road, tyres bouncing over bumpy ground, and screeched to a stop in a clearing. ‘There’s a great place to take photographs through there.’ He pointed towards some eucalyptus bushes.
She would have to let things go for now.
They got out and made their way through the bushes to an area that looked out over the Three Sisters. The sheer drop below made her stomach leap.
‘Don’t go near the edge,’ Carl whispered, standing so close she could feel his warm breath on her neck. ‘I wouldn’t want to lose you.’
‘It’s absolutely stunning,’ she said, pulling out her camera, and snapping pictures of the sun glinting off the mountain range giving it a magical purple and blue tinge. She turned and crouched beside a redback spider scurrying across a web, and zoomed in
her camera lens.
‘Jesus, Isla, keep back from him,’ Carl said, placing a hand on her shoulder and squeezing. ‘He’ll kill ya as soon as look at ya.’
She rose once more, and tucked a straying hair behind her ear. ‘Everything is so amazing,’ she said, but she was feeling unsettled. ‘Thanks for bringing me here.’
‘Pleasure.’ He scuffed the undergrowth with his boot. ‘And, yeah, it is pretty awesome. A great country, even if I do say so myself.’
‘Are you from Sydney originally?’ she said. It was the first time she’d asked.
‘Melbourne,’ he said, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
‘Do your parents live there?’
He shook his head. ‘Not any more – Dad died a while back, now. I’ve got a younger sister, but when Mum left, she only stayed with me and Dad for a few years, before being taken into foster care.’
‘I’m sorry. You must miss him.’ Her dad had tried so hard not to cry at the airport, when she first set off on her travels, and she had tried too.
‘He wasn’t a good ’un, Isla.’ Carl’s expression darkened. ‘Let’s leave it at that.’
‘Sure, sorry.’ She raised her camera and aimed it at his face. ‘Can I take a photo of you to show my mum? I’ve told her all about you.’
He grabbed her wrist. ‘Hey, that hurts,’ she cried, as he jerked it downwards.
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ he said, those dark haunting eyes that had won her over now cold. He was barely recognisable.
‘OK,’ she said, as he released her. She pushed her camera into her rucksack. ‘Is everything all right? You’re acting really weird.’
His face flashed red. ‘We should get back.’
‘But we’ve only just got here. I thought we’d take a walk. Maybe see Wentworth Falls.’
‘Wentworth Falls is miles from here,’ he said, taking off, without looking back.
She followed to find him sitting behind the wheel of his truck, the engine running. She climbed in beside him, and before she could clip her seatbelt, he reversed out of the clearing at speed. Tyres skidding on dry earth. She wanted to ask again if he was OK. Had she done something wrong? Was it because she was leaving? But it was as though her throat had tightened around her words, and she couldn’t speak, afraid of how he might react.
Her Last Lie Page 15
