by Megan Tayte
Gone was Cara’s usual chirpy tone, replaced with a gravity that made my heart ache for her. She paused in her pinning and looked up at me. ‘I’m doing my best to help too. With the eBay clothes. I wish I could do more. It sucks that he’s stuck here at nineteen, fretting over his little sister, instead of being out there living his life.’
‘I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way, Cara,’ I said gently.
‘No, he doesn’t. But he should.’
‘It won’t always be this way, though. Soon enough you’ll be eighteen, and you’ll go off to fashion school or build your business, and Luke will be free to make his own choices.’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe. But sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever be the guy he would’ve been if the accident had never happened.’
‘I get that,’ I said quietly. ‘These things change you.’
There was a moment’s hush, and then Cara gave herself a shake and continued in a brighter tone: ‘Anyway, enough of the doom and gloom. You’re all pinned now, so slip it off and I’ll add it to my to-do pile.’
As Cara helped me out of The Dress, she chattered happily.
‘You’ll look amazing. It’s going to be the defining customisation for me. Oo, it’ll be perfect for the website I want to launch – a proper brand, you know, to sell independently of eBay. This dress could be the Custom Cara signature piece. I could take a shot of you wearing it at the All That Jazz soiree…’
‘Huh?’
‘The black-tie dinner at Si’s. His parents have one every year to raise money for this local charity. It’s brilliant – dead swanky: marquee out the back, jazz band, dance floor, waiters with canapés and champers, sit-down five-course meal.’
It sounded like one of Mother’s fancy parties at Hollythwaite for Father’s investment-banking clients – stiff and stuffy. I’d spent the last seventeen years squeezing into uncomfortable formalwear and being paraded around by my parents, who expected me to charm doddering old fools and simpering women with more jewellery than sense. No way was I going to do that here in my summer, on my terms.
‘Last year’s was immense,’ Cara was saying. ‘I went with Luke.’
‘Oh. But I thought Luke hated the other surfers?’
Cara blinked in confusion. ‘Now where have you got that idea? No, he’s tight with them – he’s known some of them for years and years.’
Interesting, I thought. But with Cara, there was never time to process a thought before the conversation was racing on.
‘Anyway, so the party’s on the thirtieth of August. It’s a Saturday. You’re free then, right?’
The day before my birthday. I nodded reluctantly. ‘But Cara, I’m not invited…’
‘Well, I am. And so’s Luke. And our invitations are for plus-ones. Don’t worry.’ She grinned. ‘I’ve seen the look in Luke’s eyes when you’re near him. You’ve got yourself a date for the night.’
‘Thanks, Cara, but formal events aren’t really my thing…’
‘Don’t be daft. Who doesn’t like a bit of luxury?’
‘But The Dress – I never intended…’
‘To wear it in public? Yes, I know. But since I’ve been working so terribly hard on it, you’ll just have to, won’t you? You, Scarlett Blake, will be Luke’s lady in red.’ Cara caught my cringe. ‘You may scoff, but you just wait till you’re out on that dance floor with Luke, and he’s gazing into your eyes, and you’re melting into his arms, and he’s crooning to you, “The lady in reddddddddddd…”’
A well-aimed pillow put an end to Cara’s slaughtering of the eighties’ love song. But even as she moved on to more pressing matters – what to wear for her date with Kyle – I kept thinking about the picture she’d conjured of Luke and I dancing together, and I found myself wondering whether an All That Jazz party might just be tolerable if it involved a cheek-to-cheek moment with Luke Cavendish.
18: DEATHLESS DEATH
It was late afternoon by the time I left Luke, preparing for another evening shift at the pub, and Cara, waiting excitedly at the window for the first glimpse of Kyle’s car. As I weaved my way back up the lanes to the cottage, I pulled down the visor to shade my eyes from the lowering sun. The lanes were deserted, and an afternoon with the Cavendishes had lightened my heart, so I let go of all inhibition, singing along to the radio and letting the breeze coming through the open windows carry my voice out to the silent, towering hedgerows and the patchwork fields beyond.
I was on the final approach to the cottage, halfway through the chorus of Hozier’s ‘Take Me to Church’, when it happened.
The deer came out of nowhere, bursting through a break in a hedge and streaking across the road in front of me. Time slowed. I slammed my foot on the brakes and jerked the wheel but I was too close, too close. With a sickening thud, car met deer. I stared in horror as the animal was thrown back onto the road; squeezed down on the brake pedal with all my might; willed the car to stop, stop, stop before running the deer right over.
It slipped out of sight beyond the edge of the bonnet and in a moment I’d yanked on the handbrake, punched the seatbelt release and thrown open the door. I made to leap out, but as I did so my foot caught on the lip of the door and I crashed down. My hands, coming up to break the fall, were too sluggish, and my head struck the tarmac. I registered the pain for a split-second, then was scrambling to the front of the car.
The deer was lying with its back to me under the front bumper, right against the front tyres – a pitiful heap of brown fur. Blackish blood was pooling rapidly around its head, which looked wrong, misshapen. But it was alive; I could hear its breaths, shallow and rasping.
Without thinking, I slid a hand under the deer’s torso and began pulling it back from under the car. It was only a fawn, I thought, judging by its size, but still it was a dead weight in my arms. I hauled it clear of the car, laid it gently on its side and knelt beside it. The deer shifted feebly on the hard surface of the road and then met my gaze. Its eyes conveyed more than fear – an acceptance of the darkness that was closing in.
‘Oh no,’ I breathed.
It was one thing soothing a dying animal whose injuries were not my fault; this, this was terrible. I had killed it, the poor thing.
Instinctively, I had begun stroking the deer’s fur, from its head down its neck and across its side, heedless of the sticky blood. The animal was shaking badly, and now I flattened my hands on it and willed it to be calm, to feel no pain.
There was something wrong with my vision. A blurring, a distortion. I blinked away the tears in my eyes, but still, as I stared down at my hands on the deer, they seemed out of focus and the light was strange. Like a sunbeam under water.
I closed my eyes, opened them again.
Hands blurred. A watery blue.
Heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Cold. So cold.
The deer stilled.
The light mellowed.
The deer came back into focus – dead.
Colour caught my eye. I looked down at myself. Red on white. Blood on shirt. My blood. I was bleeding.
Home, I needed to go home.
I pushed back onto my heels and tried to stand, but the world tipped sideways and I was falling and something hard came up to greet me and then the sky was above me.
Phone. Jeans pocket.
Four touches: Unlock. Contacts. Luke. Call.
He answered after one ring. ‘Hey. Did you forget something?’
I tried to talk but my tongue was heavy in my mouth.
‘Scarlett?’
The blue above was blackening at the edges.
‘Scarlett?’
The black was sweeping in, like a wave on the beach, but something was chasing ahead of it, circling, twirling, determined not to be engulfed.
‘Scarlett, what’s going on? Are you there?’
The something came closer. Flying. A magpie.
‘Scarlett?’
I managed three words before the black claimed me: ‘I killed it.�
�
*
‘Scarlett!’
A voice, loud and frantic.
‘Scarlett, open your eyes.’
A touch, soft, brushing across my cheek.
‘Scarlett, please… Can you hear me?’
I forced my eyes open. Blinked. Blue eyes crystallised. Wild hair. A face lined with tension. Luke.
‘Scarlett? Thank God. How do you feel?’
I took a breath, swallowed.
‘My hands…’
Luke leaned closer. ‘Your hands are fine. Just bloody. You’ve hurt your head. What happened?’
I stared at him for a moment, until it all flooded back. ‘The deer!’ I struggled to sit, but Luke put a firm hand on my shoulder and held me down.
‘Easy now. You hit a deer?’
‘I killed it.’
Luke looked up and around. ‘It’s not here,’ he said. ‘It must have run off.’
‘But I killed it,’ I said. ‘I saw it die.’
‘It was probably just shocked. But how did you hurt your head? No – don’t touch it.’
I’d got far enough to feel Luke’s hand pressing something – fabric – to my brow bone.
‘I tripped,’ I said. ‘Getting out of the car.’
‘You hit it on the road? Jesus. Do you think you can sit up?’
Luke slid an arm under my shoulders and helped me upright, keeping the compress against my head. The world lurched, and I thought for a moment I’d be sick. I closed my eyes and leaned back into him.
‘Are you okay? How do you feel?’
‘Bit ropey,’ I admitted.
‘We need to get you to the hospital.’
‘No.’ I opened my eyes and grabbed for his arm, but ended up with a fistful of t-shirt. ‘No. No hospitals.’
‘Scarlett, your head is bleeding. I’ve just found you in the road unconscious. You can barely sit. You need to see a doctor now.’
I shook my head and then gasped at the pain. ‘No, please. I hate hospitals.’
‘Don’t we all. Now come on – can you walk, or shall I carry you?’
*
A crimson-faced, screaming toddler with an egg-shaped lump on her forehead. An old man staring vacantly into space and muttering about tapioca and tea bags. A lady bent double and sobbing quietly. A man with his hand wrapped in a red-soaked tea towel. A gang of blokes, raucous and inebriated, ribbing their mate whose thumb was stuck in a bowling ball. Welcome to Saturday teatime at the Accident and Emergency department.
‘When I said did you want to go out sometime,’ Luke murmured in my ear, ‘I had in mind somewhere with a little more… atmosphere.’
We were sitting on hard plastic chairs lined up against the wall in the soulless waiting room. Before us were three more rows of seats on which sat people similarly unhappy to be here, all of us facing the one source of distraction in the room: a flatscreen television tuned to You’ve Been Framed. The triage nurse who’d assessed me had promised that we’d be seen ‘quickly’ (‘Within three hours,’ she’d added cheerily), but every moment in this depressing room was a moment too long.
A man sitting in the row in front leaned forward and vomited violently onto the floor.
‘You see why I hate it here?’ I whispered to Luke.
Luke gave my hand a squeeze. ‘I know. This place freaks me out too.’
I remembered, too late, that he must be familiar with this hospital – he’d have been here with Cara and his parents, after the accident.
‘Oh crap. I’m sorry. This place must…’
‘Bring back bad memories? You could say that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He reached over and brushed my hair back from my face. ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s hardly your fault.’ He looked closely at my eyes. ‘Man, your pupils are huge. How are you feeling?’
‘Ghastly’ was the truthful answer. My head was pounding, my stomach was rolling and even with Luke’s jacket wrapped around me I was cold to the bone. I smiled at him. ‘Better, thank you. In fact, I think we could –’
‘Nice try, Blake. We’re waiting here until a doctor okays you. Now settle back and watch “amusing” home videos. Look, another elderly lady trying to mount a hammock. And she’s down. Hilarious…’
*
By some happy circumstance, a bed was found for me half an hour later. A grey-haired nurse ushered us through to the cubicles area, helped me up onto the bed, opened a packet of medical wipes and began cleaning blood off me.
‘You’ll have to bin yer shirt, young lady,’ she told me as she scrubbed at my skin. ‘No getting the blood outta that. And yer jeans. Wrecked! And you’ – she nodded at Luke – ‘she’s messed you all up too.’
‘Sorry,’ I said as for the first time I registered the dark patches on the knees of his jeans, where he’d knelt on the road, and on his shoulder, where I’d laid my head as he helped me to his van.
‘Don’t be,’ said Luke with a smile. ‘Cara’ll jump at the chance to take me – us – clothes shopping.’
The nurse tutted. ‘In my day we valued clothes.’
‘I don’t give a damn about the clothes,’ Luke told her sharply. ‘Only that Scarlett’s okay. So is she? Okay?’
‘That’s for Dr Morris to decide,’ was the response.
‘And when will the doctor be –’ began Luke, but the nurse glared at him and yanked down my vest strap to get to a rivulet of blood that had oozed down.
‘Young man!’ she said. ‘I think you’d better step outside while I clean up this mess. Don’t you?’ She gestured to my breast, which she was dangerously close to flashing at him.
Luke looked about ready to explode with some mixture of fury, concern and, I guessed, embarrassment, so I said, ‘Luke, could you get me a drink?’
He turned to me. ‘You sure?’ I read the full question in his eyes: You sure you want me to leave you alone with this battleaxe?
I nodded. And winced.
‘Careful,’ said Luke. ‘You just rest, okay? I’ll go get us some coffees. And chocolate, yes?’
‘Always yes to chocolate,’ I said, and I tried to smile, but I knew the effort was feeble.
Luke hovered awkwardly for a moment, but the nurse said, ‘Off you go then…’ and, reluctantly, off he went.
I was subjected to another minute or two of scrubbing, and then the nurse got around to checking my vital signs. Which, apparently, put her in an even fouler mood.
‘Stay here,’ she barked at me. ‘Do. Not. Move.’ And she stomped out of the cubicle.
Relieved to be alone for a while, I relaxed onto the pillow and cast my mind back to the road. There was something in the memory, some important connection to make, I knew. But thoughts were delicate butterflies, the red of the deer’s blood and the blue of my hands, circling faster and faster into a tidal maelstrom that sucked them down, down, down.
19: SERVIAM
An old man digging over a vegetable patch in the blazing sun, straw hat on, sleeves rolled up.
Two little girls hunting for potatoes with plastic spades.
‘Grandad, why’ve you drawn all over your arm? When I did that with my colouring pens Mother got super-cross.’
‘It’s not pen, Sienna. It’s called a tattoo. I was given it many years ago as a reminder of my duty.’
‘What’s it say?’
‘Serviam.’
‘Servy-what?’
‘Serviam. It’s from a language called Latin. It means “I will serve”.’
‘Like serving dinner?’
‘Not really. Like being a servant.’
‘A servant, Grandad! Whose?’
‘God’s. God’s servant.’
‘Urgh. Well, I’m never serving anyone!’
‘I see, Sienna. And what about you, Scarlett? Will you be God’s servant?’
‘I don’t know, Grandad.’
‘That’s okay. In time, you’ll –’
20: ONLY THE BEGINNING
‘Scarlett!’
The exclamation startled me upright. Which hurt. A lot.
‘Easy,’ said a voice.
I held tight to the rail alongside the bed, waiting for the figure standing over me to come into focus. When it did, I was confused.
‘You?’
‘Finally!’ said Jude. ‘Do you know I’ve been here a while trying to get your attention? You were totally zoned out, just staring at my tattoo.’
‘Tattoo?’ I muttered. I didn’t associate the word with Jude.
He gestured to his inner arm, bare since his shirt sleeve was pushed up. The word serviam was inked in Gothic script from the crease of his elbow to his wrist along the arterial path.
‘Oh. You have a tattoo.’
‘Which you were staring at.’
‘I was dreaming, I guess. Weird dream. Grandad was not a tattoo kind of guy…’
‘Dreaming with your eyes open? That’s worrying. What happened?’
Jude leaned in to inspect the wound on my head and I noticed for the first time his pallor and the dark shadows that lay in the hollows beneath his thick bottom lashes.
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Are you ill?’
He shook his head brusquely. ‘Of course not. I’m fine. I was just here… visiting a friend. Now answer the question: what happened to you?’
‘Hit a deer. Deer died.’
‘In your car? You crashed?’ He was staring into my eyes intently. There was something different about his manner today, I thought. He was usually cool, unflappable, but right now he radiated anxiety.
I was opening my mouth to relate the sorry tale when I noticed that I had an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Metallic. And that I was cold, too cold to even shiver. And that sleep was no longer desirable but imperative; so, obediently, I closed my eyes.
‘Scarlett?’ Jude’s tone was urgent now, alarmed.
