by Tom Bale
Sam makes a choking noise as he tries to swallow before speaking. ‘Wh-where?’
‘In the trees – I was with him,’ she adds quickly.
‘And you saw her, too?’
Before she answers, Jody eases herself free of the kids. Both of them immediately crumple to the sand.
‘I’m not sure. I’ve asked him again about the first time, and I think she might have been wearing a cloak, maybe, with a hood.’
‘And that’s what you saw?’
‘It did sort of look like someone in a white cloak. But it was a glimpse – could’ve been my mind playing tricks.’
It feels to Sam like she’s backtracking. He squeezes one hand into a fist and thumps it gently against his forehead. He can’t make sense of this at all.
‘Why would there be a woman in a cloak, hiding herself so that she’s only seen by Dylan?’
‘I don’t know.’ A glance at the kids, sitting miserably a couple of metres away. ‘Shall we try putting some bait in this trap?’ Jody adds in a brighter voice. ‘And these two need some more water.’
They settle the children in the shade of the boat and feed them berries, coconut and a few sips of water. The sun is high and punishingly hot; not even the hint of a breeze to bring them relief. Grace has to be persuaded that her leg will feel better if she can leave it alone. She looks doubtful, but curls up on her side and shuts her eyes. Within a few minutes she’s dozing, sucking on her thumb.
Jody shakes her head. ‘All the time we spent building up her confidence, getting her ready to face the world, and it’s been undone in the space of two days.’
‘It’s horrible, but I still don’t see any point in lying to them.’
‘When have I lied?’ Jody asks sharply.
‘Pretending it’s a game, then.’ He lets out a long sigh. ‘Have you thought about how this is going to end?’
‘You said there was no point in going over it.’
‘I know, but I can’t help it. Neither can you.’
She says nothing, so he goes on: ‘Maybe they’ll let us go, maybe they won’t. But I reckon there’s one thing that’ll decide it for sure – and that’s if something happens to one of us.’
‘Like what?’
‘If one of us dies.’ He mouths the words, because he’s not convinced that Grace and Dylan are properly asleep. ‘If that happens, they’ll have to kill the rest of us. But if we can all stay alive, there might be a point when they plan to stop the game.’
‘How can they let us go, after what they’ve done?’
‘Once we’re back in the normal world, what can we do to hurt them? You think their police will care?’
‘No, but when we get home. There’s the UK police, our MP–’
‘What proof will we have? We’ve got no phones to take pictures or videos. We don’t even know where we are! They’d laugh at us, Jode.’
She nods, and slowly traces her fingers over her dry, chapped lips. ‘I see what you mean.’
‘But that’s if we’re all okay. If one of us… you know… then all bets are off. Four people go on holiday, only three come back? No chance of keeping that quiet.’
‘But we couldn’t just vanish. Not a whole family.’
‘We wouldn’t vanish, exactly. You know that boat crash last year, the one Gabby was asked about? It wasn’t the only bad accident over here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I found out some stuff on the internet.’ Embarrassed, he tells her of his plan to organise a boat trip, and describes how he stumbled across the news items about a couple of other tragedies. ‘As long as they don’t do this too often, they could easily explain it away. I mean, look how often you see something on the news about a tourist falling off a hotel balcony, or drowning, or killed by carbon monoxide while they sleep. Accidents happen all the time. No one’s gonna question it, are they? It’s just bad luck.’
‘Bad luck?’ she repeats with a hollow laugh. ‘Oh, it’s bad luck, all right.’
After first being wounded by the charge that she lies to the kids, any relief that Jody could feel at knowing why Sam went online is wiped out by this horrific scenario. It seems grimly plausible, and for a while neither of them can find anything to say. They’re sitting within touching range but Jody can’t bring herself to reach over and hold his hand.
What’s happening to us?
Then, out of nowhere, Sam says, ‘You know all the political stuff your dad and Greatgramps go on about?’
‘The stuff you reckon is bullshit?’
‘Yeah, but I dunno anymore. Spend a bit of time thinking about it, and you realise they’ve got a point. I mean, we’ve had years of prices rising, while wages stay flat or go down. No job security anymore. Fucking zero-hours contracts. Property prices are insane, and rents are a rip-off even for a shithole. Everyone’s being screwed to the bone.’
‘Not the one percent. That’s the point Dad’s always making.’
‘I know. But even they’re gonna suffer, in time, for the damage we’re doing to the planet. I admit I feel guilty for taking the piss when Greatgramps was going on about fracking and bees and Christ knows what. But he’s right. We’re heading for disaster – not just you, me and the kids, at the level of one family, but almost everyone else is in the same mess. The whole planet, basically.’
Heavy stuff, and it causes her to look at him through narrowed eyes and find a glint of humour. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d say you were on drugs. Or maybe it was the lightning?’
He grins, which is a welcome sight, but he seems quite serious when he says, ‘Maybe it was.’ A self-conscious shrug, and then he goes on: ‘Anyway, it seems like crazy bad luck, that out of all the time humans have been around, things will fall apart for us, for our generation – and the kids’. But then you think… well, it is going to happen one day, so why not now? It’s like we’re sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff, and nothing’s gonna wake us up in time.’
A gloomy silence follows. This subject is far from new to Jody. Most of these arguments have been put forward by her dad and her granddad, with both men subscribing to the theory that the children of the forties and fifties were possibly the most fortunate in the history of the working class – at least in the rich nations of the west. The baby boomers have had decent education, healthcare, affordable housing, unemployment benefit, free universities, as well as all the luxuries and delights of the modern technological age: from dishwashers and computers to cheap foreign travel.
‘Work paid, that was the thing,’ her dad likes to remind them. ‘So we had a chance to realise our dreams through hard graft, with the knowledge that there was a proper, robust safety net if things went wrong. After just two generations that’s winding down fast. It’s the bloody eighties that did for us. Financial deregulation, ushering in the Great Greed. Banks that won’t lend money to a thriving business because they can make a hundred times the profit by betting on the price of grain. And now you see the homeless dying on the streets, and kids coming to school hungry in a country where someone’ll pay a million quid for a wristwatch. We’re facing inequality on a scale that would make Caesar blush, and yet what are most folk worried about? The result of Strictly Come Dancing, or whether someone made an off-colour joke on Twitter.’
Usually such discussions ended with her mum prodding Dad with a rolled-up newspaper and telling him not to be such a miserable git. Jody always tried to take a more positive view, arguing that it’s natural, as you get older, to feel that things are getting worse, but that doesn’t make it true.
Right now, though, it’s difficult to argue with Sam that they – and almost everyone like them – are on a downward spiral, no matter how hard they work. Once or twice they’ve skipped meals themselves to ensure that the kids would have enough, when an unexpected bill wrecked their budgeting for the month, and there was an occasion when Jody came close to approaching the local food bank, but stopped for fear of Sam’s reaction – that and her own crippling sense
of shame.
Drawing in a weary breath, she says, ‘Are you saying there’s no point in trying to survive here, if everything’s so hopeless? Because I don’t think I can accept that.’
He makes a grunting noise, as though he’s not sure one way or the other. ‘Is your dad wrong, then?’
‘All I mean is that I can’t bring myself to care about politics at the moment. The future out there in the world has got to look after itself. I’m talking about here, now, and whether we… surrender.’
‘I’m not saying we should, Jode, but–’
‘Last night you were so fired up. It was amazing. Inspiring.’ She reddens. ‘I admit it also scared me a bit. But at least you had the energy, the will to go on fighting. We have to stay strong and believe in ourselves, that’s what you said.’
‘Did I?’ He looks surprised. ‘Amazing what a lightning bolt can do.’
They both grin. Some of the tension has eased, and Jody knows she must seize this opportunity and ask what it is he’s been hiding from her: whether their future, if they get out of here, is together or apart.
But at that moment, Sam squints at the sky and says, ‘Midday now, don’t you reckon?’
‘Later than that, probably.’
‘Can’t put it off much longer, then.’
‘What?’ Lost in the track of her own thinking, her heart stutters. He’s going to tell me. But what if it hurts too much, on top of everything else?
‘The cage, remember?’ He looks confused by her fearful expression. ‘You were saying we should go. So let’s go.’
Sam’s feeling weirded out by Jody’s behaviour. It’s like she’s with him one minute and gone away the next. Probably it’s the heat, the dehydration, which is likely to be having the same effect on him. He keeps telling himself to make allowances but then, when they start to disagree, he forgets all about it. Like some part of him is itching for a fight.
There’s another tussle over who should go to investigate the cage. Jody says she’ll do it: he can stay here with the kids. Sam won’t hear of that. It’s bad enough that she went to the pit on her own.
‘We both need to go,’ he says. ‘And Grace and Dylan will have to come.’
‘They’re exhausted. And it’s the hottest part of the day.’
‘I know. But you said yourself, we shouldn’t put it off too long.’
Her lips are so tight that they almost disappear. He tenses, knowing she’s going to tear into him for not going earlier.
‘But, Sam–’
‘No. Let’s just do it, and not bloody argue about everything.’
‘You think I want that?’
He shakes his head. ‘It’s what they want.’
She looks pissed off, but doesn’t say anything. They go to rouse the kids. When Jody shakes her shoulder, Grace mumbles and groans, not wanting to wake up.
‘She’s burning hot.’ Jody rests a hand on her brow. ‘I think it’s a fever.’
Sam feels his insides go watery with fear. He can see that Jody, as she stares at him, is thinking about what he said earlier.
If one of us dies, we all die.
43
Gabrielle Marchant is a two-faced bitch.
That was the verdict of her supposed best friend, overheard by accident when they were at sixth form together. To this day, Gabby suffers a little punch to the heart when she recalls that moment, even though she has good reason to be grateful for Marianne’s assessment.
It could have destroyed their friendship, but Gabby decided instead to embrace the accusation. She gave no sign that she’d heard anything, and continued to act the part of soulmate for another fourteen months, until the optimum moment arrived – the night of Marianne’s break-up with her first serious boyfriend.
‘Why would I give a fuck?’ was Gabby’s cool retort when Marianne rang her in tears. ‘I’m a two-faced bitch, remember?’
Gabby is from a well-off but not filthy rich family in the East Midlands. Educated at an excellent grammar school, she was an above-average student who excelled at many things, including drama (wearing a whole lot more than two faces) so it seemed inevitable that good A levels would lead to a top university and then, perhaps, to a lucrative and fulfilling career.
It started off that way, but after a term and a half of an English degree at Southampton, Gabby’s vague plans and her family’s far more concrete expectations were blasted off course by a combination of boys, debts, drugs, an unwanted pregnancy (terminated) and a brush or two with the law. Bailing out, she fled to her sympathetic grandmother in West London and staved off boredom with a part-time job at a travel agent’s. Within weeks she was sleeping with her boss, a good-looking man in his mid-thirties, married with kids, who often reminisced about the fun he’d had repping at the start of his career and thought she should try it.
‘With your wild side, you’d love it. And I mean, jeez, you’ve got all the assets.’ Snicker snicker. It was a suggestion that owed more to a fear that his wife was going to discover their affair, but Gabby soon realised it was precisely what she needed. The fact that her family would be horrified only added to its appeal.
From the beginning she was Gabby, not Gabrielle. Hi guys, I’m Gabby the rep! It means a conscious change to her voice, roughening the accent and injecting a cheery, upbeat tone. Bubbly is what she aims for, because bubbly girls – especially if they’re also pretty and not intimidatingly bright – don’t get as much grief from the customers. The poor lass is doing her best for us, she wants them saying to themselves. It’s not Gabby’s fault the hotel / food / resort / weather isn’t up to standard.
The dumbing down has proved to be a smart move, earning her a sky-high rating in her performance reviews. The face she presents to the clients and her colleagues is well-received and almost always taken as genuine. Very few of the people she interacts with would guess at her middle-class origins – the property mogul father and brittle gym-and-shopping mother – but there is one exception, one person who suspects that she belongs a little higher on the social scale than she lets on. And because of that – because of him – she has landed herself in a very tricky situation indeed.
She times today’s mission to coincide with the long lunch session – tourists at the trough: gross! – when the hotel’s reception area is likely to be quiet. Unfortunately it’s the luck of the draw in terms of the duty manager, a sour-faced woman with onion breath and a large nose peppered with blackheads. She hands over the passports and attends to the paperwork without comment, but insists on accompanying Gabby to the room.
She doesn’t offer to help pack the cases; just stands by the door with a sullen expression. Once or twice Gabby catches the woman staring at her cleavage; she can’t work out whether it’s jealousy, disapproval or desire, but it’s making her uncomfortable – and God knows she’s feeling jittery enough as it is.
It’s tempting to throw the clothes and toiletries into the cases in a messy heap, but that wouldn’t show the appropriate respect for their possessions – something the duty manager might later remember. During her final sweep of the room, Gabby spies a small plastic figure under one of the beds – a superhero of some sort – and feels the unexpected prickle of a tear. Silly Gabby, she scolds herself.
She leaves the toy where it is.
In the lobby the duty manager sets the case down as though it’s radioactive and plods away. A porter comes over to help – Viggo, a good lad, with bright green eyes and magnificent pecs beneath his tight shirt. He takes the second case and a rucksack from Gabby, insisting he can manage them all himself.
She’s following him towards the exit doors when footsteps quicken on the marble floor and someone calls her name. There’s no point pretending she hasn’t heard.
It would have to be these two, wouldn’t it? Their names are lost to her, despite the unpleasantness that nearly ensued when she asked for the invitation back. Generally it’s only the heavy-duty troublemakers whose names lodge in her brain like shrapnel.
; No, she’s got it: the Baxters!
‘Hi guys, holiday all good? Soaking up plenty of sun?’
It’s a reflex question: these two belong firmly in the category of middle-class apparitions who inexplicably take hot-weather holidays, only to spend the whole time sheltering in the lobby, complaining that it’s too hot, too noisy, too crowded – when usually what they mean is too common.
‘It’s about our, er, friends,’ Mrs B says. ‘Jody and, er, Sam.’
‘They won the prize,’ says hubby, addressing Gabby’s right nipple. ‘We were all set to go in their place, until–’
‘Ah, yeah. Sorry about that.’ Gabby tries to look bereft, but Mrs B shakes her head, coldly dismissive.
‘The thing is, the family… we’ve not seen hide nor hair of them since Thursday.’
‘Oh, really?’ Gotta sound totally nonchalant here, Gabs. ‘Well, it is a big hotel!’
‘Medium-sized, I would say,’ Mr Baxter corrects her. ‘But I’m not sure whether they actually returned from the party.’
There’s a painful silence. Gabby can’t decide if lying will dig her deeper into a hole, but put on the spot, she really has no choice.
‘I’m afraid there was a slight accident. Their little boy fell and broke his ankle.’
A microsecond’s delay before the wife clasps a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my word! Trevor, didn’t we say there might be something…?’
‘He’s fine now, don’t worry. But the hotel felt so bad about it, they offered them a suite for the rest of their holiday.’
‘At the Conchis?’ Trevor Baxter’s face is glowing like an overripe tomato.
‘Yeah. Everyone wants to keep it kind of low key, you know? I’m just delivering the rest of their stuff now.’ A pointed look at Viggo, waiting by the taxi, but the Baxters fail to take the hint.
‘We were so looking forward to hearing about it,’ Mrs Baxter says. ‘Though I suppose we may see them at the airport.’
