Lake of urine, p.20
Coming to Find You, page 20
‘OK,’ I gasp. ‘I’ll come with you. Just put that knife down.’
He nods as if satisfied. ‘Actually, we won’t drive to Plymouth. They might be looking out for us. We’ll take a boat.’ He grins again. ‘It will be an adventure.’
‘Are you crazy?’
As soon as I say this, I know I’ve made a mistake.
‘Nancy,’ he says softly. ‘Don’t ever, ever call me crazy. Got it?’
‘Yes,’ I squeak, terrified he’ll use the knife this time.
‘And leave that mobile of yours behind,’ he adds.
Reluctantly I place it on the kitchen table.
Then he pulls me by the arm, out of the door and into the night.
40
The wind is so fierce that I can barely walk. But I have no choice because Martin is dragging me along firmly by the arm.
We stumble over fallen branches on the pavement. He takes the quieter route down a side road, past the bowling green and the church. Past the museum and Kennaway House. Please God let us run into someone.
‘Faster,’ Martin keeps saying.
‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ I yell out.
I’ve decided to pretend I’m doing what he wants. But somehow I have to find a way of escaping. We’re getting nearer to the front. As we do so, the wind is increasing. Massive waves are fiercely slapping over the promenade like waterfalls. No one is here as far as I can tell. Martin heads for the far end, towards Jacob’s Ladder. ‘I want to leave from our place,’ he says, pointing up to the rocks where he’d carved our names all those years ago.
He’s crazy. Stark raving crazy. Fear makes me unable to think properly. I want to be sick.
‘HELP!’ I call out.
‘SHUT UP!’
Martin’s eyes are glaring at me like a devil’s in the moonlight. ‘If you make a fuss, Nancy, I’ll kill you here and now.’ He’s still holding the knife.
There are some boats moored on this part of the beach. One of them has a motor, and the key is inside. People are trusting here. It’s tied with a knot to a lobster pot. Martin swiftly cuts it with the knife.
‘Help me pull it out,’ he commands.
I stare with horror at the waves. Some are as high as a house. It’s freezing. ‘We’ll die out there,’ I shout over the wind.
‘No we won’t,’ he yells back. ‘It’s safer than the road, where someone will spot us.’
‘Not in this weather!’ I scream.
‘We have no choice! I’ll die if I have to go back to prison. Come on, Nancy. It’s this or I kill us both.’ He looks mad enough for me to believe him.
I push one end of the boat out down the shingle with Martin taking the lead.
‘Nancy!’
A voice calls out into the air.
I turn round. It’s Vera in her old raincoat, flashing a torch.
‘What’s she doing here?’ growls Martin.
Her voice rings out across the beach as she walks towards us. ‘I heard Sheba barking and came round to see if you were all right. Then I saw you heading down here. You can’t possibly take a boat out into weather like this. You’ll drown.’
As Vera speaks, she sees Martin. Too late. He smashes the torch out of her hands.
‘What are you doing? Stop it. Or I will call the police.’
There’s a scream. Mine or Vera’s. I don’t know.
All I can see is Vera falling to the ground and Martin’s knife glinting in the moonlight.
‘What have you done?’ I yell.
‘I had to,’ he yells back. ‘Now get in.’
He shoves me into the boat. A wave tosses us up and out. I look back at the body on the beach.
‘Help!’ I scream out again. ‘Help!’
‘Too late,’ he says, as the wind whips my voice away. ‘They can’t hear us. We’re on our own now. Us against the world.’
41
Please God, don’t let Vera be dead. And please don’t let me drown.
I’m not a particularly religious person. But I find myself recalling a line from a prayer that my father and I had come across in an old church near here: Preserve us from the dangers of the sea.
‘The sea is a beautiful place, Nancy,’ Dad had said to me. ‘But don’t be fooled. It can turn against you. That’s why I’m teaching you to swim.’
Right now, I am scared in a way that’s beyond terror. Each wave tosses us into the air. Each wave feels like the last chance I have to draw breath. There’s no way we’ll survive if we get thrown into the water.
We’re going past the cliffs now and heading towards Branscombe.
‘You don’t honestly think we’re going to make it to Plymouth, do you?’ I scream. ‘Besides, we’re going the wrong way.’
‘All right,’ he shouts irritably. ‘I’m just trying to get this thing away from the rocks.’ He’s struggling with the engine but it’s no match for the waves.
Then there’s a noise from above. A rumbling. A huge splash a few feet ahead of us. Then another, even closer this time. It must be rocks falling down from the cliff. Hadn’t Vera talked about the danger of landslides?
‘Look out!’ yells Martin. I can’t help ducking instinctively, even though common sense tells me this won’t help. A biggish rock lands on the boat. It tips us sideways.
‘Move to the other side,’ he roars.
I do as he says while he heaves the rock over the side, and the boat rights itself again.
But now we’re being dragged out to sea.
‘I don’t want to drown,’ I whimper.
I put my fingers inside my jacket pocket to keep warm. They close around something hard. My grandmother’s whistle! The one I’ve been using to call Sheba back on walks.
I blow on it as hard as I can. The sound is carried away by the wind.
Martin laughs. ‘No one can hear you, Nancy,’ he yells.
‘You’re right,’ I say.
Then I lean forward and blow it again straight into his right ear.
‘Bitch,’ he snarls. ‘Don’t do that ever again.’ He smacks my hand away and the whistle falls into the boat.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, scared.
‘It’s OK, Nance. I know you’re frightened. But you’ve got me here to look after you.’
We flounder on for I don’t know how long. Ten minutes, maybe. Fifteen? Each time a wave tosses us up in the air, I think it’s the end. We don’t seem to be making any headway. The pull of the current is too fierce.
Then he swears.
‘What is it?’ I yell, trying to be heard over the wind and water.
As I speak, I see a light coming towards us from the esplanade. It’s a boat.
‘It must be from the lifeboat station,’ I call out. ‘They can see we’re in trouble.’
‘No, no.’ Martin’s voice is disbelieving.
There’s a sea plane overhead too. Looking for us. Please may it find us in time.
We’re both soaked to the skin now. My fingers won’t move. My heart is beating so fast that I don’t have the energy to argue back.
‘Watch out,’ yells Martin.
The highest wave I have ever seen is coming towards us. I can’t breathe. The fear in my throat is so thick that I feel I’m being choked. Martin grabs my hand. ‘I’ve got you, Nancy, my love. It’s all right. Don’t be scared.’
I feel myself being dragged. He’s going to take me with him. ‘We’ll die together,’ he screams.
‘No!’
Clutching the side of the boat as an anchor, I use a strength I didn’t know I had. Water smashes against my face as we somehow ride the wave. God knows how but we are still upright. Exhausted, we fall back into the bottom of the boat, clutching each other with blind terror. If he still has the knife, I can’t see it.
Another wave is coming. This one seems even higher. The sight makes my stomach freefall with panic. I look towards Martin’s eyes. I can’t see them in the dark. But I can feel them. Boring into me. ‘I love you, Nancy,’ he calls out. ‘Remember that.’
Then the wave hits us. The force is stronger than I could have imagined. I am knocked to one side. My ears sing with the pressure of the water. I can’t see anything, but somehow I’m still in the boat. My hair is plastered to my face. I brush it away from my eyes, searching desperately in the dark.
‘Martin?’ I scream.
There’s no answer.
I feel around in the darkness. But there is nothing there. I go to the other side of the boat. Still nothing. I pause, my heart pounding, preparing myself for the moment when he will surely rear up like a sea monster, his eyes glittering in triumph.
But he doesn’t.
I search around the bottom of the boat. He’s not there. But my hands close around something else. The silver whistle that Martin had knocked out of my hands earlier.
I blow on it. ‘Help!’ I call out. Where did the lifeboat go? Then I blow again.
Nothing happens for a while. I’ve no idea how long. The waves seem to have subsided slightly, as if recognizing Martin is no longer there.
I blow the whistle once more in desperation.
And then I hear it.
‘ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?’
It sounds like a loudspeaker.
‘Yes,’ I gasp.
The lifeboat pulls up alongside me. Its searchlight blinds my eyes. It also lights up the sea around. I search the surface for a body.
Nothing.
Someone climbs over, picks me up and carries me back. ‘Where’s the person who was with you?’
‘He went over the side,’ I weep.
‘Shine the light,’ orders someone else on the lifeboat.
We all stare.
Nothing.
I burst into floods of tears. Not just for Vera, who might be dead. Not just for my mother. Not for Martin. But with relief.
Please let it be over now.
It has to be.
42
‘Are you all right, love?’
‘Put this round her. She’s shaking.’
‘Hang on to me. That’s right. You’re safe now.’
‘What happened?’
I’m aware of these questions and well-meaning gestures as my rescuers help me ashore. It feels like their words are coming from miles away.
Then I remember.
‘Vera,’ I gasp. ‘Is she all right?’
‘The woman on the beach?’ says someone. ‘She was taken away by ambulance.’
‘She tried to help me,’ I weep. Please. Don’t let me be responsible for another death.
There’s another ambulance there. Someone from the lifeboat station must have called it. They want to take me to hospital to be checked out, but I tell them that I am all right. ‘I need to go home to see to my dog,’ I whimper.
‘I’ll look after them both,’ says a voice I recognize as Jasmine’s. ‘I saw the sea plane hovering. I’m a registered first-aider so I came down to see if I could do anything.’
My first thought is that I don’t want her anywhere near me after her betrayal. But I’m in no state to argue.
‘Let’s go home,’ says Jasmine.
I allow her to take me back to Tall Chimneys. She runs a bath. When I come down, she is in the kitchen stirring a pan of tomato soup. ‘I found a tin,’ she says, handing me a mug. ‘I know it’s your favourite.’
Gratefully, I sip it.
‘It rang while you were in the bath,’ she says, pointing to my mobile that I’d left behind in the kitchen when Martin had dragged me off. ‘I answered it. Hope you don’t mind. It was Alex. I told him what happened.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He was really worried. Says he’s on his way. Don’t worry. I won’t cause any trouble.’
But the only thing that matters now is Vera.
Jasmine is still here when Alex arrives at Tall Chimneys.
‘I didn’t want to leave Nancy alone until you came,’ I hear her say as she opens the door.
‘Thanks,’ he says.
‘I did it for her, not you.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘Go into the kitchen,’ says Jasmine briskly. ‘I’ll give you some space.’
Sheba is sitting by my side. If it wasn’t for her size, I think she’d be on my lap.
‘Nancy,’ Alex says. And then he wraps me up in his arms. I smell his sweat. His panic. His love. ‘Thank God you’re all right. I don’t know how I would have lived without you.’
But I’d ended it with him. Did he still really care?
‘We’re waiting to hear if Vera is all right,’ I sob. ‘I seem to bring trouble wherever I go.’
‘You can’t think like that,’ he says, stroking my back. I’d forgotten how good that felt.
And then my mobile rings.
I grab it. ‘Thank you,’ I say quietly after listening for a couple of minutes.
Jasmine walks back into the room and both she and Alex look at me expectantly. ‘That was Vera’s niece,’ I say. ‘She thought we’d like to know that …’
I pause, struggling to accept the news.
‘… that the knife missed any vital organs. She’ll be in hospital for a good while but it’s not life-threatening.’
‘Thank God,’ say Jasmine and Alex at the same time.
I still can’t believe it. I had been certain that she had died, like so many others I had loved. The relief is overwhelming.
I sleep fitfully that night. Alex is holding me and wakes me up when I have my nightmare. It’s always the same. Duncan grabbing me. My mother screaming as the knife goes in. And now there’s another. Martin and me in the sea. ‘We’ll die together.’
‘It’s all right,’ soothes Alex.
But it’s not.
How can it be, after what I’ve done?
There’s only one way out, I realize. To do the thing I have been trying so hard not to do. To set myself free with the truth.
After all, Alex has laid his past bare to me. That couldn’t have been easy.
Now I must do the same – even if I go to jail.
43
I decide to tell Alex in the morning. I need one more night with his arms around me. It’s so comforting. I might have denied it to myself, yet the truth is that I’ve missed him terribly.
But I must have overslept with the exhaustion of everything that had happened because the next thing I know, the clock on the bedside table says 9.15 and someone is saying my name.
‘Nancy?’
I wake up bolt-upright, terrified it might be Martin or Duncan. Then I realize it can’t be. It’s Alex.
‘Sorry to wake you, love,’ he says tenderly. ‘But something’s happened.’
A body has been washed up on the shore, further along the coastline towards Exmouth. It’s wearing a green prison tracksuit. They want me to identify it.
‘Are you OK about doing it?’ asks Alex when he’s finished explaining.
I get out of bed and wander over to the window. The sun is streaming through, in stark contrast to the terrible weather of the storm yesterday. I can see the sea over the rooftops of my neighbours’ houses. Glinting. Sparkling. Cleansing. Lighting up the hidden secrets in my mind.
‘I don’t want to see him,’ I reply. ‘But I have to.’
‘Someone else could do it. One of the prison officers, perhaps.’
I come back and sit on the bed. ‘I have to do it myself. I owe him that.’
‘You don’t owe that monster anything,’ says Alex.
But I do.
Of course, I’ve seen a dead body before. But this is different. There is no blood. No glazed eyes open. No horror written over the face. No screams.
It’s just Martin. In the morgue. A pale, bloated Martin who bears little resemblance to the man I knew.
The first boy who kissed me.
The ‘brother’ who stood up to his father for me.
The man who nearly killed me.
‘Yes,’ I say turning away. ‘That’s him.’
Alex is waiting for me. He puts his arm around me. I move away. Despite everything, I don’t feel right touching anyone straight after saying goodbye to my stepbrother’s bloated body.
We drive back to Tall Chimneys in silence. I don’t want to talk. If I do, I will either have to lie or tell Alex what really happened. And I don’t want to do either.
When we open the door, Sheba bounds up to me. I kneel down, burying my face in her fur. I almost feel like telling her instead. In the short time I’ve looked after her, I’ve learned how understanding she is.
I’m quiet for the rest of the day, weighing up this terrible decision about whether to tell Alex. Last night it had seemed so clear. But seeing Martin had changed it. Duncan had hurt us both in different ways. Martin had also hurt me. Didn’t I deserve to be free after all that?
But I can’t get the farmhouse out of my head. ‘Mummy! Mummy!’
Alex makes cheese on toast, but I can’t swallow a mouthful.
‘Do you mind if I go to bed early?’ I ask Alex.
‘Good idea,’ he says, getting up at the same time as if coming with me.
‘Alone,’ I say.
Something flickers in his eyes. Hurt? Doubt?
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I’ll sleep in one of the other rooms. Just wake me if you need anything.’
I toss and turn, counting the pros and cons on my fingers. But it’s no good. I’m not the kind of person who can hide things easily. The last year and a bit since my mother died has been agony. There is only one thing to do.
In the early hours of the morning, I tiptoe downstairs to the room where Alex is sleeping.
He looks so calm. So peaceful. What I have to say now is going to wreck his life for ever.
‘Alex,’ I whisper.
He wakes, startled. ‘Nancy? Are you all right?’
I kneel by the side of his bed, taking his hand in mine. ‘I’ve got something to tell you. You won’t like it. In fact, it’s terrible.’
‘What?’ he says. Alex is usually someone who takes ages to wake up. But right now, he’s fully alert.
As soon as he speaks, I wish I’d stayed silent. But it’s too late now. I’ve said something that can’t be taken back.
