Purgatory Is a Place Too

by Dominique Kyle

  “The one that’s on the Council as well,” she revealed.

  “Shit, that’s big then?”

  “It is,” she said with satisfaction.

  “And the others?”

  “He didn’t know the guy in the other sex scene, but at the party was a local GP, a local Police Community Support Officer, a prominent local businessman in the property market, and an old school friend of his.”

  “Double shit…” I drawled.

  “So just in case he chickens out of blogging this for the Dropbox, will you blog about this phone call, so that we can document that Ishaq has recognised these people? The team can ask him then directly for the names…”

  “Ok,” I agreed.

  “You know something Eve, I have to admit this, every time I watch any of your footage, I’m tense as hell, and I wondered why, and I’ve realised that I’m desperately hoping that my Senior Houseman isn’t going to turn up in them.” She paused. “I keep thinking, no honestly I’m one hundred percent sure that he won’t. And then I think, well ninety-nine point nine percent sure. I feel like I’ve let those girls down by not recognising what’s been going on for so long, that I’m not sure I trust my own judgement now. And then the way you looked at me when I told you that my Senior was from a Pakistani background, and said, well they’re not going to speak out then are they, made me take a step back and think – I’ve got to keep an open mind. I can’t be one hundred percent sure about anything or it’ll blind me to all the other options…”

  “And those girls?” I queried. “Those girls in your groups? Do any of them have the burn marks?”

  There was a lengthening silence. “Yes,” she said at last. “Two in the self-harming group, one in the eating disorders programme, and the one on the ward currently on suicide watch.” She went silent again. “I’ve asked them about the marks, but they’ve all just given me a dirty look and compressed their lips. I can’t force them to tell me. But once this investigation is finished and out there in the public domain, then not only will the other health professionals be unable to ignore it, but the girls might feel that something is actually being done about it and feel safe enough to speak out.”

  After I came off the phone, an unpleasant thought occurred to me. Once this was out in the open, then everyone in town would know what those brands meant. I bet those girls will be treated like shit as soon as anyone spots those marks on them, I thought.

  Nick rang me up. “Don’t worry, we’re sending a full team in. We’re going to be all over this! We’re pursuing all those Council, Police and Medical links. We’ll blow it sky high for you, Eve, you can be confident of that…”

  Damian rang. They wanted me and Quinn to take a couple of days out this week to film another episode because there was a good weather forecast. I went to Entwistle. “I’m really sorry, but I just can’t afford to miss a weekend’s racing,” I explained, “so it’ll have to be during the week.”

  He looked resigned. “Never mind Eve, your Championships and this latest TV series are probably the best asset this business has. Off you go!”

  We got on a train going up North and were told to get off at Oxenholme. We got off and looked around. A cameraman came over to us. “That train there,” he pointed at a small one on the other side of the platform.

  “Windermere?” I queried with a frown. “Where’s that?”

  “Lake District,” Quinn explained with a grin. “What do you mind betting – canoeing, sailing, or walking up some huge mountain?”

  “Dunno,” I said blankly. “I just hope to God it doesn’t involve water!”

  The cameraman pointed out an open topped double decker bus waiting outside Windermere Station. “599,” he said. “Get an ‘explorer’ ticket. Get off at Ambleside.”

  We glanced at each other. “This is like some weird treasure hunt,” I said.

  We got on.

  “Top deck,” the cameraman barked at us.

  We went upstairs and sat in the open section. Once the bus got up some speed it was bloody freezing. I yanked up the hood on my fleece. Quinn just looked like he was enjoying the whole thing from beginning to end.

  Tree lined roads with branches threatening to take our heads off. Hills. Glimpses of blue lake. Suddenly it opened out and I stared open mouthed at the most beautiful view I’d ever seen. Across a bright blue lake, a vista of hills, pointed, and jagged with two distinctive rounded ones in the foreground.

  “Langdale Pikes,” the cameraman helpfully informed us. “You’re going to get to see those a bit more close up.”

  Quinn and I glanced at each other.

  We were asked to change buses at Ambleside. On the journey I sat entranced, not knowing which way to look first. More trees, another lake, lots of sheep with nearly adult lambs. It was all so beautiful.

  “All the houses are kind of green,” I observed as we passed through a tiny picturesque village.

  “Local green slate,” the cameraman explained.

  Suddenly we came over a rise and a cattle grid and the Langdale Pikes suddenly loomed, huge and amazing in front of us, almost fairy tale like. “Wow,” I exclaimed. “Everyone should see this view at least once before they die!”

  “I hope you’re not planning on dying!” Quinn teased.

  We were told to get off at the Old Dungeon Ghyll, which turned out to be a pub. We were right in the middle of the steepest valley I’d ever seen, blocked at the end by thrusting mountains.

  “This way,” the cameraman said, and led us across the road and down a lane to a campsite.

  Quinn and I looked at each other. I grimaced. “I’m getting that sinking feeling!”

  On the campsite, the rest of the team were already set up. One grinned and tossed us a big heavy compression bag and a piece of paper with diagrams on it. “One tent and one sheet of instructions. You can treat it as a problem solving exercise…”

  Quinn smiled at me. “Do you want to be the one interpreting the instructions or the one following orders?”

  He knew which one I’d go for.

  “No Quinn, that into that!” I ended up saying despairingly for the ‘n’th time.

  Finally we were able to fall into the completed tent absolutely knackered and lay flat out. Suddenly something occurred to me. I crawled to the entrance and stuck my head out.

  “So you’re expecting us to share the one tent then are you?”

  “Looks like it,” the guy said with a bit of a knowing smile.

  I retreated back inside. “They are so determined to have us shagging by the end of this series,” I exclaimed.

  “Oh well, they’ll be disappointed then…” Quinn said with lidded eyes.

  “Ta Quinn, that’s so chivalrous…” I drawled.

  And I knew they’d darn well leave that exchange in the final cut.

  We stood looking up at a sheer cliff of rock.

  “Seriously? You expect us to climb that? Is that even humanly possible?”

  The two instructors all geared up in helmets, and harnesses with shed loads of metal work clanking like cowbells around them, just grinned.

  “They warned us you were small,” they said to me. They plonked a pastel blue and pink helmet on my head, clearly designed for young girls, and helped me get into a Barbie pink harness. He tightened it up as far as it would go around my waist giving it a yank to test it that almost lifted me off the ground and then he adjusted the thigh loops. Clearly I was going to have to put up with being handled. They handed me some tiny looking green suede ballet shoes. “They’ll feel tight,” they warned, “but they’re meant to.”

  Then they togged Quinn up.

  Then they started to run two ropes through into piles on the ground. “Red rope, blue rope. Top end gets tied to the leader, bottom to the belayer. Red on the right, blue on the left. Figure of eight knot.”

  “That’s not red,” I complained. “It’s pink – well fuschia really. And that’s not blue, it’s lilac!”

  The instructors looked a
t each other. “I think you’ll find that whenever two male climbers are out together, whatever colour the ropes are, they’ll somehow manage to convert them to red and blue!”

  “Yeah, can you imagine it? Two gnarly old beardy blokes yelling Take in on Cerise, and Slack on Harvest Gold?” They grinned. “We should start a new trend!” They struck a pose. “We’re so confidently heterosexual that we can shout up the crag, Hang on mate, I’m just flaking the Magenta and there’s a knot in Turquoise!”

  Quinn and I glanced wordlessly at each other. And we were going to have to put up with two whole days of this!

  They did the figure of eight knots for us the first time.

  “Do that again,” I said, narrowing my eyes on what he was doing. “And again.” I had a go myself, and got it right on my second attempt.

  Then they introduced us to the gear. “Now since you ladies have taken up the sport, the nice men in the design department have started to colour code everything, since we know you never remember numbers…”

  When this screened in mid-October, Pete gave a hilarious cat call.

  “You were admirably restrained, Eve,” Paul’s lips were twitching. “You never said a word!”

  “Yeah but did you see that look she gave him?” Jo observed.

  He showed us the nuts, and the friends, which were a kind of camming device, the extenders and the slings and the karabiners, and explained the different uses. And then he got us to practice placing them into different nooks and cracks and crevices in the rock. You had to fit exactly the right size and shaped one at exactly the right angle to protect you if you fell. It would jam in the rock and hold the rope so you wouldn’t fall all the way back to the ground.

  “I bet you were good at that Eve, weren’t you?” Paul commented, watching my narrowed assessing eyes as they did a close up on my face on the screen.

  I nodded. I hoped everyone watching noticed my ability to name each nut and cam by their number. Quinn was always fumbling around trying to find the right one to fit, trying this one and then that one.

  “Two and a half cam,” I’d say to him glancing at the crevice he was trying to shove them into.

  He’d panic and look helplessly down at the metalwork hanging off his harness.

  “The yellow one,” I’d say, and he’d grab it with relief.

  At lunch time we lay out in the sun. Quinn and I sat a bit apart from the rest of the team. The instructors were telling some hilarious big fall story to the co-ordinator that mysteriously also involved a big slice of fruit cake and a goat.

  I stretched out on the deep soft moss. “This is wonderful,” I said. “Why have we never been here before? It was only a couple of hours on the train. I never even knew this existed!”

  He smiled and looked sideways at me.

  “It’s the first time I’ve felt completely safe for months…” I realised.

  “Well that’s not surprising Ginty, with what you’ve been getting up to!” Quinn said disapprovingly. “When are you going to pull out?”

  “Soon, I promise,” I reassured him. “It’s just that I’ve left something behind that I need to go back in to pick up…”

  He propped himself up on one elbow and stretched out my left arm. He looked in a rather repulsed way at the still suppurating sore on my inner elbow. For some reason it just wasn’t healing.

  “You decided to change group or something?” He asked.

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t my decision, someone else took a fancy to me and decided for me.”

  He threw himself back down into the turf. “Oh Ga-a-a-wd! I’m just hoping that you’re gonna come out of this alive and in one piece!”

  I rolled over close to him and he put his arm around me. “Sorry Quinn,” I said penitently. “I know it’s stressful for you, but if you can monitor that phone for just a few weeks more…”

  “I s’pose,” he said gloomily. “I just don’t know why it has to be you, that’s all!”

  “Because someone had to do it, and no-one else seemed to give a shit,” I told him, resting my head on the useful hollow on his shoulder. Seconds later, without meaning to, I’d fallen asleep.

  By the end of day two after being led up separate climbs by our respective instructors and then asked to repeat the climb, leading, but using already in-situ gear, and then leading again, placing the gear, they tasked us with climbing a route together that neither of us had yet been on.

  “So which one of you is going to lead?” He asked, looking at Quinn.

  “I will,” I said. “I don’t trust his gear placement.”

  “Woo, did you hear that Adam?” He teased.

  “That’s fine by me,” Quinn said easily. “I don’t trust my gear placement either.”

  They loaded my harness up with the metalwork and it got steadily heavier.

  Quinn eyed it. “That’ll weigh more than she does won’t it?”

  I went off up.

  “Slack on Lilac,” I yelled at the top. Then, “Safe!”

  “Take in on Fuschia then,” Quinn shouted.

  We had decided to kick start the new trend.

  “I enjoyed that,” I said to Quinn on the way home in the train, leaning in to him.

  He put his arm around me. “You’ve got very tactile all of a sudden…” He commented.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, suddenly conscious of what I was doing and pulling away. “I guess I’m just borrowing you. I’ve not had anyone to hug me for so long, and we got into the way of it when we used to live together, didn’t we? Sorry.”

  He put his arm back round me and pulled me back against him. “That’s ok Ginty. I just wanted to know the reason and what the boundaries were.”

  “Blimey, that sounds very mature!” I responded.

  He glanced down at me, smiled and said nothing.

  Jo and I took both my cars for a trip in the Beast down to the Midlands, and I gave my newly worked over engine a good run out at Birmingham. I would be needing to put a full set of new tyres on it for the Finals in less than a fortnight’s time anyway. It seemed to be going like a bomb. Now I had to keep it that way. While we were down South, we took the opportunity to attend another World of Shale Qualifier, this time at Stoke in my bomb-proof shale car, while Quinn obligingly took Cody on another outing to Barford for us. On the bank holiday Monday, instead of trekking off somewhere further afield, Jo and I felt a bit lazy, and took Cody and myself over to Buxton for a simple afternoon twirl round the High Edge Raceway.

  After we’d dropped Cody off, Jo and I went round to visit Pete in his new flat. He’d moved in over the weekend. It was a bit bare as it was only partly furnished.

  “I’ve realised I don’t own much beyond a shed load of car parts,” he concluded ruefully.

  “Age UK has a furniture refurbishment place out on the east side of town,” Jo suggested. “They have everything there and it’s dirt cheap. I guess everyone gives them the stuff when they’re clearing houses out when old people die…”

  “Lovely…” Pete said sarcastically.

  “Anyway, let’s christen the flat shall we?” I said cheerfully, pulling out a bottle I’d brought along. After a long search, we came to the conclusion that Pete only owned one mug. So we passed it around, sitting on the living room carpet, because he didn’t have a sofa yet.

  “Here’s to independence!” I lifted the mug.

  “Here’s to Pete getting some bloody furniture,” Jo added on her turn.

  “Here’s to Eve winning the World Championship,” Pete said, looking straight at me and raising the mug.

  “Thanks Pete,” I said, touched. It was big of him. But I hoped it didn’t mean that he’d given up on it himself.

  A couple of days later, about eleven o’clock at night, just as I was going to bed, I got a phone call from Nasim. My stomach lurched. She sounded in a flat panic.

  “What is it?” I said quickly, my fist clenched.

  “Sahmir asked me to call you. He’s in the bathroom throwing up and h
e asked me to call you and ask you to come straight round. I don’t know why!”

  “Come round where?” I asked urgently.

  “Our place of course,” Nasim said as though it was obvious.

  I got on my bike and drove straight round, my stomach in knots. What on earth had happened? Nasim answered the door to me, her eyes wide with concern and bewilderment. Sahmir was sitting curled up in an armchair looking really sick and upset. When he saw me his eyes flashed with anger. “I’m never going back in! Never again! You hear me?”

  “What’s happened?” I asked worriedly.

  He ripped the button camera out of his shirt, yanked off the watch and threw them both at me. “You can take those and you can upload them for me, and I’m never doing it again!”

  I gathered them up. “Ok,” I said cautiously.

  He put his head in his hands and began to sob. I walked towards him and went to put a comforting hand on his shoulder but he shoved me off. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Ok,” I said quickly and backed off. I glanced at Nasim. She tried to put her arms around him instead but she received the same treatment. Rajesh was just staring from across the other side of the room like the whole world had just gone mental.

  Sahmir got up sharply, wiped roughly at his face, and snapped, “I’m going home.” At the door, he paused, without looking back he said abruptly, “You upload the stuff, but don’t watch it. I’m serious about that! Just don’t watch it!” And then he slammed out.

  Nasim and Rajesh stared at me. I ignored them. I rang Chetsi. She sounded sleepy. “Sorry to ring so late, Chetsi,” I said quickly, “but something awful has happened to Ishaq, and I don’t know what it is. You need to get Taib to speak to him as soon as possible. I’m uploading the footage for him as soon as I get home, but he’s warned me not to watch it.”

  “Take his advice then,” Chetsi warned me. “Taib and I will watch it and let you know the gist of what’s in it. It’s too late now to speak to Ishaq, and Taib’s on a night shift. Is Ishaq in a safe place right now?”