by Ali Ahearn
Oblivious to everyone around her giving her a wide berth.
And she’d known then that G had been right. Not exaggerating and trying to force a reconciliation.
Joni was in deep. The cocaine was winning.
Panic had filled her – thick and heavy in her belly. Obliterating all that had gone before. She’d turned, taken two paces towards the steps that led up and over the rails.
Two steps closer to Joni.
Then a train had thundered into Joni’s platform. Thirty seconds later, it was gone. So was Joni.
Then going home to Edward. Guilt riding her coat-tails the entire way. Ranting and pacing, telling him she needed to do something.
Edward shaking his head, saying, ‘She doesn’t want your help, Frannie,’ and ‘Remember what she did to us.’
Lying awake all night, knowing it was true. Angry with Joni.
Angry with herself. She should have done more. She should have tried harder when they still had a relationship.
Angrier with Edward. For letting him sweep her away. For distracting her.
The next day enquiring about registering a charity. Working twenty-four-seven to set it up. Demanding Edward support her, badgering businessmen, cajoling banks, leaning on her husband’s contacts. Headhunting the best staff. Opening the doors of the renovated Georgian terrace house in Bayswater within a year. Admitting a steady influx of hunched people at rock bottom.
Holding their hands. Mopping their brows.
And doing much, much worse.
But, most importantly, giving them a refuge, connecting them with services, helping them to get their lives back.
Like twenty-year-old Kelly-Ann, who’d come to her high on crack after her third baby had been taken away. Broken and defeated, wanting to get clean, to get her children back, but scared to death she’d always want her next hit more.
She’d stayed with Kelly-Ann for three days and nights, cleaning up the vomit and the diarrhoea, and toughing out her bilious rants. Watching as she went on to change her life and get her kids back.
She’d been their first success story. One of many.
Daragh lay down again, bringing Frances back to the present. The night. The jungle. The rock warm beneath her cargo pants.
She blinked – had she imagined that look?
Surely the network wouldn’t let a drug addict loose on a reality game show?
Not even Sally was that soft in the head.
She shone the torch at her watch. Ten more minutes. She lay back down with a sigh and shut her eyes.
A minute later, she heard a scratching noise on the rock and sat bolt upright with a yelp.
‘Fucking hell, Frankie.’ Joni sprang back, clutching her heart. ‘You scared the living shit out of me.’
Frances, her pulse pounding through her ears, felt like she’d just been given an adrenalin enema herself. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I hate this sodding jungle.’
Joni looked around her. ‘Join the club.’ She pointed at the space beside her sister. ‘Can I sit with you?’
Frances nodded and lay back down, Joni joining her. They lay in silence for a few moments and watched the stars. She had the strangest urge to reach for Joni’s hand. To tell her how relieved, how proud, she was that she had come through the other end. Frances knew from Pick Me Up how hard that was. How many failed.
But they hadn’t talked properly in seven years. Joni’s addiction was hardly the best place to start. An apology was probably better.
Frances shut her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, JoJo.’
Joni rolled her head to face her sister, looking wary. ‘About what?’
Frances opened her eyes but kept them fixed on the stars. ‘About the challenge yesterday. About the zapping. I don’t know what got into me. I just wanted to … I just …’
Joni stared at her sister for a moment, then also turned her gaze heavenward. ‘It’s okay, Frankie. I get it. I was doing it too, remember?’
Frances nodded. They’d sure put on a show. ‘It should be good for votes.’
Joni rolled her head and looked at her sister again. Then she laughed. And, before Frances knew it, she was laughing too. They were both laughing. In the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night.
They were laughing like nothing had ever happened.
Like they were sisters.
They sobered up quickly as a flock of something winged squawked and took flight from a nearby tree. A reddish star twinkled down at her and Frances pointed to it. ‘That’s Mars,’ she said.
Joni looked at her. ‘Oh, is that right, Sir Patrick bloody Moore?’
Frances laughed again. ‘Nick gave me an impromptu astronomy lesson down on the beach earlier tonight.’
‘Oh, he did, did he?’
Frances blushed beneath her sister’s scrutiny. ‘He’s quite knowledgeable.’
Joni grinned. ‘I’ll just bet he is.’ She looked back at Mars. ‘Maybe,’ she mused after a moment, ‘you should think about … going there? With Nick? He is, after all, seriously yummy and he looks at you like he has a PhD in anatomy.’
Frances laughed, the very idea of it scintillating and terrifying in equal measure. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’ve seen the way you look at him too.’ Joni nudged her arm. ‘You know you want to.’
Frances shook her head. What she wanted and what she did were often two different things.
‘C’mon,’ Joni cajoled. ‘You wouldn’t do an old lady out of her dying wish, would you?’ She lowered her voice. ‘You should definitely fuck him.’
Frances rolled her head towards her sister, looking at her like Jiminy Cricket’s evil twin. ‘I do not shag men on national television,’ she said primly. ‘Not for you. Not for G. Not for anyone. And, besides, I’m married, remember?’
Joni’s lips tightened. ‘Look, I know you’re committed to Edward but …’ She shrugged. ‘He never has to know.’
Frances almost choked when she heard the word ‘committed’. She was silent for a moment, Joni’s morally dubious suggestion not even registering amid the chaos of her thoughts.
‘Edward cheated.’
She didn’t know why she said it. She would never, under normal circumstances, have admitted the sad state of her marriage to the one person in the world who had viciously predicted its end seven years ago.
One day you’re going to wake up and see him for what he is. Don’t expect me to be there for you when it all comes crashing down.
But nothing about this whole thing was normal. And this strange night seemed to encourage confidences. Sitting in the middle of the jungle, talking and laughing with her sister, with no mike packs to inhibit them, it was as if the last seven years had never happened.
‘What?’ Joni hissed, vaulting up. ‘Edward screwed around on you?’
Frances nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘That slimy little prick!’
Frances nodded again. ‘Yes.’
‘I knew it. I knew that giant-sized nob would end up breaking your heart.’ She thumped the rock. ‘I know a good kneecapper.’
Frances laughed. But the truth was, Edward’s cheating was the least of her problems. ‘Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.’
‘I bet Nick gives good revenge sex.’
Frances bet he did too. ‘You have a one-track mind.’
‘Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.’
Frances shook her head, beginning to wish she hadn’t fessed up. A potential four weeks of Nick and his biceps tempting her was bad enough. Having Joni as his cheerleader would be impossible.
She checked her watch. ‘C’mon. Thirty minutes is up. Let’s go.’
Chapter 8
Joni
‘So, it’s day seven on the Island of the Damned, and I’m on the camera because little sister is busy patting the rat and talking music with the Gaelic Undertaker.’
Joni felt compelled to stop marching and interject in the monologue Frankie was directing towards the tiny camera she had pointed at her
self. ‘He’s a rodentus Australis.’
‘I thought he was Irish.’
Joni stomped her foot in frustration. ‘You know I was talking about Des.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ Frankie didn’t sound it.
Okay, so Colm was kind of dark and there was something distinctly furtive about him. But Joni liked brooding types. Daragh, on the other hand, was just a moody bastard, who seemed to be getting moodier as the trek went on.
‘Don’t worry about her,’ Joni told Colm in a stage whisper. ‘She never did get the New Romantics.’
‘Ah, but she’s lovely, that sister o’ yours,’ Colm insisted forcefully. ‘A right treat on the eye, and such a competent lass there never was.’
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
‘Maybe,’ Joni admitted grudgingly. ‘But she knows fuck-all about music. Now, tell me, what did you think of that Bono YouTube thing?’
Daragh, perhaps fed up with being left out of the conversation or perhaps with trudging relentlessly up what felt like Mount Kilimanjaro, chose that moment to break his moody silence and launch into an homage to the great man.
He crooned U2’s ‘Stuck in a Moment’, which would have been tragically beautiful had the words not been so shockingly accurate.
‘Right,’ Frankie barked, coming to an abrupt halt and causing each of them behind her to stumble. ‘Enough of life imitating bloody art, who knows where the hell we are? Colm, what does the compass say?’
Colm stopped the humming he always, like some subconscious backing vocal, engaged in whenever his cousin was singing.
‘Ah, now, there’s an excellent question.’ Colm appeared genuinely thrilled to have Frankie consulting him on such matters of state. ‘Now, let’s just have a wee looky here …’
Frankie, Joni, Daragh and Des all dutifully waited while Colm laboriously extracted the torch from the backpack, checked the batteries, shone it on the compass, made a few reassuring noises into his shaggy beard, returned the torch to the bag and cleared his throat.
‘This better be worth it, Bear Grylls,’ Frankie bitched.
‘Ah, now, there is the tiniest of baby-sized problems.’
Something about Colm’s tone hinted to Joni that he was going to say something calamitous. She tried to telepath to her new friend that Frankie could possibly murder him if he said the wrong thing, but obviously he just didn’t have the gift.
‘Y’see, m’lovely, I can’t exactly read a compass.’
It would have been much better if Frankie had exploded. Eruptions can be contained; damage controlled. It’s the low, slow burn that leaves lasting scars.
‘You what?’ She marched back to him.
Colm was standing at the end of their unhappy little conga line, and as Frankie passed, Joni could almost smell her tightly coiled rage.
‘What the flying Freddie Mercury do you mean you can’t exactly read a compass? Do you mean the light is not quite good enough?’
She jabbed a long, beautiful finger into his shaggy chest.
‘Do you mean you feel like you need a second opinion to make sure your initial calculations are on the money?’
She jabbed again, clearly expecting a response this time.
‘No, no,’ Colm confirmed, sounding cheerful for the first time in hours. ‘Just can’t read a compass, really. At all, really.’
Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
‘If you can’t read a compass, why the shoddy, shagging, shit-out-of-luck hell did you take the bloody thing in the first place then?’
Frankie sounded like she wanted to castrate him with her bare hands.
How much longer till she swore properly and was done with it?
‘You said you’d take it. You said, actually, “Here, m’lovely, let me have the wee thing.”’
Joni had to admit Frankie did a good West County.
‘Everyone else said they couldn’t read a compass.’
Colm’s response sounded almost logical to Joni, who still desperately wanted to like someone with such excellent taste in music. She remembered that, yes, everyone had said that. She remembered because, at that moment, she’d experienced a moment of sheer fury at their father. He had, after all, taught them to shoot, run, erect a tent, dig a latrine and the exact proportions of a shallow grave, but God forbid he let go of that fucking little dial.
Screw you, Dad, if you’re watching – this is your fault.
Although, looking at Frankie’s murderous face, Joni wondered if maybe it was lucky their father had taught them that stuff about the shallow grave, so they could hide the evidence.
‘Yes, but neither can you, you dimwit!’ Frankie was yelling now, her normally beautifully modulated voice being used to bludgeon Colm where he stood. ‘That is simply absurd. Moronic. It’s –’
‘Um, look, I’m terribly sorry to interrupt while you’re beating on my man here …’ Daragh had been saying very little until this point. His interruption was startling enough to make Frankie stop, mid-tirade. ‘But I’m feeling brutal. D’y’think it’d matter if I took a wee lie-down?’
He pointed to some dimly visible shrubbery over to the left of the track they were walking. Joni could feel that Frankie was about to disgorge a stream of invective in Daragh’s direction. Frankie moved over to him, like a viper ready to strike, flicking her torch into his face, the better to get a clear view of his terror as she scorched him.
But something pulled her up short.
Frankie looked carefully into his face, and gave one noisy exhalation of disgust and resignation.
‘Oh, go on then,’ she allowed. ‘What difference will it make?’
She stood still, watching Daragh meander over to the spot he had assayed and smoothing her cargo pants in her habitual gesture of nervous tension.
It obviously wasn’t enough, though. Joni watched as Frankie picked up a nearby stick and began to slash widely at an outrageous plant beside her, amputating several of the showy purple blooms that looked disconcertingly like penises. Then, breathing more easily, she spun on Colm again.
‘Tell me this,’ she insisted wearily. ‘Did you have any particular reason for suggesting we head in this direction, given you had no bloody idea what the compass said?’
Colm shook his head sadly.
‘Did you choose it because of the huge bloody incline? Think it’d make things more interesting?’
His big, dark head moved slowly from side to side again. ‘It looked right, to be sure, this way did,’ he finally offered lamely. ‘And I’d hate to be the one to worry everyone.’
‘Oh, jolly decent of you,’ Frankie bit out tartly.
Joni wanted to come to Colm’s defence. But, in the cold assessing light of Frankie’s interrogation, his actions did seem rather stupid. In fact, she was feeling rather panicked.
They were lost.
Des, in the way animals can, was beginning to pick up invisible signs of distress. His scratchy little legs were starting to scurry on the spot, like he wanted to run from whatever little-understood danger was starting to make Joni’s blood pressure spike.
Frankie leaned exasperatedly against a tree a dozen or so yards ahead of Joni. The angle of the incline made her look like she was crowned by a million stars.
How had someone like her, all wild-eyed and full of fury and frankness, ever ended up with Edward?
Even now, after all this time, it defied belief for Joni.
Especially now she knew about the cheating.
What had she seen in him? What had she imagined she’d found in that spineless slug? Had it been worth it?
And why was she still with him?
Joni knew, from years of experience, that down this mental path there lay no good. But she felt herself begin to hyperventilate, and the words came spilling out.
‘Oh my God, we’re lost, really lost, and anything could happen. Fucking Irish nob. There’s only this video diary and hidden cameras, and they might not get footage from those till fuck knows when and we’re going to die out here.’
Joni was swallowing great lungfuls of air in between her words. They were becoming thin and thready, and her mouth was drying. She began to consider all the things that could happen to them out here, not the least of which was losing the game and returning home to a guaranteed kneecapping.
‘We could, we could get eaten by a bear or a crocodile or something … I can’t believe they’re allowed to do this to us. Colm, you bloody twit, why did you say you could work the compass? I can’t –’
Joni stopped short as she felt the swift sting on her cheek. ‘Stop it,’ Frankie commanded.
Joni was too surprised to respond. Her sister had never, ever hit her.
Even then. Even seven years ago.
The shock was enough to silence her. And the hurt was so great, she didn’t have it in her to be angry.
Frankie was on a roll. ‘You’re right. It is dangerous out here. You can’t melt down. You’re better than that. Stronger than that. I know you are.’
‘You don’t know anything.’ The words felt like they were wrenched from the darkest place in Joni’s soul as she cupped her smarting cheek. ‘You know nothing about how weak I am.’
As she finished speaking, a strange frog-thing croaked in the distance, in a sing-song cry that sounded uncannily like a low, grumbly It’s true, it’s true, it’s true.
It was true.
Frankie didn’t know what she was.
‘Look at me.’ Frankie directed Joni’s tear-streaked face towards her own clear, sad-eyed one. ‘I do. I do know. And I know how it ended. In the end. You are stronger than you think.’
What did she mean? Did she know? Could she mean …?
So many things neither of them knew about the other.
But Frankie wasn’t finished.
‘At the moment, I’m worried about that lad over there.’ Frankie thumbed a swift, quiet gesture towards Daragh. ‘And you can’t afford to be wrapped up in yourself right now. I think he needs some help.’
Joni looked over, confused, and suddenly saw what Frankie had seen when she’d allowed him to rest moments ago. He was prone in the shrubbery to the left, shaking but quiet. His cousin had gone to him.
A fever?
Something about the tableau looked familiar. The way Colm looked, resigned and scared. The way he held Daragh’s head, in his big, hairy hands, soothing him and saying something into his ear. Afraid, but not freaked out. Practised. Joni knew what it looked like. But couldn’t accept it. And couldn’t accept that Frankie could have seen it first.
