Hubble Bubble

by Jane Lovering

  Suddenly his hand was back, gripping at my wrist so tightly that little electric shocks fired up to my elbow. ‘No. No, Holly. I won’t let this happen. I will not let you turn your back on this, on us, on a relationship just because you feel guilty.’

  ‘I do not feel guilty.’ I twitched my arm in his grasp once or twice, but he didn’t let go.

  ‘Oh, I think you do. Guilty that you resent your brother for who he is, and guilty that you hate him for what he’s made you into – someone who can’t show emotion for fear of what will happen.’

  ‘I …’ Then everything stopped. A huge barrier rolled away from a part of my heart that I’d been ignoring, the part that I’d hidden behind sibling duty and responsibility; concealed so carefully that I’d been able to fool myself into believing that it didn’t exist. I remembered those children playing by the river, the teasing, arguing relationship between them. The normality. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ my voice was a whisper. ‘I never wanted to hate him. I love Nick. But sometimes …’ The horrible secret corner of myself curled inwards as the light of realisation shone upon it and I began to cry. ‘Sometimes it’s too much.’

  ‘Holly.’ Kai folded himself around me. ‘No more protection, strip it all away and look at what’s happened. It’s the only way to let yourself get over it, I should know. Look at who did what and why …’

  ‘He should have been my big brother!’ The words came from my ten-year-old self. ‘He should have been there for me! But I had to always be there for him, protecting and standing up for him and not losing my temper or being irrational or any of the other things that ordinary real people do …’ Hot hard sobs welded my ribs together. ‘It’s not fair,’ wailed that ten year old girl, who’d had to take the responsibility for her brother when she should have been playing with dolls and riding ponies. ‘It’s not!’

  Kai held me so tightly that my reluctant tears rocked both of us, resting his chin on the top of my head and using that long body to absorb the power of my resentment against my brother, a resentment I’d never allowed myself to be aware of until now.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I don’t need to do this any more. Weird that, huh? After all these years, these letters are now redundant. I can say this to your face, if I want to, but old habits won’t die unless you shoot them in the head and … yeah, I guess these serve a function. Stuff that maybe I wouldn’t say, couldn’t say to you. Jury’s out as to whether I’m even going to show you this pile of writing … maybe I’ll get a book out of it, hey, there’s a thought. ‘Writing to my Mother’ … but then there’s the pat little ending to get over, ‘and we met and we liked one another and the previous thirty-six years of misery and wanting and lonely nights and sabotaged relationships were all forgotten’.

  Won’t happen. I’m preaching forgiveness and opening up and catharsis and all to Holly but it’s harder than you’d think to let go of all those years. They stain you so deep that it’s part of your soul, part of who you are, me and her. I’ve been made into this social outsider, this guy who stands beyond the crowd and watches and I don’t know that I’m ever going to be allowed to come into the firelight, while she … Holly … she’s spent so long protecting herself from that pain of having someone she loved turn underneath her from fun brother to this guy she’s had to protect from the world …

  But together – ah, together we are something more. She takes the pain away. Somehow, being with Holly makes me feel that, hey yeah, I deserve a life. Spent so many … so many years believing that I was this lowlife piece of shit, something even a mother couldn’t love. So, QED, anyone who loved me must be fucking deranged, need a lesson in never trusting, never loving, and, oh yeah, I gave them that lesson.

  And now I see what I did, how I humiliated those women to try to bring them down to my level. To show them how it feels to be less than human, to be this discarded, worthless thing not worth loving, not worth even so much as casual pity, and I’m sorry. I thought I was doing it to get myself away, give them a lesson in objective reality – don’t get attached to this guy, he’s no good – but what I really did was try to make them feel just one tiny atom of what I felt.

  Okay, so I’m shit on a stick. But Holly doesn’t care. She knows what I did, she knows why. I’m not saying she understands, but she tries to. From the first she’s seen through the image and she’s not scared, even when I peel back the layers to show her what’s underneath it all. And I love her for it. Love her for her struggle to come to terms with the fact that she’s stifled her life for twenty years to care for her brother. Love her for the way she’s letting her inner craziness come up from where it’s been weighed down with the pragmatism and the logic. You know something, I even think she’s starting to believe in all this ‘magic’ stuff? Mind you, even I am beginning to wonder …

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It was absolutely dark. The kind of complete darkness you never get in a town, where even during a power cut there’s people with lanterns and candles and generators. This was the dark of the deep countryside or, as Megan put it ‘like being inside a water buffalo’. I’ve no idea why it would be darker inside a water buffalo than any other ruminant, but that’s Megan for you.

  Somewhere below us an owl boo-hooed, and an unconvinced blackbird twittered, a pheasant clattered skywards to my left and I grinned to myself. Underfoot the ground was still boggy, and every step felt like walking through undigested dinners, but the air had lost that shrapnel-feel of snow and settled down into a rain-tinged mildness. My right hand was loosely clasped in Megan’s, she in turn held Vivienne’s. Eve and Isobel were likewise joined to us, as we stood in a row on the hilltop and waited for the dawn. We must have looked like a set of paper cut outs, silhouetted as we were on the crest of the rising ground, joined hands outstretched, braced to meet the coming dawn.

  ‘So, you performed sex magic as a charm?’ Vivienne tugged at Megan’s hand until she turned and Vivienne and I were drawn face-to-face. ‘That was very enterprising of you, Holly.’

  ‘What exactly did you do?’ Megan’s grin was visible even in the dark. ‘I mean, was it complicated or did you go for the easy stuff?’

  ‘We … look, it was a charm, all right? We … said words and stuff.’

  ‘I bet you did.’

  I gave Megan a shove and whispered, ‘It’s only for Vivienne’s benefit.’

  ‘So you didn’t do “sex magic” with your man?’

  I thought of the gentle way Kai had held me, the curative power of his kindness when we’d made love amid the tears and the pain. ‘Well, it was pretty special.’

  ‘And that’s all? It’s just sex?’

  I pulled my hand out of hers. ‘It was a charm. I was doing Vivienne a favour, and now at least I’ve put her mind at rest.’

  Megan nodded. ‘Good thinking. A bang with results.’ She went quiet for a moment. ‘So, if you’ve done the charm, why are we up here waiting for the sunrise?’

  I sighed. ‘Because it’s the solstice.’ I said enigmatically and turned to face the horizon. I had hoped for something symbolic, the golden glow of sunrise perhaps, but in Yorkshire in December you settle for what you can get, and we got a bleak, bleaching of the darkness to the east, a roil and bluster of cloud barely splitting enough to let a pale pink come through.

  ‘That colour would make a lovely blouse,’ came Eve’s voice, very matter-of-fact, making Megan giggle.

  ‘Ssshh. Think solemn,’ I whispered at them out of the corner of my mouth, but I could feel Megan’s hand shaking as she tried to stop the giggles. Nerves were making us all hair-trigger and a touch hysterical. At the end of the line I could see Isobel jigging from foot to foot desperate for the toilet and Vivienne’s body a little hunched over by the weight of contrition.

  ‘Sorry. But we’re not going to be long, are we? I don’t know how long that rope will hold Rufus.’ We’d tied him up outside the cottage, Meg didn’t trust him either inside or to be left in the car, since he tended to eat soft fur
nishings and pee against anything upright.

  The air lightened still more. A few birds began to get the idea and sleepy twittering broke out in selected trees, a whirl of rooks took to the sky and began a noisy bickering above us as they climbed on the early-morning breeze. I could see the faces of the women now, all a little high on what we were doing. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  A nod and I dropped Megan’s hand, walked a few paces forwards and held my arms up into the air. It was a huge coincidence that at that moment the sun broke free of the horizon and let the first rays trickle along, illuminating me nicely. Behind me, Megan was humming ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’’, and I would have kicked her if that hadn’t meant shattering my illusion of serenity.

  The sunlight brushed the tops of the trees below us and I let my eyes drop from scanning the heavens to peering through the forest. A ratcheting drone told me all I needed to know. ‘Brace yourselves,’ I muttered. ‘Here we go.’

  The first bike broke cover. It jetted towards us in uneven spurts caused by the cloying mud. As it reached the bare hilltop, another shot up behind us, with a third zigzagging up the path until three bikes rode a circle around us, staying just the far side of being offensively close. All three riders were hooded and helmeted, their machines bearing no number plates or identifying marks apart from a rather amateurish double B insignia painted in black on the dark red of the petrol tanks.

  I stood my ground, keeping my eyes on the gradually spreading patch of sunlight at my feet. It smelled of moss and crushed grass and was nicely stable, and all the while I could hear that ghastly buzzing and the sound of the women behind me grouping together. Vivienne and Eve had been in on the plan, but I’d kept it quiet from Isobel and Megan. Isobel, because I was afraid she’d panic, and Megan because I was afraid that she’d come armed, and now they were a collective of fear and scared reassurances stamping a defensive circle at my back.

  For a few moments it was an impasse. The bikes rode around us as though we were a wild west wagon train and they were some kind of native attack force until I was afraid that this was all they were going to do. Scare us then ride for the hills. But then I realised, incrementally, the circle was growing smaller and tighter. The riders were herding us closer together, almost up one another’s tailpipes in their attempts to stop us breaking free. The smell of exhaust fumes was dizzying. I fought the urge to go round, to try to keep my eye on any one rider, and let them circle. I stood still and waited.

  It didn’t take long to come. From an inside pocket, while the rider steered single handed, the shotgun appeared, unfolding its length into the winter sunrise like Death’s calling card. Okay. Now we’re in business.

  ‘Are you going to shoot me?’ I shouted above the engines. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Nah. Too easy.’ The voice came muffled through the black balaclava. ‘Too traceable. One thing I’ve learned, if you’re gonna do something, make sure it leaves no marks.’

  ‘So?’ I was moving now, keeping him in my line of sight. ‘What’s on the agenda for today? Locking me up in some shed again?’ Keep him talking …

  The bike dropped to the ground, engine whining until it stalled in a flurry of blue smoke, and he stepped towards me across it. The gun barrel waved at the group of scared women. ‘I’m thinking something more up close and personal. What I should’ve done to you last time, straight off. Thought I’d save you for later, y’see. Big mistake, should’ve done you there and then. And after that, your wog girlie here is going to find out what a white man’s cock is really all about. And if this lot even so much as think about shopping me – well, I know where you all live, don’t I?’

  Vivienne squeaked. The two remaining bikes had idled to a standstill behind us. I could feel the eyes, watching and waiting behind the helmets – those unidentifiable helmets. ‘Okay,’ I said.

  There was a visible double take. ‘What?’

  ‘I said okay. Go on, do it.’ And then I made my mistake. Let my eyes flick upwards, beyond the muddy circle to the lone tree which guarded the edge of the path where it entered the forest. To the man standing underneath, arms folded across his chest and legs braced.

  ‘Shit, she’s got company!’

  ‘It’s fucking Rhys!’

  Sunlight flashed on the gun barrel, arms came from behind and locked me down. Isobel screamed. Eve gave a grunt, there was a sound like a kick connecting and then a muffled swearing but the arms didn’t loosen. They tightened and I couldn’t breathe. There was the smell of sweat and leather, the unpleasant moistness of a damp biker’s jacket pressed to my face like thick skin, no air and the ground falling away beneath me.

  The mud hit the back of my neck like a slap and I began to struggle beneath the man holding me down, writhing and biting and jerking my head. But it was too late.

  ‘He’s over there!’ A shout and then the abrupt violence of the gun firing which cut the noise into nothingness for a second. When I could hear again, it was panic. Eve was moaning, a kind of tearless crying, and the three men were arguing.

  ‘You fucking moron. You weren’t supposed to hit him!’

  ‘I was trying to scare him off.’

  ‘You shot him.’

  The arms released me and the weight of my captor moved suddenly as he climbed to his feet. ‘Nah. I was pointing at his feet, not his fucking head.’

  A sudden punch, which I heard rather than saw, which sent a body landing next to me on its backside. ‘You fucker. What do we do now?’

  The three men started swiping at one another, helmets cracked together and jackets creaked and tore, sounding like mating time in a leather furniture showroom, as fists and arms flailed and connected. I struggled to my feet and stared across at the body lying underneath the tree, then I started to run with my feet skidding, three steps forward and one step back until I reached Kai’s fallen shape hunched and huddled across the roots of the leafless oak.

  ‘Kai! Oh God, don’t be dead, please don’t be dead!’ I reached out and took his hand, but it flopped inertly onto the earth. I grabbed his shoulders and shook. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen!’ My tears fell onto his pale, chilled skin and ran down into his hair. ‘Don’t do this to me, Kai Rhys, you bastard, don’t die on me!’ My voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Please. Don’t let me lose someone else that I love.’

  ‘You should always start this kind of conversation by looking for the exit wound.’ Kai’s voice was so level and its tone so coolly amused that I found I was looking around for the ghostly shade that spoke. ‘That was your first mistake.’ His eyes slipped open. ‘And the second was telling me you love me.’

  I suppressed the startled noise that rose. ‘But …’ was all I could manage. Then I slapped him on his shoulder. ‘You’re alive.’

  He closed his eyes again. ‘Well, yes. But it makes a much better ending for my piece if someone shot me, don’t you think? Besides’—a cool hand rummaged inside his jacket and brought out the tiny, but very powerful camera—‘I’ve got it all. In all its megapixelled glory.’ He shook the camera gently. ‘It does sound too, y’know. Borrowed it off my photographer.’

  I opened my mouth a couple of times but words refused to come out. They were forming a disorderly queue in my brain though. ‘You … are such a … journalist,’ I managed.

  ‘When I saw him point the gun I decided to take a dive. Better all round if he thought I was out of things. Besides,’ a lazy drift of his fingers pointed to the gang fight that had erupted on the brow of the hill, where the rest of the girls had long since been left to their own devices, ‘they’ll do all the hard work for me.’

  ‘But … I thought … where are the police? I thought you had the police watching through your telescope?’

  ‘They’re on their way.’ He tapped his ear. ‘I’m Bluetoothed up the wazoo. They’ve been watching all right. All we need now is to find where the drugs are before one of them gets them all shipped out and the case is dropped for lack of evidence.’ He pointed again at where two of the
men had a third down on the ground and were explaining to him where he’d gone wrong, with the teaching aids of both boot and fist. ‘Of course, that has yet to dawn on these morons.’

  Eve was doubled over, sitting on a muddy outcrop and rocking. ‘She thinks you’re dead too,’ I said, gazing at her over the trio of scrapping helmets.

  ‘Yeah, resurrection will have to wait until the police get here. It’s only them thinking they’ve killed me that’s keeping their minds off you lot. If I were you I’d get those ladies off the hill and somewhere safe.’

  ‘But …’

  His lips rose to mine and the words I’d been about to say vanished in hot breath and heartbeats. ‘Kiss of life. If anyone asks,’ Kai whispered, letting his head drop back onto the mossy ground again. ‘Now go.’ He tapped his earpiece again. ‘Police are on their way. You and the girls vanish off to Vivienne’s place, I’ll catch up with you there.’

  ‘Won’t there be questions?’

  A manic grin. ‘Probably. And I should warn you that I am going to lie outrageously.’

  ‘Well, you are a journalist.’

  I headed back. Vivienne was leading everyone down the path towards her cottage, carefully not turning around to watch the increasingly bloody fight, which I managed to circumvent by tracking around the hilltop. As I dropped below the skyline, I heard the crackle of radios and the heavy-booted running of several men in police-issue footwear, then the gunning sound of a motorbike engine.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What?’ Megan panted alongside me for a second, chest bobbing like two buoys on a choppy sea.

  ‘One of them is trying to get to the drugs.’

  ‘There are drugs? As in, little plastic baggies being sold in nightclubs? I thought you said they were poachers!’ she puffed.

  ‘I may have been a little economical with the truth.’ I stopped running, Meg’s words kicking an idea into the front of my brain. ‘And I think I know where they’ve put the stuff.’