by Tim Weaver
And then Rebekah was back in the gas station.
She saw how dark it had got, even with the Cherokee’s headlights on bright. Beyond the forecourt, she couldn’t see anything.
She tried not to let the thought disturb her, but as – teeth gritted, muscles taut – she levered the wrench around in another rotation, she found her gaze drawn back to the darkness. She remembered that there were some old buildings directly across from the gas station. She knew the ocean was somewhere on the other side of them. She knew that the town lay to her right, and to her left the forest, but she couldn’t see any of it.
I’ve never known a night as dark as this.
Goosebumps scattered up her back.
And then something moved.
Rebekah stopped instantly. Leaving the wrench where it was, she got slowly to her feet, her eyes fixed on where the movement had come from. For a moment the only sound was the wind, the ocean obscured somewhere behind it – but then, as that faded, something new filled the void.
Was it some kind of click?
What would be making a clicking sound out here?
She looked down at the wrecked tyre, at the replacement waiting on the ground, at the jack propping up the underside of the car. She couldn’t move the Cherokee, swing it around so the headlights revealed what was out there. And maybe I don’t want to, she thought, because now she could hear the clicking again. More regular, almost uniform.
‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’
The wind came again and, this time, a branch rolled out of the shadows, into the edge of the light. A second gust propelled it across the blacktop towards the gas pumps. Finally, it came to rest twenty feet from her, contorted and damaged where it had been ripped from a tree.
Everything settled again.
Was that really what she’d heard?
A branch?
She looked into the darkness, trying to see if anything else was out there, any other sign of movement, but now it was almost serene: the wall of night wrapped itself around the entire gas station – unbroken, impenetrable.
Just get the wheel done and get out of here.
She glanced down at the tyre.
And then what?
What was the point of any of this? What was going to happen even if she did get the wheel changed? It wasn’t like she could simply drive off an island. She was a hundred and one miles away from the mainland, in the vastness of the Atlantic.
There were no people.
There were no boats.
And no one was coming back for five months.
10
She woke on the second day to a leak. In the corner of the store, where all the candy bars had been left on the shelves, rain was coming through a patch on the ceiling.
During the night, she must have cried because tears had dried on her cheeks, like trails of frost. Hardly a minute passed without her thinking about her girls, even when she was almost asleep. Her absence would be making them frantic and confused. And even though they weren’t old enough to process it all, part of them might think Rebekah had deliberately abandoned them.
‘I haven’t, I promise,’ she muttered. ‘I wouldn’t.’
Never.
She’d spent the first part of the night in the Jeep, running the engine and the heaters, but then she’d started to worry about burning through the gas still in the tank. She had no idea if there was any left in the pumps at the station, and trying to find out would involve starting the generator, which probably meant breaking into the office on the forecourt. Until her first night here, when she’d sought shelter inside the store, she’d never broken into anywhere.
She was near-certain a rescue was coming, near-certain that Noella or Gareth had reported her missing by now and that it would be just a matter of time before the cops arrived on the island – and, yet, there was still a sliver of doubt in her, two nights on. She knew she might need a Plan B.
One way or another, she had to get home.
She had to get back to Kyra and Chloe.
In the here and now that meant fresh clothes. It meant food that wasn’t just chocolate. It meant a water source because she’d already been through four of the eight remaining soda cans left in the store. To keep warm, she needed a heater, some blankets. From what she could remember, Johnny had said there weren’t any hotels or bed-and-breakfasts or, at least, none that weren’t boarded up or abandoned long ago. Anyone who stayed for any length of time used the hostels built for the fishermen. There, she might find a mattress and a blanket.
She needed to get a proper idea of the geography of the island too, so she could find her way around: there were no maps in the store, but if she could find one, it might help her get an idea of where Johnny had gone, and where she might find food. She could have used the GPS in the Jeep, but only roads were marked on that. She needed a bigger, more detailed overview.
She moved to the window, looking out at the sky: it was raining again. She could hear the ocean, though the window was too high for her to see it.
Stay calm, she told herself.
This hell will only be temporary.
Before
After Rebekah found the cellphone in the car, she held onto it and did nothing. It was number-locked, so there was no way for her to access it, and – when Gareth wasn’t at home – she’d veer wildly between believing there must be a simple explanation for a stranger’s phone to have fallen under the front seat of their car, and being certain that her husband was lying to her. But every day of the pregnancy, she became a little more tired, and after four months, she still hadn’t done anything about it.
When her belly began to swell, she started telling herself it was better that, for now, she didn’t know. The new baby would turn their lives upside down anyway. Rebekah just wanted things to be normal.
But unanswered questions were never normal.
Eventually, something had to break.
‘I’d like to scale back the locum work for a year.’
They were standing across from one another in the kitchen, the table a mess of food and toys. It was after ten thirty at night and, on one of the countertops, Kyra’s monitor crackled with a faint static.
Gareth’s face coloured. ‘Are you shitting me?’
She watched him, saying nothing, her hand on her belly. It was now only seven weeks until her due date, and everything hurt: her back, legs, feet.
‘Absolutely not,’ Gareth said. ‘That’s insane.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’
He frowned and stepped back from her, as if Rebekah were some species he’d never seen before. His tie hung limp, like an inverted noose, and one of his shirt tails had escaped the belt at the back of his pants. It had been a few weeks since they’d stood so close to one another and, for the first time, Rebekah thought how old Gareth was looking. It was in his eyes, in the lines there, and in the colour of his skin: grey, anaemic.
‘Because,’ he said, slowly, patronizingly, ‘we can’t afford it, Bek. If you give up work, the pressure’s all on me. You get that, right? I’ve already got a hundred million problems to deal with – I don’t need money being another.’
‘We can afford it,’ she said calmly.
‘You won’t be earning, Bek.’
‘We won’t be paying for daycare. Plus I’ve saved some money.’
He frowned again. ‘What?’
‘From the locum work. I’ve set some money aside.’
‘And you didn’t bother telling me?’
‘I told you,’ she said, ‘but you obviously weren’t listening,’ and then she started loading cutlery into the dishwasher. ‘I’ve got the money to cover us for a year, so there won’t be any pressure on you. And I didn’t say I’d give up the locum work, just scale it back so I can spend some quality time with Kyra and the baby when she comes along. After a year, I’ll start searching for something permanent.’
‘As easy as that.’
‘No, it won’t be easy,
Gareth – but life isn’t easy, is it?’ She looked up at him and saw that he was nodding. But he wasn’t agreeing with her, he was seething. ‘There are no permanent positions in orthopaedics anyway – not in New York – even if I wanted one. Which I don’t. But I’ve seen jobs in Oklahoma City and Fort Worth. I even saw an orthopaedic role in North Dakota. Shall we all move up there, Gareth? Would that be better?’
‘You’re so clever, aren’t you?’
She loaded the last mug into the dishwater, snapped the door shut, and straightened. ‘No, I’m not clever,’ she said. ‘But I’d like to give this a chance. I’d like to be around for the girls as much as I can.’
His eyes were narrow, dark, resentful.
‘It won’t be easy.’
He laughed. ‘You’re damn right it won’t. While I’m busy busting my ass trying to pay the bills, you’ll be doing yoga, and shopping at Pottery Barn. This is great for you. You get to relax at home, while I’m out there d–’
‘Yeah, because bringing up kids is so easy.’
‘It’s not as hard as going to wor–’
‘Not as hard as going to work?’ She felt every muscle in her body tense. ‘Did those words seriously come out of your mouth? Okay, so why don’t I start doing locum work full-time and you can bring up the kids? You can change their nappies –’
‘Diapers.’
‘Whatever.’
‘You’ve been living here twenty years, Bek.’
‘So? So what?’
‘“Look at me, everyone. I’m British.” Please.’
She stared at him. ‘I am British, Gareth.’
‘We don’t call them “nappies” here, and you know it.’
‘What the hell difference does it make?’
‘It’s fucking irritating. That’s what difference it makes.’
She didn’t respond. It was petty and he knew it, but he was angry and trying to hurt her in whichever way he could. When they’d first got together, he’d told her his dad was Italian, and when she’d joked that Gareth Russo was the most un-Italian name she’d ever heard, he’d said his mom was from Wales. He kept telling her he loved the English accent, adored how Rebekah spoke. Taking a breath, Rebekah looked at him. ‘You support me – or you don’t.’
They glared at each other, and then he stormed out of the room.
Rebekah realized that that was probably the moment when the façade finally, irreparably, cracked for good. In the weeks before the birth, he began returning home late at night, drifting through the house and up to bed without saying a word to her. Sometimes, after Chloe arrived, he’d look in on the girls on his way through, but often he’d pass their doorway, as if he didn’t have an obligation to them – or he’d forgotten they were in the house at all.
Before long, he smelt of whisky again, of perfume, and when Chloe was a month old, Rebekah dug out the cellphone she’d found in the car: she’d hidden it inside an old jewellery box, knowing Gareth would never think to look inside. And as she held it, staring at the passcode screen, the memories came flooding back: she remembered his apology and how he’d folded so easily just as she’d been about to tear into him about her father’s funeral; and she remembered how, deep down, she’d wondered if he wasn’t apologizing for missing the start of the service but for something else.
That was when she understood there was only one way to know for sure.
She had to find a way to unlock the phone.
11
She climbed out of the store window onto the dumpster.
Her arms were so sore, it hurt to just lift them. Her palms still smelt of metal, ingrained from the wrench. She’d been squeezing so hard, had had to expend so much effort the previous night just to get the lug nuts off the wheel, that simply opening her hands this morning was agony. She hadn’t slept well either – cold, scared – and kept thinking about the clicking sound she’d heard at the gas station. It hadn’t been the branch rolling out of the shadows.
It had been something else.
She was relieved it was daytime. When she was in the store at night, at least she had a flashlight, its solitary glow bringing her some small measure of comfort. But at the gas station, the blackness had been absolute. It was why she wouldn’t go out again at night without a light.
She looked down towards the harbour, the boats gone, the parking bays vacant, and then the other way, beyond the store, to Main Street. It marked the centre of the island’s only town, although it was nowhere close to being a town, and Main Street was way too grand a title for a single sloping streak of asphalt lined with a collection of broken buildings. Her eyes went to a rust-speckled sign mounted at the bottom of the slope, the name of the town in faded black lettering.
Helena.
Whenever she saw it, a memory would spark at the back of Rebekah’s head: she’d gone to school with a girl called Helena. The two of them had been best friends all the way through primary and had spent hours at each other’s houses. But then Helena’s father had become ill, and she hadn’t been at school for a week, then a month, and the next thing anyone heard, Helena and her family had moved to Yorkshire. A few nights later, Rebekah’s father had found her crying in her room, and when he asked what the matter was, she’d said, ‘It’s my fault Helena left.’
‘No, it isn’t, honey,’ he’d replied. ‘Why would it be your fault?’
‘Because the people I like always leave me.’
She tore her eyes away from the sign, jumped off the dumpster, and made her way up to Main Street. In its heyday, Johnny had said, there were ice-cream parlours and crab shacks and diners, but all that was left now was the store Rebekah had been sleeping in, and a small bait-and-tackle place. It was barely more than a wooden shack.
This whole island is just a memory.
It was the way it looked: after Hurricane Gloria had ripped through, nothing was ever fixed properly, just repaired enough, or the damage ignored entirely. It was its isolation: three hours south of Montauk on a ferry, on the wrong side of a hundred miles of ocean. Mostly, though, it was the way it had retreated so far from the minds of mainlanders that most people had forgotten it even existed. Once the fishing season was over, it closed every year from November to March, and even when it was open, it was only ever visited by trawlermen and a few hardy academics who came to study the marine life. Why the hell would anyone come here? Rebekah wondered, as she got to the Cherokee.
Why had she?
She slid in at the wheel and pulled the door shut. I came here for Johnny, she thought. Because I loved him. Because he was my brother.
Is my brother.
Is.
She started the ignition.
He’s still alive, Bek.
In an effort to keep the rain out of the Jeep, she’d covered the broken passenger window with an old, torn tarp she’d found at the gas station, but in the store there was a roll of plastic wrap under the counter, which she was going to use instead: it was much less cumbersome, plus she could see through it.
She pulled away, heading out of Helena, and as she did, images of Kyra and Chloe formed behind her eyes – Kyra, two and a half, running after a beach ball in the backyard; Chloe, eight months, cheeks red, gumming Kyra’s old giraffe – and whatever strength Rebekah had drawn from the idea that she was being searched for, by the plans she’d been making to survive just long enough to be saved, disappeared. In its place came a profound sense of loss.
For Chloe, it might not have registered as completely, but Rebekah couldn’t bear to think of how her absence might be affecting Kyra. They hadn’t spent a night apart for two and a half years.
Don’t lose focus.
She looked out to sea, in the direction of the mainland. It was a vague grey line on the horizon, what little shape it had shrouded by a swirling mist.
Someone is coming back.
You’re going to get home.
You’re going to see your girls again.
12
The hostels that the trawlermen us
ed during the fishing season were two double-storey buildings on the north coast. They were miles apart, as if they couldn’t bear to be with one another, one facing out to the ocean, the other towards the centre of the island, where the highest point, Nuyáhshá, was.
‘Highest point’ made it sound grander than it was: for the most part, as far as Rebekah could tell, the island was virtually flat. There were a few solitary buildings scattered on the side of Nuyáhshá, but the highest point was more a mound than a peak, and almost all of the buildings were rubble.
She pulled the Cherokee alongside the first of the hostels and got out. The rain had turned to a fine drizzle, but it was still cold, and when she passed from the warmth of the car to the rawness of the morning, a thought hit her: If it’s already this cold and it’s only November, how cold will it be in January?
She pushed the idea away.
I’m not going to be here in January.
Even as the words came to her, she wasn’t sure she believed them, doubt clinging on, flickering images of still being here as the snow fell, the winds roused and winter gripped. But, again, she suppressed them, concentrating on the hostel instead. As she walked from front to back, her breath clouding in front of her face, she could see there were doors on both sides: the one at the rear was padlocked, the one at the front secured with a key.
She returned to the front and stared at the simplicity of the keyhole. It looked like a simpler task than breaking open a padlock, but she knew it wouldn’t be. She’d seen people kick doors down with ease in movies and on TV, but that had always been one of her dad’s pet hates – whenever some actor cracked open a door with a single kick, he’d say, You can’t just walk up and kick open a locked door. If it’s an exterior door, it might be reinforced, so all you’re doing is busting your ankle. You’ve got to listen to the sound it makes when you kick. If you can hear wood crack, it’s game on. If it’s a dull thud, you’ve got a problem. If it’s a dull thud and the door has a steel frame, or there’s bolts on it, you’ve got an even bigger problem. Rebekah looked at the door.