Perfect Strangers

by Dani Atkins

  ‘But, can I just say one thing? William, whoever he is and whatever he has done, is a total dick.’

  I looked back at Logan over my shoulder, and smiled sadly. ‘You got that right.’

  For variety we sacrificed a square of chocolate and swirled it into the boiling water. It helped to take away the vaguely metallic taste from the container which had tainted our first batch. Hopefully we would be rescued long before we had to worry about the folly of squandering one of the tiny squares of confectionary. Our eyes met across the fire as we slowly sipped the brown tinged liquid, which suddenly made vending machine hot chocolate taste very good indeed.

  ‘So what do we do next, while we’re waiting for them to get here and pick us up?’ I asked, as though the rescue planes were sure to arrive at any moment and we just had a little time to fill in until they flew overhead. Perhaps I knew even then that I was just whistling in the dark, but it was much too early to admit it to myself.

  ‘I think we should probably construct a shelter of some sort,’ Logan suggested. ‘I don’t want to spend another night totally unprotected, especially if there is a storm on its way.’

  I felt my stomach tighten and twist uncomfortably and the thin watery hot drink swirled and rose within it. For a horrible moment I thought I was going to be sick.

  ‘You think we’re going to be stuck here for another night?’ I whispered the question, almost as though I was too scared to give it full volume.

  ‘I think we’d be foolish to ignore that as a possibility,’ Logan reasoned. ‘I’d rather waste my time building a shelter we don’t end up needing, than have to cope without one.’

  What he was saying made good sense, but I couldn’t see past my disappointment and fear to acknowledge it. How were we going to survive another night in these conditions? How would we protect ourselves if the bears came back again? What would our waiting families think when yet another night passed without word of us? Would they fear the worst? How could they not?

  ‘It doesn’t mean we’re giving up on being found,’ Logan said cajolingly, watching me teetering on the edge of an abyss of despondency. I didn’t trust my voice just then, so I just nodded slowly.

  ‘Why don’t you sit by the fire and rest for a bit,’ he suggested kindly. ‘I want to root around and look for some branches and debris that we can build a shelter from.’

  ‘You’re not going to leave me here alone, are you?’ I said, hating the panic in my voice, but absolutely incapable of swallowing it back down.

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said, getting to his feet and giving my shoulder a quick reassuring squeeze as he walked behind me. ‘I’m just going over to the edge of the clearing to see if there are any fallen branches we can use.’

  I smiled uncertainly, but couldn’t stop my eyes following him constantly from the moment he left my side and crossed the expanse of the clearing to the edge of the forest. He took far too long in my opinion choosing suitable materials for his construction. Not only that, but on a couple of occasions he strayed dangerously close to the shadows at the edge of the trees, temporarily disappearing from view. It made me realise with panic just how terrible it would have been if I’d been here alone, if he had never come to sit beside me on the plane. Too twitchy to wait by myself, I was scrambling to my feet when he re-emerged from the darkened forest, cradling several long branches against his body. I quickly ran across to help him, marvelling at how he had managed to carry the heavy and cumbersome lengths on his own. He was certainly strong. Maybe he was some sort of manual worker, I thought, before dismissing the notion. That didn’t seem to fit either.

  We deposited the branches near to the place we had set up camp, and although I’d done virtually nothing, I flopped back down on a rock, totally exhausted. I still hadn’t put the sweatshirt back on, and I could feel the thin cotton vest sticking to my back uncomfortably. How was it possible to feel so hot when the outside temperature was this cold?

  ‘What can I do to help?’ I asked, as Logan thoughtfully sorted through the wood and some of the pieces of wreckage.

  He turned and looked at me with a kind smile. ‘Nothing. I just need to figure out how best to do this and what I’m going to use.’ I managed to stay quiet for all of twenty seconds before breaking the silence. ‘Is this really going to work?’

  He laughed gently. ‘You’re not very trusting, are you? Didn’t you ever build a den when you were a child?’

  I closed my eyes and suddenly I was back in the large rambling garden of my childhood home, the one that had trees just begging to be climbed and a hundred great places for hide and seek. I was six years old, it was a blistering hot day in the middle of the school summer holidays, and Kate and I had spent the best part of an entire afternoon trying to build a secret cave under the shade of a sprawling oak tree. Much like Logan was doing now, we had hunted around for uprights and, in a stroke of what I had thought was sheer genius, I had pulled all the bamboo canes out of my mother’s vegetable garden to use, presenting them proudly to my older sister.

  I could still remember my mother’s horrified shriek when she had looked through the kitchen window and then seen the plants she had carefully been nurturing for months, lying in a twisted tangle of broken stems on the soil. She had come racing down the garden, halting in further horror when she’d seen that we had used one of her best tablecloths to make a canopy for our den, piercing the edges of the fabric onto the sharp ends of the cane. I can vividly remember the heat of the sun beating down on my head as I trembled in guilt and fear as she had thundered, ‘Which one of you two did this to my plants?’ As though I was answering the question in class, I remember beginning to raise my hand, only to have it snatched back down and firmly held at my side by Kate. ‘It was me, Mummy. I did it. I’m really, really, sorry. Don’t yell at Hannah, it’s not her fault. She’s only little.’

  The power of that old memory took my breath away. I hadn’t thought about that in over twenty years. Even back then, Kate had been looking out for me, taking the blame for me, protecting me. A sudden wave of longing for my older sister overwhelmed me. I had never, ever wanted to feel her beside me more than I did at that very moment.

  Having surveyed what was available to him, Logan began systematically to select what he needed to make our shelter. Although I repeated my offer to help, he had taken one long scrutinising look at me, and then just shook his head.

  ‘I’m good,’ he assured, before adding ‘I’m just going to be making it up as I go along anyway. But there is something you can do.’

  I began to move from my rock, but he motioned me to stay put. ‘You can talk to me while I work.’

  It didn’t really seem to be an equitable division of labour, but then I remembered what he had said earlier that day, when we’d been looking for wood. ‘Oh, yeah, sure. Because of the bears.’

  He was crouching down and reaching for the longest and sturdiest of the fallen branches from the pile, but he paused and looked back at me over his shoulder. ‘No. Not for the bears this time. For me.’

  It was actually much harder than I had realised to précis my life without including any mention of William in it. I kept stopping halfway through sentences and letting my words trail away into the chilly mountain air. Having spent the best part of the last five years as a couple it was virtually impossible to separate him from almost every aspect of my life, and his influence and presence wound their way through and around my history like twisting vines.

  ‘So, you live in London, work in marketing, have an excellent memory and try to visit your sister in Canada whenever you can?’ Logan summarised, and I nodded. ‘Do you have any other siblings or family in the UK?’

  I closed my eyes briefly before replying; memories of my mother’s death just two years earlier still had the ability to make my eyes sting. ‘No. Not any more. What about you? Wife? Girlfriend? Parents?’ I parried, not wanting to have to talk about the family Kate and I had lost, and still missed like severed limbs.

 
‘Oh no you don’t. You’re not diverting me that easily,’ corrected Logan, standing back and surveying the six upright sticks he had placed in the ground directly in front of a large grey-veined boulder. ‘We can talk about me later. Right now, I want to know more about you.’

  ‘Why? I’m really not all that interesting.’

  Logan’s eyes travelled from the task he was undertaking and panned to mine. ‘Did someone tell you that? Because if they did, they were wrong.’

  I heard another voice in my head then, a British one, with an accent that hinted at an expensive education, saying words which had once, on a night long ago, made my spine tingle. ‘You’re so completely different from anyone I’ve been with before. That’s what makes you so interesting and intriguing, Hannah Truman.’ I hadn’t known how to reply, but it turned out William hadn’t been expecting a response. He had kissed me then. It was exactly two weeks since the night we had first met in a wine bar, and we’d been on our second date. Nothing too daunting: pasta and Chianti in an Italian restaurant and then a moonlit walk along the banks of the Thames when we were done. We’d been standing on Westminster Bridge, where the lights strung along the embankment had been twinkling and reflecting back in the rippling inky black water of the river. It was our first kiss, and I had known even before we broke apart that he was going to become very important in my life. I felt the edges of the memory crystallise and sharpen enough to cut me if I held on to it too tightly. So I let it go.

  ‘So how exactly is this going to work then?’ I asked, getting to my feet and lightly touching one of the upright supports for the shelter. It felt surprisingly secure, and Logan’s method of hammering it into the ground using a piece of wreckage as a mallet seemed to have been quite effective. ‘What are you going to use as a roof?’ I questioned, knowing there’d be no tablecloths to utilise this time.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Logan. ‘Look around.’

  My eyes travelled to the precious few items we had positioned beside our small camp. There was my tote bag, with its contents still lying beside it; there was a pile of sticks and kindling beside the fire to keep it going, and a large bundle of leafy branches waiting in readiness to be used as a signal for help. There was nothing else to be seen except for the suitcase we had steadily been raiding, but apart from the voluminous velour dressing gown, the one we had wrapped ourselves in the night before, I could think of nothing within it that could be of use . . . and then it came to me.

  ‘The suitcase?’ I cried in delight, turning a beaming face towards Logan as though I’d just won first prize in a very tricky contest. ‘You’re going to use the suitcase itself, aren’t you?’

  He grinned back at me. ‘Well done. There you go, Hannah. Now you’re thinking like a survivor.’

  Between us we set to work dismantling the case. Fortunately for us, Bob had chosen not to stint on the quality of his luggage, and the suitcase was expensive and well made. It had two zip-up inner dividers, which we tore free, and solid reinforced panels in both the top and bottom lids which we ripped from the lightweight fibreglass shell.

  ‘Sorry, Bob,’ I apologised as I pulled one of the large pieces of reinforced cardboard from the bottom of the case.

  ‘We’ll buy him a new one, for his next trip,’ promised Logan and then we both stopped and shared a meaningful look. There was every possibility that wherever Bob was now, he no longer required luggage, and the thought took away the brief moment of levity.

  Logan must have had an excellent eye for calculating size and distance, for the opened suitcase fitted perfectly on top of each of the wooden uprights when we carefully lowered it onto them. We stepped back and studied our handiwork, which was effectively a small gazebo-like structure about two metres wide and a little less in height. It wasn’t much room for two taller-than-average-height people, and it would certainly be snug within it, but it was better than nothing at all. Cleverly, Logan had positioned the shelter so that the large sturdy boulder formed a solid back wall, which just left three open sides to try to cover.

  After a bit of fiddling we used the ripped out interior of the case to fashion two end pieces, holding the fabric together and in place using the packet of small gold safety pins from my first-aid kit. I sent up a silent Thank you to Kate for making me bring it, and then tagged on a quick I’m all right, I’m still alive message, just in case telepathy between close relatives was actually a real and tangible thing. Which I wasn’t sure I believed, anyway.

  Still, I could recall reading many accounts where family members had somehow known the fate of their loved ones when they were in dire circumstances. Accounts which defied all logic or sense. I tried to visualise Kate, sitting on the big comfy settee in her lounge, her eyes fixed on her silent phone, waiting for news of me. Perhaps at this very moment she would suddenly feel my presence and be aware of me whispering silently in her ear that I had survived, and had every intention of continuing to do so until I saw her again. Thank God she had Stephen and Lily to help her get through this and to keep her strong.

  Logan and I continued to eye the sky watchfully as the daylight slowly began to fade. I was looking for rescue planes and he was looking at the storm clouds. The absence of one and the presence of the other left us fairly certain we were going to be in for another rough night.

  ‘They’re not coming now, are they?’

  ‘Not today,’ Logan said gently. ‘But maybe tomorrow, if the storm has died down, and the search area is widened.’

  There were far too many ‘ifs’ and unknowns in his reply, and I wanted to raise again my suggestion of trying to walk out of there, but knew I was going to have my work cut out persuading him that we should head off into the potentially lethal mountain terrain. Not that our current situation was ideal, I thought, as I watched Logan select two of the sturdiest branches and carefully lash a jaggedly sharp shrapnel of wreckage onto the end of each length, using a couple of neckties that we had found in the suitcase. I didn’t need to ask him what he was doing. That much was obvious, even if I hadn’t seen him do a couple of practice lunges into the air with the homemade spear. I had serious doubts whether I would have either the stomach or the physical strength to spear an attacking bear, and it wasn’t realistic to expect Logan to be able to protect us both in an attack. Silently I took the spear he held out to me with a grim nod. I kept it close beside me.

  It started to snow just before the daylight faded. Not much at first, just small flakes which were caught in the wind and swirled and pirouetted around us. We had found a second container to hold our boiled water, and I volunteered to take charge of the continual cycle of boiling, syphoning off and then re-filling the container from the lake to make our next batch. We were both drinking as much as we could, and although it was keeping us hydrated, it was getting harder to ignore the gnawing hunger that the water just couldn’t satisfy.

  I carefully peeled the foil off four more squares of chocolate, broke them in half and passed Logan his share. ‘Dinner,’ I said with a rueful half-smile. I put one of the squares on my tongue, deciding I would just let it melt there to make it last. Nothing like varying the menu a bit. However Logan just shook his head when I held out his pieces on the flat of my hand.

  ‘No. You have them. I’m still full from lunch.’

  ‘Ha ha. No way. These are yours, take them.’

  ‘It’s okay, Hannah. You eat them. You need the energy.’

  ‘And you don’t?’ I countered.

  ‘I think your need is greater than mine, just now. You’re looking really tired.’

  I couldn’t argue with him there. I did feel absolutely exhausted, but I’d done no more than he had. Although by the time we had crossed the clearing for the last time, finally satisfied we had gathered enough firewood to last until morning, my legs had felt like jelly, and I had needed to sit down for a good ten minutes before the trembling within them had stopped.

  Logan reached for the hand which I still held outstretched towards him, and very gently c
urled my fingers up and around the chocolate squares. His eyes went to mine and there was concern and kindness reflected in their green depths.

  ‘Please, Hannah, just eat the chocolate.’

  This was important to him, I could tell that, and I knew instinctively that if I refused he would not touch the pieces himself. Very slowly I nodded my agreement.

  ‘But it’s going to be your fault if I get fat,’ I said as I slipped one of the pieces into my mouth.

  ‘Men really don’t like skinny girls,’ Logan said, with a knowing twinkle. I thought of the young intern, the one my boyfriend was currently screwing. I guess on a ‘fat day’ she might even be pushing a size eight.

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ I replied, and began to chew.

  We had done as much as we could to make the shelter as comfortable as possible, but as the storm began to intensify I was worried that by morning any rescuers who arrived would find two frozen corpses lying on the cold unforgiving ground. Luckily Logan had a much more positive outlook on our prospects. We had built the fire up to about twice its former size and it was close enough to the entrance of our shelter that we could still feel the heat from within. We weighted down the two fabric sides of our shanty-style accommodation with small rocks, but when the wind buffeted against them they flapped and billowed like yacht sails on rough seas. We had laid a thick layer of fern branches on the floor of the shelter, and although it was marginally more comfortable, it wasn’t much of a mattress and I knew we’d probably both be as stiff as boards by morning. If we managed to get through the night at all, a dark pessimistic voice whispered inside my head.

  When I saw Logan shaking out the velour gown, and smoothing it down onto the ground, as he had done the night before, I felt a moment of uncertainty.

  ‘Are we both going to sleep in that again?’ Logan glanced up from his preparations. He was crouched inside the shelter, and had just folded up two very smart pairs of trousers to make pillows for our heads.