The Vacation

by T. M. Logan

  “Alex fucking Bayley is a piece of shit.” There are tears on her face and she is slurring a little, but her words are clear enough. “But he just gets away with it, without any punishment, because he’s this big rugby boy that all the girls supposedly fancy. I wish someone would make him feel the way I feel, just once. Just for a day, or an hour. Make him feel used and dirty and worthless, like he wished he was dead. I wish he’d…” She waves a hand in the air. Her voice is wobbling. “I wish he’d fall under a bus. Fall off a cliff. Just fucking…”

  She picks up her glass of cognac and drinks deep before slamming it back down on the table.

  “I wish … I wish he’d just fucking die!”

  She puts her head in her hands and there is silence for a few seconds, a hiss of static on the video. The silence is broken by Jake’s voice, loud and close to the camera.

  “I’ll do it for you.”

  She snorts, half a laugh, looks up.

  “What?”

  “Sort him out, if you want. I’ll do it.” His tone is studiedly casual, full of broken-voiced teenage bravado. “Sounds like he’s fucking got it coming anyway.”

  “Damn right,” Ethan said. “He deserves it, bro.”

  She frowns as if she can’t tell whether they’re joking. “Seriously?”

  Ethan’s voice is calm and cool, always pushing his brother a step further. “I’ve seen him out cycling on his training route. I know where he goes.”

  “You want him to have an accident?” Jake said.

  She leans forward, blinking fast, tongue flicking over her top lip. Takes another drink of cognac, sits back, runs a hand through her blond hair. Crosses one long leg over the other.

  “Yeah.” Her voice is detached, determined. A cold, hard tone that I’ve never heard before. “Yeah, I do.”

  The screen went black as the video ended.

  I sat for a moment, trying to process what I had seen and what it meant, trying to grasp the full scale of what our daughter had set in motion. Conspiracy to commit murder. Our daughter, our smart, talented, beautiful daughter. If this video ever got out, she could be implicated in a death. Prosecuted. Her bright future would come crashing down in flames.

  “Hold on, this video is already out there somewhere on the internet? How many people have seen it?”

  “It’s set to private view only,” Sean said, “which basically means you need a password to access it—a password that only me and Jennifer have. She sent me the link and told me that if it ever comes out that Jake was involved, it would take her thirty seconds to lift the restriction and upload it to YouTube, put the film out there for the whole world to see. To justify why he did it.”

  “She’s been holding that over you all this time?”

  “Yes.”

  I remembered the messages I’d seen on his phone.

  Can’t stop thinking about what you said x

  —I meant every word

  “Does Lucy know Jake was the one who knocked Alex off his bike?”

  He shook his head.

  “She doesn’t even know about the video of her asking him to do it. Only Jennifer, her boys, and I know that footage exists.”

  “And me.”

  “And you. So now you know, what do we do? What about Jennifer?” He checked his watch. “The police will be here soon.”

  I looked at my husband, my brave, kind, protective husband, my heart overflowing.

  “You know what we have to do, Sean. You’ve known all along.”

  After a long moment, he stood up.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I do.”

  One last thing niggled at me.

  “Why did you have the condoms, Sean? I found them in your suitcase.”

  He looked confused.

  “I didn’t put any condoms in there. I swear.”

  “Who used that case before you?”

  Even before the question had left my mouth, I knew the answer.

  “Lucy,” I said. “She took it on the German trip.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said slowly.

  He looked around. “Where are the kids, anyway?”

  “Games room?”

  “I’ll go and have a look.”

  He headed for the basement room and I picked up my phone, scrolling to the Find My iPhone app.

  I selected Lucy’s phone and waited for the location finder to work its magic.

  After a few seconds, the map showed Lucy’s location on the west side of the property, near the gorge. There was no good reason for her to be down there in the middle of a thunderstorm. I felt a sudden plunge of panic at the thought of her standing at the edge of the cliff, full of self-loathing over how she’d been treated, feeling used and dirty and worthless, wracked with guilt over a drunken prophecy come true. I sent her a quick text and stood up, preparing to head out into the rain.

  Sean came back into the room, his face lined with worry.

  “The kids aren’t in the basement or in their rooms, either of them.”

  I held my phone up, showing him the icon for Lucy’s phone on the map.

  “For some reason, Lucy has gone back down to the gorge.”

  Suddenly, Lucy appeared in the doorway, her eyes red from crying. “Don’t suppose anyone has seen my phone?” she said. “I left it charging in the living room and now I can’t find it anywhere.”

  I looked at my phone again, selecting the icon for Daniel’s phone, feeling my heart thumping against my ribs as I waited for the app to locate the signal.

  It zeroed in on the location of my son’s phone, and my heart rose up into my throat.

  75

  Daniel

  Daniel ran.

  The rain was a pounding torrent that made a thick wall of noise as it struck the leaves on the trees around him and the ground at his feet. He was properly soaked now—he may as well have jumped into the pool; there wasn’t a bit of him that wasn’t totally drenched. Hopefully Lucy would have an umbrella, and they could both go under it and wait for the rain to stop.

  He squinted through his rain-smeared glasses. She was up ahead. Near the edge where … He didn’t want to think about what had happened to Izzy; it was too sad. Why his sister had wanted to come down here again, he couldn’t figure out. But she had a present for him, and she’d texted him specially, so he’d come. Remembering the bag of Haribo in his hand, he held it up behind his back so that it would be a surprise.

  He slowed his pace as he came into the clearing next to the big fallen tree. She was right on the edge of the cliff, with her back to him, long blond hair plastered to her head. He slowed to a walk, trying to catch his breath. As he watched, she turned around.

  He gave her his best smile. Here she was: his sister. Oh. No, she wasn’t.

  It wasn’t Lucy.

  It took a moment for that to sink in, for his thoughts to catch up, as he blinked up at her through the downpour. Not Lucy. It was Jake and Ethan’s mum, Jennifer, her makeup smeared and smudged in the rain, black lines running down from each eye.

  She was here, too, that was a bit weird. And she had a phone that looked just like Lucy’s. Like, identical.

  “Hello,” he said. “Have you seen my sister?”

  Jennifer smiled at him.

  “She’s on her way.” She indicated the hand he held behind his back. “What have you got there, Daniel?”

  He brought the bag of sweets out to show her.

  “A present for Lucy.”

  “Aren’t you sweet? Guess what—I’ve got a present for you, too.”

  “What is it?”

  She reached into her pocket.

  “A surprise, honey.”

  Daniel took a step nearer. Her smudgy makeup and her smile reminded him of the clown he’d had at one of his birthday parties once when he was little. The clown had smiled all the time but it was sort of fake, like it was supposed to be nice but was actually just creepy and scary. He’d been scared of clowns ever since.

  “How do you know Lucy’s
on her way?” he said.

  “She told me.” She beckoned him closer. “Don’t you want your surprise?”

  “Umm, OK.”

  She held out her hand, opening her palm to reveal a clear yellow plastic lighter.

  “It’s yours, isn’t it? Not much fuel left now, sorry. Gives a heck of a good flame, though, doesn’t it?”

  Daniel blinked raindrops out of his eyes, the words coming out before he could stop them.

  “Was it you that made the fire?”

  She held the lighter closer to him, her smile widening.

  “Hope you didn’t mind me borrowing it.”

  As he reached out to take it, Jennifer’s other hand shot out and grabbed his arm tight, her grip like steel rods squeezing the bones of his wrist.

  She dropped the lighter and dragged him toward the edge of the cliff.

  76

  I heard him before I saw him, his cries cutting through the roar of the storm on the hillside.

  “Ow, you’re hurting me! Mum! Dad, help—”

  Then nothing.

  Rivulets of rainwater poured in streams toward the gorge and I stumbled on as the rain lashed down, catching a glimpse of figures through the trees before losing my footing in the wet and crashing onto all fours. Scrambling back to my feet, mud smeared up my arms and legs, I plunged on until I reached the clearing.

  My heart stopped beating.

  Jennifer was holding Daniel right at the very edge of the cliff. His feet were half on, half off the rocky promontory, the front of his sandals hanging in thin air above the drop, arms held out for balance. The back of his T-shirt was bunched in her fist, gym-toned muscles standing out on her strong right arm.

  One quick shove would send him over the edge.

  Daniel turned to look at me over his shoulder, eyes bulging with terror, cheek blazing red from a fresh blow. Next to Jennifer’s tall frame he looked tiny and thin and vulnerable.

  “Mummy!” he gasped, his voice strangled with panic.

  I tried to speak but no words would come, my jaw locked with fright. The terror was rising up inside me, filling my chest, filling my throat, bile rising into my mouth. I felt sick. With my hands held up in a gesture of surrender, I took another step toward them.

  “Stay where you are!” Jennifer barked. Her eyes were wild, with a strange intensity that gave a cold, hard edge to my fear. She looked mad. As if something inside her had been stretched and stretched over and over again until finally, decisively, it had snapped.

  I stopped.

  “Jennifer, please, please don’t hurt him, I’m begging you.” My voice seemed thin and distant. “It’s OK, Daniel. It’s going to be all right.”

  Jennifer glared at me.

  “He told you, didn’t he? Sean told you everything.”

  “Yes.”

  “So I need to make you see. Make you understand.”

  “Please just come away from the edge a little bit.”

  She shook her head.

  “Remember when we first came out here, Kate? When Jake was here, on this spot, right where I’m standing now?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Do you remember what I said to him?”

  I searched my memory. It seemed like a hundred years ago.

  “I don’t know … we just wanted him to be safe, for all the children to be safe.”

  “I told him something important: whatever you do, don’t look down. Because if you look down, you fall.”

  “Yes,” I said breathlessly, “I remember now.”

  “Well, my son is looking down now, Kate. My boy is looking right into the abyss, just like yours. And you’re the only one who can save him. How does that feel? To have the power of life and death over someone’s child?”

  “We can both save him, Jen. I know your boys mean everything to you. Just like Daniel does to me.”

  “Your son. My son. They mean the same, to us. So I had to find something to make you understand.” She gestured toward my terror-stricken son with her free hand. “To persuade you to keep our secret. You’d do the same for your kids, wouldn’t you?”

  “Believe me, Jennifer, I understand what you—”

  “This is what you’ll do to my Jake if you tell the police, your colleagues.” She shook the handful of Daniel’s T-shirt that was clutched in her white-knuckled fist, and he wobbled on the edge, arms windmilling crazily to keep his balance. His glasses fell off, spinning end over end into the gorge. “This is what it means. You’ll ruin him. He won’t be able to cope with it. You’ll kill him, just as surely as if you’d done it yourself.”

  Bile flooded my throat again and I almost gagged. The rain, pounding and incessant, hid my tears.

  “Please, Jennifer!”

  From the trees on our right, Rowan emerged slowly with a man I didn’t recognize at her side. He was young, maybe early twenties, slim and clean shaven, holding a police ID wallet open in front of him so that Jennifer could see it. He said something in French to Jennifer but she gave him barely a glance before turning her attention back to me.

  “Promise me, Kate.”

  “I promise,” I said, my voice cracking. “I’ll do anything, please.”

  “Swear it on your son’s life.”

  “I swear on his life. I won’t say a word, not to anyone.”

  Daniel suddenly seemed to wobble on the edge and for a second I thought he would pull her over with him, but she braced herself and pulled him back at the last second.

  “Oh God, please just let him go, Jen!”

  I would have told her anything, anything, to step away from the edge and give my son back to me. She seemed to sense it, too.

  The young policeman said something to her in rapid-fire French again.

  Rowan said, “The detective says step away from the side, Jennifer.”

  But Jennifer was staring at me.

  “Izzy was going to tell you, she was going to lay it all out for you. I couldn’t let that happen, but she wouldn’t listen to reason. She just refused to see my side of it, Jake’s side of it.” Her voice took on a hard, unyielding tone. “I didn’t mean to … what happened wasn’t what you think. She just slipped.”

  “I believe you, Jennifer. I do.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Absolutely. Of course.”

  She smiled, just for a second, before it faltered and died on her lips. “You know what, Kate? You’ve always been too honest. Too straitlaced. And you’ve always been a crappy liar.”

  “I’m not lying!”

  The sky flashed with lightning as another blast of thunder ripped over our heads.

  In that instant another figure burst from the trees on our left, a stocky, bearded man in a jacket and jeans, sprinting hard at Jennifer and Daniel with his arms outstretched.

  Everything seemed to slide into slow motion.

  The bearded man’s jacket flew up to reveal a pistol and handcuffs on his belt. He shouted commands in French. Then he was losing his footing on the sodden ground, stumbling forward, lunging with open hands, trying to grab something, anything, to stop the child going over—but he was too slow, too late, the yards between them too far. I started forward, my feet leaden. Jennifer turned toward the bearded man, flinching backward. The other policeman lunged forward, too, hands grabbing at her, grasping her arm and reaching across her chest.

  Jennifer released her grip on Daniel’s T-shirt. Hands flailed toward him, grabbing at the empty air. But he was already overbalancing, tipping, arms extended, reaching out to grab something, anything. He was dropping too fast, too fast, and we were too slow.

  All I could see was my son’s face. All I could hear was one word.

  “Mummy!”

  He turned toward me at the last second, his skinny arms outstretched, hands grasping, eyes wide with terror. Disappearing over the edge. There, and then gone.

  My boy.

  Falling.

  ONE MONTH LATER

  77

  We shuffled slowly
through the churchyard under a slate gray English sky.

  Hundreds of black-clad mourners, faces pale with grief, moving in silence, conversation rendered meaningless, pointless on this day, in this place. Friends and family gathered, babies and toddlers, children and teenagers, parents and grandparents, old and young. Too many who were young. Far too many.

  Like a blade sliding into my heart, I remembered the last time I had been inside this church.

  Daniel’s baptism.

  The tears came again and I felt Lucy’s arm slip through mine, holding me up. We filed in through the arched stone doorway and took our places at the front, soft organ music playing beneath the whispers of shuffling feet. It was impossible, inconceivable that we should be here, having to endure the unendurable. It was not right, not natural, that we should be here in grief for one so young. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. The normal order of things was turned on its head.

  And yet, here we were. Ready to say goodbye for the last time.

  I had cried every day since it happened, set off by anything and everything. Every morning I woke from restless nightmares, my cheeks wet with tears. I was numb from crying, hollowed out with shock and grief. I couldn’t work, couldn’t eat, barely slept. Everything I thought I’d known had turned out to be wrong, and nothing would ever be the same.

  Rowan appeared at my side and we hugged each other. Her pregnancy—the secret she had been keeping from her husband, from her potential new business partners, from everyone—was just about starting to show. It was her pregnancy test that I’d found at the villa, discarded somewhere she thought Russ wouldn’t find it. She handed me a fresh tissue and squeezed my hand before going to a pew with Russ and Odette. I could hear the low voices of people in the row behind, asking one another where Jennifer was, snatches of whispered conversation passed back and forth: