The last weekend, p.23
The Last Weekend, page 23
‘I dunno,’ said Claire, pushing the hair out of her eyes and knocking back something from her leaf cup, like it was tequila. ‘Friday night sometime?’
‘That stuff was private, Claire, you knew that,’ said Suze. ‘What if he says something to Martin back at the house? He’ll be a complete bastard about it.’
‘Weird that you’d tell Dex,’ said Maura, her gaze still fixed on Claire.
‘Is it?’ said Claire, swooning on the sand as she turned and faced the direction of the wood. ‘I didn’t find it weird at all. In fact, I rather liked it. I don’t know about you, but I need another drink.’ Then she looked into her leaf cup again, but found nothing.
Annie followed Claire, leaving the other two behind. ‘Hey, what island bar are we going to? Can I join you for a drink? I think we should talk.’
‘There,’ Claire said, pointing at a brackish pool with a thin film of green. ‘I got my drink from that.’
Why had Claire taken yet another stupid risk, this time not with a man but drinking water that looked like a puddle on a London street in the middle of winter?
‘Can someone please help me carry this pallet to the waterline so we can get on with building the raft and going home?’ Annie said. She didn’t add that they needed to get on with it before someone got injured again, or worse.
She looked up at the sky in confused desperation, anxiety pushing down on her sternum with the force of a boulder. And in the distance the birds circled and cawed.
Chapter 26
Annie
7 a.m. Sunday, 30 August
Blue Bracken Island
Annie woke up from the worst night’s sleep of her life turning to find Claire lying listlessly a few feet away, her arms ramrod straight beside her like she was lying in a tomb. They’d all taken shelter at the edge of the forest as the rain came in again the previous night, and found the thickest layer of pressed bracken they could, hoping it might be like lying on a camping mat. But the cold had been unbearable. They’d all held on to each other where they could, but there was little warmth left of any kind between them.
Claire lifted herself up on her arms, slowly, weakly. She’d been the one to go without food the longest and was looking pale, and frail. ‘How many days have I been asleep?’
‘What?’ said Annie, digging the back of her elbows into the damp grit of the woodland floor and lifting herself up to look at Claire properly. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps only a few hours. I think it’s Sunday morning.’
‘I feel really bad.’
‘Things will be different today. I can feel it. The rain looks like it’s stopping, and the men will be expecting us back in a few hours which means something will happen to save us. Martin was keen on us getting back for brownies at eleven—’
‘Please, Annie, don’t mention brownies.’
‘Though I can’t remember how committed I was to the plan. I didn’t know how much time we’d need—’
‘Stop talking, please, I feel sick,’ said Claire, agitation in her voice. But they had all become increasingly agitated and terse, like their batteries were running low, their water tanks were draining dry and their souls were gasping at the last dregs of positive energy.
Down on the beach in the near distance Annie could see Maura and Suze shifting pallets and wood around, still trying to find a workable solution to their most important problem.
‘We should go help them with the raft,’ Annie said finally. ‘I think they’ve been up a while.’
Then, Annie glanced at Claire’s foot which was gummed-up with blood and sand, pus and grit, the usually pale and elegant fan of her metatarsals pink and swollen instead. ‘Can you walk?’
Claire got to her feet and swayed uneasily. ‘My leg hurts. There’s a pain all up my calf.’ When she stood straight, with the slow and tentative energy of a frail old woman, Annie could see the swollen area, as though Claire had pulled a grotesque sweatband of extra flesh over her slim ankle. Her skin was stippled with pale red dots and goosebumps of cold.
‘Lean on me,’ said Annie, trying hard not to voice her concerns about infection, incipient sepsis, even. She was finding it harder, without any sustenance, to keep a lid on her ravaging anxiety about how the coming hours would play out, though there was still a pale, throbbing light left in her that said it wouldn’t do to spread panic.
Claire used Annie as a crutch to stumble further down the beach to where Maura and Suze were sitting opposite each other, hair straggled, bird-nested and caked in mud, stooped in exhaustion, looking intently down at their work.
‘Wow,’ said Annie, as she approached, Claire breaking off to sit back down on the sand. ‘That’s a … that’s a thing …’
‘It’s a raft, Annie,’ said Maura sharply.
The raft, such that it was, constituted the two pallets they’d found, stacked on top of each other, and tied together with thick strands of twined grass. It looked blocklike and strong, yet very unfit for purpose: entirely unlikely to hold four grown women on a long journey across the water.
‘Come on, guys,’ said Maura quickly, almost feverishly. She threw a pile of thick grasses at their feet. ‘Look at that,’ she said, pulling a bunch of it taut between her hands. ‘I could hang myself with that.’
‘Stop it,’ said Annie.
‘Get plaiting then. Before we have to resort to jungle law.’
‘How do you know about plaiting grass to make rope?’ Annie said.
‘I do read, you know. I was a big fan of Swallows and Amazons as a child.’
Suze grabbed Annie by the sleeve and whispered in her ear. ‘She’s watched every single episode of a Bear Grylls survival programme on Netflix, plus everything else he’s ever made in the last two months. I saw it on her viewing history when I borrowed the iPad for Walt back at the house. Don’t say anything. Just give her this moment in the sun? Premium Maura bullshit.’
Annie took a deep breath and felt her brow crumple, wondering why Maura kept lying about her TV habit. She supposed it was better than lying about a crack habit, but still. She parked the thought and concentrated on her work. The odd structure in front of her was the closest they’d got to a passport home since arriving, so she summoned all the enthusiasm she no longer had and all the self-control not to criticize their valiant efforts.
It turned out she couldn’t summon very much.
‘The four of us won’t fit on that. It’s far too small.’
‘Don’t hold back,’ said Suze. ‘I’m confident we can get all four of us on there … if Maura leaves her arse on the shore.’
Maura punched Suze in the arm.
‘We need more pallets,’ said Maura.
‘Oh, shit, I forgot that we could search Things to get me the fuck out of here on Amazon.’ Suze sounded uncharacteristically crabby. ‘In other words, we’ve probably circled this island, like forty-five times? Therefore, I pinky-promise and swear to a God I don’t believe in that there aren’t any other pallets, boats, canoes, surfboards or millionaires’ yachts to be unearthed. This is the best we’re going to get.’
‘Well, we need to try again,’ said Annie.
Maura held up her hands. ‘I don’t know about you lot but I’m not looking for business-class comfort here. I just want to get home before we all perish. I’ll happily pretzel my body for the whole journey if that’s what it takes. Let’s just cram on and see what happens.’
‘How, though?’ said Annie, feeling her legs drain of strength as they drained of hope, too. ‘Your raft is lashed together with grass and look at the weather! It may have stopped raining but all it takes is some choppy waves and we’ll all be in the water.’
Maura shrugged belligerently.
‘OK,’ said Suze. ‘I’ve got it. Three squashed up on the raft. One in the water, kicking and holding onto us like we’re one of those foam swimming lesson floats? Like, kicking really hard?’
‘Aha, aha,’ said Maura. ‘I think I see where this is going. Can I ask who you have in mind for what role?’
‘Captain, permission to speak?’ Suze gave Annie a small bow and smile.
‘You already are … but go on,’ said Annie.
‘On the raft,’ said Suze in her best announcement voice, ‘is me, because I cannot swim. And Annie who is too scared. And Claire, who is too weak to do anything else owing to the fact that she has not eaten for two days and is very thin. Annie and I will sit back to back with our feet in the water, Claire balanced over both our laps.’
‘And?’ said Maura.
‘And, drum-roll please … The fourth woman, aka the swimming woman in the water, will be Maura, on account of her extra chub reserves giving her warmth and energy, and her basic, though not at all advanced, level of fitness which should be mitigated by her holding on to the raft.’
‘A sort of middle-aged female outboard motor?’ said Maura, narrowing her eyes.
‘Exactly!’ said Suze, clapping her hands together.
‘Cool, cool, cool,’ Maura said thoughtfully and calmly, her brow furrowing. ‘That’s definitely cool, really it is … Makes a lot of sense. Not something I’ve done before but I’m game, I really am. I guess I find myself asking: how can I be sure that any one of you won’t, like, peel my fingers off the raft when the effort becomes too much to move us all in the water? You know, when we have to drop extra ballast? Because there’s been a lot of swearing. Everyone’s been annoyed with each other. Perhaps some of us still harbour some bad feeling. I don’t know …’
‘Let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt?’ said Annie.
But Maura didn’t reply and turned quickly toward Claire, which set alarm bells ringing. Annie had noticed, with increasing frequency, that Maura tended to redirect the beam when she wanted it taking off her. ‘And what do you think, Claire?’ she said. ‘Of the plans?’
‘I think the plans are fine,’ said Claire absently, wearily.
‘So you don’t have a view?’
‘I don’t mind. Do whatever you want. I don’t feel very well.’
‘You see, Suze,’ said Maura. ‘This is the key issue with Claire having been your sounding board for your life’s biggest decision. She doesn’t challenge anything.’
‘OK, stop now,’ said Suze. ‘I’ve made my decision, Maura, and we’ve moved on. We have to focus on getting home. Claire doesn’t look great and I might be about to kill someone.’
‘Claire, seriously,’ said Maura, completely ignoring Suze, ‘I don’t think you’d have ended up in the Home Counties with Karl if you’d just challenged him a bit more? You know, had an opinion about it. Or rather, an opinion about where you’d rather be. Like London?’
‘Maura, what are you doing?’ said Suze.
‘I’d guess she’s trying to distract us all from a plan where she has to get in the water,’ said Annie.
‘Don’t patronize me!’ snapped Maura. ‘Claire needs to contribute once in a while! She has opinions. Surely you have opinions, Claire. Tell me, do you?’
‘But …’ Claire’s face was stricken and pale.
‘We don’t all have to be a drama-tornado like you, Maura,’ said Annie, feeling the frayed ends of her own tether. ‘Some of us are just looking for a quiet life.’
‘Sure,’ said Maura. ‘But sometimes it’s important to say something that sets the world on fire, else everything is meh, just boring, and nothing, but nothing, changes.’
‘Fine,’ said Claire, her voice hoarse, her pale face flushing pink. ‘I’ll tell you something that’ll set your world on fire. Dex and I snogged each other.’
‘Hold on,’ said Maura, holding up her hand, ‘I didn’t mean that kind of— I’m sorry, what did you say?’
Claire hobbled forward unsteadily and spoke a few inches from Maura’s face. ‘I said, Maura, that Dex and I—’
‘Claire, shit,’ said Annie. ‘What are you doing? Please don’t do this.’
A deafening crash of thunder came rolling through the skies, rinsing out the metal kinks in the clouds and bringing the heavy, driving rain of a shower on full power again.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, everybody! We should have left an hour ago when there was a break in the weather,’ said Suze, as though they’d completely mis-timed the traffic.
‘Friday night. On the beach,’ said Claire.
Maura’s eyes were granite and unreadable but her words were matter of fact. ‘And how was it?’
‘Terrific,’ Claire replied, equally stony, her frailty seemingly forgotten.
‘Anything more than a – a snog?’ Maura sounded as if she was enquiring about something that had happened in the papers.
‘No. But it was a good snog. A great snog, in fact.’
‘OK,’ said Annie. ‘Let’s move on. People do stupid things when they’re drunk. And people are attracted to each other and want to have sex with each other, like, all the time.’
‘No, they don’t,’ said Suze quickly. ‘I wouldn’t sleep with Karl.’
‘But you would sleep with Dex?’ asked Maura, holding eye contact with Claire.
Suze hesitated. ‘It depends on how fast other sex supplies were dwindling. He’d come somewhere between a low supply of both men and women.’
‘Good to know,’ said Maura, checking her fingernails, then looking up suddenly and pouncing on Claire in one swift move.
But Claire dodged out of the way just in time, stumbling on her bad foot. She righted herself as Maura got herself back together, then leapt in the direction of the raft, trying, ineffectually, to push Maura away with one hand and push the double-pallet lunk of a thing toward the water with the other.
‘You want another one of my opinions? I’ll take the raft!’ said Claire, crying, persisting with pushing a raft that did not want to be moved, in the direction of the water.
‘Oh no you don’t, you thief!’ said Maura, jumping on Claire’s back as though she was about to get a piggyback.
‘Don’t let her take the raft!’ shouted Suze.
Suze tried prising Claire’s hands off the raft and Annie jumped in to try to prise Suze off Claire.
‘Stop this!’ shouted Annie. ‘Stop this. Claire can’t move a branch, let alone a raft.’
‘Stop it, get off me!’ yelled Claire feebly, stepping back and pushing Annie away, struggling to stay balanced. Claire’s eyes filled with tears, turning from ice grey to black. Then, when everyone had stepped back, she redoubled her efforts and began pushing at the unstable, and largely immovable, raft again.
As they began wrestling again with struts and twine, things pinged and snapped and unravelled: Annie and Maura on one side and Suze and Claire on the other pulling the pallets apart, Annie trying to get Claire off the pallet, Maura off Claire, Suze off Maura off Claire. The already dry and bleached wood snapping and splintering.
‘What have you done?’ screamed Annie. ‘You idiots!’ she shouted, as they stepped back to survey the unlit bonfire of scrap wood and grass twine. In her hungry, dehydrated haze she found herself looking around for glue, kintsugi gold paint, for Martin’s face, and words of reassurance that their raft, that their friendship group, could certainly be fixed to become stronger and more resilient than ever.
‘Oh God,’ said Suze, breaking down into tears. ‘We’re never going to get home.’
Annie felt a searing crack through her breastbone, enough to press her hand against it, like she needed to hold together the pieces of herself.
‘Are you in love with him?’ asked Maura, stepping back from group.
‘I don’t even like him!’ Claire moaned. ‘I was so, so angry, Maura. I was so—’
Maura held up her hand, her face frozen into an expressionless mask. ‘It’s OK,’ she cut her off abruptly. ‘I see it. And I feel sorry for you, Claire. It’s all part of one big game. You do know that, don’t you? He’s just pushed it too far this time.’
‘No, it’s not that, Maura—’
‘It is,’ she said, aggression lacing her voice. ‘You don’t know Dex. You have no idea what he’s capable of. You’re just a tiny chess piece, babe, in a war that started nearly a year ago. That man has been on a mission to destroy me and my career and now, it seems, my friendships. This is nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me. You’ve no idea what came before this.’
‘What exactly did come before this?’ said Annie, speaking from the break inside her, the conversation with Dex on that moonlit beach just a few days before racing back in full technicolour. The silver moonlight casting the sand in indigo and the waters in navy and green, Dex’s bright white face and the tickertape of receipts and tickets to museums thrown into the air with a flick of his Rolex-ed wrist. ‘Because honestly,’ she continued. ‘You savage and you criticize Claire and yet, where are you in all of this?’
Maura crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows, primed for a fight.
‘You’ve been lying to me, Maura,’ said Annie, her voice shaking with the effort of not crying. ‘And lying to Dex. What have you been doing, Maura? Are you having an affair?’
Chapter 27
Annie
A few moments later
Blue Bracken Island
Maura doubled over with laughter. ‘An affair? An actual affair? I love the idea of it, and I’m not saying I haven’t considered it, but if I was sneaking off to a hotel, I’d go on my own. I’d rather have the extra sleep.’
‘What have you been doing at the weekends then?’ said Annie coldly.
Maura’s smile dropped and her eyes stilled. ‘I was working.’
‘You told Dex that you were with me. You don’t lie to your husband about doing overtime. So where were you?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘It is, though. I asked you to stay on a few of those weekends and you either ignored me or fobbed me off with an excuse about needing to look after the kids. But you weren’t doing that. And you told Dex you were with me. So you lied to both of us.’
‘Annie, this isn’t a big deal.’
‘Maura, are you having an affair or not?’ said Suze. ‘I’m so confused.’
‘I’m not having an affair! If I was having an affair I’d probably be a million times happier.’
