On the Edge

by Jane Jesmond

  I’d told Kit and Sofija. I was sure I had. Had all the fuss over Ma’s will reminded them?

  Kit was watching me with a puzzled look on his face. I forced a smile.

  ‘I’m going to bed, Jen,’ he said. ‘Pa’s solicitors have given me a letter for the bank that’ll get them off my back and I want to go down there first thing.’ He headed for the door but turned at the last minute. ‘You know, I thought tonight would be a celebration. Problems finally solved.’

  For a moment I was tempted to go to bed, too. Lock the door behind me and ram a couple of chairs against it. It had been a hellish few days but tonight was the shittiest moment by far. Except I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I’d lie in bed and think about Kit and Sofija’s rage with Ma and the way their financial difficulties had driven them to the edge of reason so that stress ate the flesh from Sofija’s bones and Kit thought nothing of cadging money from my ex-boyfriend. Sleep would be impossible. I’d think about Sofija wanting me to clean the windows at Tregonna. I’d think about the look in her eyes when she held Rosa to her. She’d do almost anything for her daughter. I’d think about how much Kit had changed.

  Stop. No more. I was mad. Paranoid. But I could no more stop my brain from chasing down dark pathways than I could stop breathing.

  Friday afternoon, Sofija and Kit had come back from Seb’s wake with Mark’s words condemning me ringing in their ears. They’d left Plymouth around four, according to Grid. They’d have arrived at Craighston about the same time as me. Had they seen my car then? Or had they seen me on the road and followed me? Who knew? But they, of all people, would have guessed straightaway that the appearance of a red Aston meant I’d arrived. After all, they were the ones who’d asked me to come down in the first place.

  And then what?

  Kit had gone up to see Gregory and invited him to stay the night at Tregonna. Was it kindness or was it a desire to get him away from the lighthouse? Sofija wasn’t with him. Had she gone to the hotel to find out what I was doing there? Had she been the person talking to Vivian in the room behind reception?

  And then they’d got lucky. I’d left the hotel for a walk.

  And after that…

  I couldn’t bear to think any more.

  So I pulled an old hat and scarf off the hooks by the back door and unbolted it. My mother was wandering about in the freezing night, possibly upset and definitely not sensibly dressed. I’d go and look for her because anything was better than staying in Tregonna with suspicions running through my head and Kit and Sofija in the room below mine.

  Twenty-Two

  Ma wasn’t in the woods. I was sure because I’d been over every square metre with a strong torch. Even the bit in the middle where the brambles are fierce. She wasn’t in the gardens either and she hadn’t crept round the house to the lawns at the front. Nor was she in any of the sheds, outhouses, stables and so on that lie like drunken tramps around the east side of the house, some still standing but wobbly, the rest collapsed and offering shelter only to spiders, mice and the occasional bird – none of whom were pleased to be roused by the beam of my torch.

  By the time I’d finished looking, I was tired, scratched, grubby and festooned with spider webs. Brambles 5, Jen 0. And my ankle hurt where a loose stone on a step into the tool shed had leapt up and whacked me.

  And did I mention I was furious? Fucking boiling with rage. I’d stopped peering through the cracks of opening doors ready to whirl round and run. Instead, I kicked doors open. Stamped on plants in my way. I was mad at all of them. Furious with Kit and Sofija for making me suspect them. Furious with Ma for swanning off into the night rather than standing up for herself. The heat of rage made me feel better. But then anything was better than thinking about what might have happened after I headed out of the hotel on Friday night.

  Clearly, Ma had left Tregonna. I slammed myself into the Golf and set off to try to find her. I knew I was doing what she wanted me to do and that was even more annoying. She was probably sitting in front of a fire in a friend’s house, sipping a herbal tea and ‘being zen’ about the whole situation.

  But the wind was rising, bringing in an edge of ice and the smell of a rainstorm from over the sea. So, tempting as it was, I couldn’t leave her out there. I jabbed my foot on the accelerator and let the night rush past. The speed calmed my mood, at least a bit. Eventually, I slowed to a crawl and began the tedious business of trying to find her, scouring the roads and getting out from time to time to call her name.

  By the time I reached the village, I knew it was hopeless. Even Ma in a huff couldn’t have walked this far. I was just driving for the sake of doing something. The long-awaited rain finally arrived. I got out one last time, shouted for her and then, chucking my sodden coat into the boot, gave up.

  On the way back to Tregonna, the rain became one continuous slap of water against the windscreen. The wipers could hardly cope and I slowed right down, gripping the road with my eyes, trying not to lose sight of the white lines in the centre. So I was barely aware of what made me screech to a halt, sending great plumes of water over the grass at the side as my tyres slid across the tarmac.

  I’d seen someone… a white face looking back at me, streaked to a blur by the wipers. The sight had bypassed my conscious mind and spoken straight to my feet.

  Ma?

  I looked in the mirror.

  A figure ran towards the car, towards the passenger door. It wasn’t Ma. Too tall. My hand reached out automatically and pressed the central locking. The clunk reassured me.

  But the figure didn’t stop. It kept on running. Past the door. Past the car. Into the headlights. Feet hitting the ground too fast for its body. Staggering and swaying. Like a tightrope walker struggling to balance.

  Not Ma. A man.

  I slid the car into gear and eased forward. The runner’s speed increased. His head whipped from side to side, as though looking for a way off the road but the cliffs fell away after the grassy strip on one side and high rocks loomed on the other. He slipped in the mud and fell, saving himself with one hand, then forced himself back up and stood bent double, his ribs heaving for breath and visible through the jacket plastered against his back.

  I stopped the car a few paces behind him and waited.

  He straightened his back and turned to face me.

  Nick Crawford.

  For a moment I thought I was hallucinating.

  But it was unmistakably Nick. Even through the jumble of water and wiper on my windscreen I knew it was him. Details registered. Blood was trickling down his face as fast as the deluge could wash it away. His left eye was puffy and closing to a slit as if he’d been in a fight. He strode forward and raised his right arm.

  Some stupid instinct made me cower back in the seat and raise my hands as though to ward off a blow. I even whimpered. Then I remembered how hard it had been for me to see him inside the car, last Friday night, in the rain, with the headlights dazzling me. He wouldn’t recognise this car. So I turned the headlights off and put the inside lights on instead, wondering if I was making a huge mistake.

  I couldn’t see his face now. I could barely see his shape.

  Nothing happened. No more crashes on the outside of the car. No rock smashed the windscreen. And when I turned the headlights back on, he was still standing in the same place but looking behind me and beyond the car. Then he snapped his body round and started running again. When I glanced in the mirror, I saw the jagged beams of torches coming down the hill onto the road and I knew where I was. Nick’s cottage was a couple of hundred metres up above and the torches were on the steep path that connected his road with the coast road.

  I looked at Nick. He waved his right arm at me, his hand a blur of white at the end, telling me to go. Then he turned and ran again. His legs pounded the ground, his right arm bent and jerked like a piston thrusting him forward but his left arm dangled by his side and every so oft
en unbalanced him, so he staggered and lost ground as he fought to stay upright. He wasn’t going to get away from the dark figures with torches chasing him. They were almost down the hill now.

  Something inside me settled as though it had been waiting, edgy and stressy, feet skittering from side to side, for this moment. I knew what I was going to do. Part of my brain screamed at me to be sensible and get the fuck out of there but I couldn’t leave Nick battered and bleeding and running desperately down the road. Not now I was full of doubts about his guilt. Not while suspicions of Kit and Sofija crowded my head. Not if Nick’s loan of his car to me on Friday had truly been an act of kindness. A few brief seconds of fight in my head and then I felt the adrenalin fizz through my blood and clear all the crap clogging up my head. I drove forward, pulled up beside Nick, reached over and pushed the passenger door open.

  He didn’t stop. Kept on running. I yanked the door shut, followed him and pulled up again a few yards in front of him and slid the passenger window down. This time he came to a stumbling halt and screamed at me.

  ‘Get the fuck out of here.’

  He turned and ran off again and I shouted, ‘No, get in the car.’

  And then I got out and slammed my door shut. The noise stopped him.

  ‘Get in the car,’ I yelled.

  A horde of doubts raced through my mind. What the fuck was I doing? I must be completely off my head. But underneath, I knew this was right. Like the moments when the route up a rock face suddenly becomes clear and I know exactly which series of holds to use and which ledges and cracks will link to get me to the top. The glorious feeling when I don’t think, I just act.

  Nick waited until the last minute, though. Until I could smell the danger emanating from his pursuers and hear their sweaty panting, their pounding steps. Just as I thought it was going to be too late, he wrenched the passenger door open and thrust his body into the seat. I leapt in after him.

  ‘Now drive,’ he said. ‘Drive anywhere as fast as you can,’ and he pulled the rear-view mirror towards him. ‘Fucking drive, Jen.’

  ‘They’re not going to catch you now,’ I said as I shot off. ‘A few men on foot!’

  ‘They’ve got cars. They’re on the road down.’ A sharp intake of breath. ‘Shit!’

  I glanced over at his face, lit up by the reflection of headlights in my mirror.

  ‘Is it the police?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are the police after you?’

  ‘That is not the police behind us. And believe me, Jen, you don’t want them to catch us up and prove me right.’

  His words were stripped of all emotion and that, more than anything else, more than the blood and bruises marking his face and the injured arm he clutched to his side, made me concentrate on driving as fast as I dared. I drove like I’d never driven before. Life narrowed down to keeping the car on the road, throwing it round corners and staring through sheets of water, fighting to see beyond the dazzle of my reflected headlights.

  Nick was a presence on the outer edges of my awareness. A rhythm of snatched breaths and rustles as he alternated between looking ahead and turning to gaze at the lights behind us as though it was not enough to see them in the mirror.

  I didn’t look in the side mirror. I didn’t need to. The headlights of the car chasing us were a constant glare and flared on the periphery of my vision every time we turned a corner. Each time brighter and closer.

  ‘I’m heading for St Austell,’ I said in a staccato burst. ‘There’ll be people and cars there. We’ll be safer.’ He said nothing but looked behind again. ‘Won’t we?’ I asked.

  ‘Have you got a phone?’

  ‘In my coat. But it’s in the boot.’

  He swore.

  ‘They’ll have one,’ he said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘They’ll get someone to head you off before you get to St Austell.’

  I gritted my teeth and clenched the steering wheel tighter. The coast road was deserted. It would be easy to trap us.

  I snatched the next turning off. A little lane lined with high hedgerows that went straight up into the back country and through a couple of little hamlets. I knew families in both but there wouldn’t be time to rouse them before we were caught.

  I gained a few seconds because they overshot the turning but I knew it wouldn’t be long before they reversed and followed us. My eyes raked the sides of the road ahead, looking for another turning. Somewhere to screech into and hide while we were out of view. But there was nothing and a few minutes later I heard Nick mutter something under his breath as the headlights reappeared in my side mirrors.

  ‘Haven’t you got a phone?’ I asked.

  ‘They took it off me. First thing they did.’

  The rain rattled on the car roof. A thousand things I wanted to know stormed my head but Nick’s voice, hot and sharp, sliced through them all.

  ‘Don’t slow down,’ he said.

  I pushed my foot down until the accelerator would go no further. But as the hedgerows flashed by, interspersed with sudden openings and tantalising glimpses of dark-windowed houses wrapped around their sleeping occupants, the car behind seemed chained to mine. It never dropped back and if I lost concentration for a moment, the lights crept up on me, two cold eyes of a beast waiting to pounce.

  The back of the Golf skidded as I wrenched the wheel round the first of the bends which marked the beginning of the climb up to the moors. The road was no longer lined with high hedgerows but had a forest of young oaks on either side. Their trunks and naked branches flashed in the light as I passed. The road was a snake, coiling and uncoiling in front of me, and the water on the road hissed as my tyres washed it out of the way. I bit my lip, tasted blood and put my foot down again. Somehow, I had to get every last bit of power out of the Golf. I no longer bothered to change gear much but drove until the engine screeched in agony.

  I flicked a glance into the side mirrors again. The gap between us was growing.

  ‘I think they’re giving up,’ I said, hearing hope make my voice husky.

  ‘Where does this road go?’ Nick’s voice was harsh.

  ‘Over the moors and joins the main road to Bodmin.’

  ‘Any turn-offs between now and then?’

  I let the familiar route unroll in my mind.

  ‘Only one. There’s a fork at a village called –’

  He bit me off. ‘And after the fork?’

  ‘Nothing. No turning until it reaches the main road.’

  ‘And if you take the other road at the fork?’

  ‘The same. It takes you to the main road too. But past a couple of farms.’

  Too late, I understood. Once I’d chosen which road to take at the fork, we’d be trapped. All they had to do was send another car down the road from the other end and we’d be caught between them. They must have other cars driving around out there, waiting for a call. I saw them in my mind like a circle of hawks hovering over the moor, their shadows terrifying the little creatures caught in the open. My foot faltered on the accelerator and the car slowed.

  ‘Keep driving,’ Nick said. ‘As fast as you can. What’s the road like between here and the moors?’

  ‘Bendy until we get out onto the moor and then it’s straight and flat. All they have to do is follow us to the top, then wait and watch which way we go. There’s no cover up there at all.’

  ‘Can we get off the road?’ he asked. ‘You said the moor was flat.’

  ‘You used to be able to. But they stopped it. Quad bikes doing too much damage. Now the sides are hedged or fenced or ditched.’

  Little explosions of fear dislodged my concentration and I felt dampness prickle the palms of my hands. A rabbit ran across the road, a flash of grey through the pouring rain, and I braked and swerved to avoid it. My tyres squealed as I fought to keep the car on the road. The move
ment flung Nick sideways and he cried out as his body smashed into the side of the car.

  The shock cleared my brain. There’s always a way up the rock. You just have to find it. Something came to me. Something that might work. I raced through it in my mind, seeing what had to happen. Then I floored the car and felt it pick up speed again.

  ‘I have an idea,’ I said. ‘No time to explain, but get ready.’

  A white flash of skin as he turned to look at me, but all he said was ‘OK.’

  I liked that about him. So much. No questions. No fuss.

  Another glance in the mirror. The gap between us and the men behind had stretched. They were sure they had us. Easier for them to keep an eye on us from further back. It suited me fine. I’d never driven like this before, with a reckless disregard of every safety precaution. Just me and the car and the road. Judging within a hair’s breadth how fast I could go and still keep the three of us together.

  We shot over the top of the hill and onto the moor. We were out of their view for a few seconds while they drove the last hundred metres up through the forest. High hedgerows lined most of the road we were on until just after the crucial fork. I blessed them and cut the headlights. We were invisible now.

  The two roads after the fork were open and unhedged. They rose away from the junction and climbed over the moor. If the men had any sense, they’d wait at the top behind us and watch to see which road we took, call ahead and snap the trap shut. But they might not. They might follow us all the way.

  I lifted my foot off the accelerator a little. This was the tricky part. I needed to keep far enough in front so they wouldn’t catch up with us but go slowly enough to turn off when the time came. And all without using the brakes. A sudden flare of red would give us away. I blinked my eyes, holding them shut each time for as long as I dared, forcing them to adjust to the dark. My feet screamed at me to brake. I ignored them. Nick was a statue beside me. He knew, I thought, this was the moment.