The Harder They Fall

by Debbie McGowan

  Friday morning was a little brighter, and everyone headed off to the village, to hire boats on the marina, which sounded a lot more glamorous than it was in reality, as what they ended up with were brightly-coloured, numbered pedalos, in which they spent more time going round in circles and almost colliding with each other, than racing to the island in the middle of the lake, which was what they were trying to do. The entire adult contingent blamed their fuzzy heads, from the previous day’s extended drinking session, and refused to surrender their hopes for victory, even though the weather looked set to turn again soon. Inevitably, it was Dan and Adele who made it to the island first, closely followed by Andy and Shaunna. Jess and Kris were in third place, although it had taken them a further twenty minutes to get there, with the Browns giving up when they crashed into a moored yacht. Josh and George didn’t even look as if they were trying to compete (although they were), and took a strategic early retirement, following Eleanor and James back to the jetty, where they ate ice-creams and watched as the others made their higgledy-piggledy voyage back to shore. Their communal failure to steer their vessels didn’t detract from the enjoyment of the experience though, and by the time they disembarked, their sides were aching from laughing, a situation made profoundly worse when Shaunna remarked that it gave a whole new meaning to their once overly utilised nickname of ‘The Circle’. Needless to say, they were stiff-legged and still feeling too toxic to do much in the way of drinking that evening, so all retired early in order to make the most of their last two full days in Wales.

  Andy was sweating, and his hands were shaking so much that he could barely keep a grip on the smooth steel karabiner, let alone clip it to the harness. And he could afford to surrender. After all, he reasoned, he’d stacked up a few achievements this week: hang gliding and skysurfing on Wednesday, a day off to recover from concussion on Thursday, another day off to recover from a hangover and paddle around a lake on Friday, and even though Dan came first, it was still the best holiday ever, because he was getting over Jess. Yes, he was enjoying every minute, whereas she appeared, by and large, to be having the exact opposite experience, and he was kind of pleased about that, but was too nice a guy to gloat that her misery was of her own making.

  So, today was the day. He was going bungee jumping, over whitewater, and this one was on his own. Dan had been up for everything else, and was only too happy to drive him here, but there was no way on earth they were attaching that harness to him and dangling him from a bridge. Adele had also complained, entirely reasonably, that he had left her to look after little Shaunna for most of the week, although the truth was that James and Eleanor had done more than their fair share of babysitting. Nevertheless, he’d strapped his daughter into the car, to accompany him in delivering her crazy and much idolised uncle to his madcap adventure for the day, leaving Adele free to head off with grown-up Shaunna on the weekly bus to the nearest town. It was a two hour ride each way, with almost six hours to see the sights in between, the bus picking them up at a quarter to nine in the morning, and set to return them at seven that evening. So far they’d visited a tea room and a traditional sweet shop and spent a small fortune in each, their bags now laden with pear drops, cola cubes and all kinds of other sugar-based delicacies they hadn’t much liked in their youth, but were deliciously loaded with nostalgia. They stopped off at a couple of fashion boutiques, mostly so Adele could criticise the dreadfully outdated lines on display, and then crunched their way along the rest of the high street, towards the tiny shopping precinct and hopefully lunch.

  Kris returned from walking the dog and scrubbed his hands vigorously in order to remove the sticky sap from the various sticks and cones Casper had retrieved for him, not that he’d thrown them in the first place. Contrary to what Shaunna had said, he was still enjoying being out in the wilderness, so to speak, and was also loving the fact that they had a little longer left before they went home. The same, alas, could not be said for some of his cabinmates, or one of them in particular, for Jess had spent the past couple of days making, at best, half-hearted attempts to join in with barbecues and nights in the hot tub, her mind elsewhere. Even now, she was once again standing on their balcony, her phone at her ear and a worried expression on her face. She moved her phone away, checked the screen and returned it to her ear. Kris was curious to know what it was all about, and armed himself with a magazine, under the guise of sitting outside to read. Jess flashed a brief smile at him and turned away. He put his feet up on the chair opposite and opened a page at random, paying very little attention to what he was reading. Jess put her phone in her pocket and sighed. She ambled over to where Kris was sitting and perched on the edge of a chair. Evidently, she wanted him to ask, so what else could he do?

  “Everything all right?”

  “Ha ha. No,” she said tearfully. “I think I might have done a really stupid thing.”

  “OK. What’s that then?” He asked the question almost sarcastically, because what he was expecting to hear was some almighty confession of how she’d made a dreadful mistake in spending all her time and energy on Rob, at the expense of Eleanor’s wedding celebrations, and even most of this holiday.

  “You know I told you about Rob’s heart condition, and that he was selling his bike to pay for the surgery?”

  “Yes?” He glanced up from the magazine he wasn’t reading.

  “Well, he did sell the bike, apparently.”

  “Oh, that’s good. So now he can have the operation?”

  “Err, the thing is, I received a phone call from his boss yesterday. Or should I say, ex-boss? He was having a problem getting hold of Rob—Lord knows how he got my number, but anyway, the bike wasn’t his. It belonged to his boss. And now he’s reported it stolen, and says he thinks Rob stole it.”

  “What?” Kris looked at her in disbelief. It was the same expression she imagined she’d had when the owner of the motorcycle garage called yesterday to tell her.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of him ever since, but he’s not answering his phone.”

  “Are you sure you’ve got all the facts? Maybe it’s just a coincidence, and the bike was stolen by someone else.”

  “I don’t know. I checked what make the bike was, and it’s definitely the one Rob showed me. But he said it was his.”

  “Right.” Kris thought for a moment. “Do you think he stole it to pay for the surgery?”

  Jess didn’t answer. Her lip was trembling and she was ready to burst into tears. Kris put the magazine down and moved his chair closer.

  “Jess? What’s happened?”

  She let out a couple of sobs and got up, putting her hand out to distance herself from him.

  “Rob told me the sale fell through on the bike. The guy who was supposed to come on Monday never showed.”

  Kris frowned. “Hang on a second. You just said he sold the bike.”

  “His boss said he sold the bike, which wasn’t his to sell. He told me he didn’t. And he sounded so upset…” At this point she trailed off and started to cry again, so completely inconsolable that if the sounds she was making were real words, he had no chance of deciphering them. He went inside to get her a glass of water, waiting for Josh to finish filling the kettle.

  “Bugger!” Josh said, shaking the excess water from his hands. In his haste to get out of Kris’s way, he’d turned the tap full on, forgetting the water pressure here was stronger than at home. Now his t-shirt was totally drenched and it was his last clean one. He went to the bedroom, grabbed a jumper and turned towards the wall to change.

  “Had an accident?” George asked.

  “Yeah. Bloody tap. I’m going to have to do some laundry. That’s my last clean top.”

  “It’ll dry.”

  “And in the mean time?”

  “I’ve got a couple spare, if you want to borrow one.”

  “Thanks, but I prefer long sleeves.”

  “But you only wear them in bed. Does it matter?”

  Josh glowered at him. “
It matters to me! Is that not enough?” George looked a little hurt by his reaction, and Josh immediately softened. “We don’t all have perfect biceps, you know.”

  “Like anyone’s going to be looking when you’re in bed!”

  “You might.”

  “I might, but then I think you’re perfect anyway.” Like Josh, he was trying to gloss over this latest outburst and they each appreciated the other’s effort enough to sustain the pretence.

  “Excuse me while I go and throw up,” Josh teased, leaving the room again in order to make the coffee. George threw a pillow at him and it hit the edge of the door. Josh peered back through the gap.

  “Missed,” he grinned and dodged out of the way of another well-aimed shot. The kettle hadn’t quite boiled yet, and as he waited he heard Kris and Jess talking outside. He moved closer to the partly open French doors to listen, catching the very end of what Jess was saying.

  “…no surgery without the money, and without selling the bike, he wouldn’t have the money, so I lent it to him.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Yeah. And that was the last I heard from him.”

  “Oh, Jess,” Kris said. She started to cry and the kettle clicked. Josh crept away from the doors and made the coffee, stirring the cups as quietly as he could, in case there was more to follow, but other than the sound of Jess sobbing her heart out, there was nothing. He took the coffee back to the bedroom and explained what he had heard.

  “Hmm. I’m intrigued now,” George said. “I think it’s time we found out what’s going on.”

  “How?”

  “If we can get Kris on his own—I bet he knows everything.”

  “Good idea. As soon as I’ve drunk my coffee.”

  George tutted. Josh was well and truly back on the full caffeine diet this week: he didn’t seem to be suffering so much for it at night, but during the daytimes he was restless and agitated, stressing out over silly things, like getting his shirt wet.

  “I’m also thinking,” George said, crawling across the bed and putting his head in Josh’s lap, “maybe we should go and commandeer the hot tub.” Josh looked down at him, tracing his finger across that mischievous smile.

  “You know that line we talked about?”

  “Yes. And have I done anything to breach it all week?”

  “No, you haven’t. That’s true.”

  “In fact, I quite like the whole tightrope-walk aspect of it. Not that I’m suggesting we get up to anything. It’s just that everyone next-door’s out, and I get the feeling that you’ve wanted to go in it all week, but felt a bit shy about stripping off in front of people.” He felt Josh’s leg muscles tense under his head. “Hey. It was only a suggestion.”

  “I know,” Josh said, “and you’re so right. I really do want to go in the hot tub, but I just can’t.”

  “Does it have anything to do with ‘the dream’?”

  “No! That’s fear of heights, if it’s anything at all.”

  “Your scrawny biceps then?”

  “I didn’t say they were scrawny!”

  “True. But you do keep yourself covered up,” George argued gently. He could feel Josh mentally pulling away from him.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “and you’re wrong.” He eased his legs out and sat on the edge of the bed with his back turned.

  “I’m not thinking anything.” George put his hand on Josh’s shoulder and he shrugged it away. “Don’t shut me out.”

  “This isn’t me shutting you out. This is me getting angry at having to justify who I am.”

  “No, you’re misinterpreting what I said.”

  “Am I? Don’t you think I’ve been through this a hundred times before?” Josh was up on his feet and pacing the short expanse of floor between the door and the bed. “Maybe he was abused as a child. Maybe it was because his mother died when he was so young. Maybe it was the lack of a father figure. Maybe this, maybe fucking that. There is no reason for it. It’s just the way I am, so stop trying to fix me!” He left the room, slamming the door behind him, and locked himself in the bathroom, leaving George sitting on the bed, alone and confused.

  Andy was strapped into the bungee harness, balanced on the rail along the side of the bridge, the uneven banks of the river giving him vertigo and a touch of cold feet. The instructor was splitting his attention between watching him and repeating his explanation of the process to the next jumper. Dan was standing a short distance away, with little Shaunna perched on his shoulders.

  “Addeeeee!” she shouted, bouncing up and down and grabbing her dad’s ears.

  “Hurry up, bro. I’m suffering here,” Dan complained. He could see Andy was scared, but he’d also seen him bottle it before and knew that if he didn’t do it now, then they’d be back tomorrow, and the day after if necessary, until he finally found the nerve. “You’ve jumped out of planes and off mountain tops without a safety harness. This is nothing!”

  Andy glanced down again and felt himself go dizzy. Dan was right. He had done all those things, and technically they were of far greater peril than this, yet somehow the prospect of plunging a hundred feet down into the rock-strewn rapids below, should his bungee cord snap, was infinitely more terrifying. However, failure was definitely not on his agenda for this holiday, and with this thought firmly planted in his mind, he fell forward and tucked in his toes, keeping his arms in a swan dive and falling, falling, the fast-flowing river rising up to meet him at an ever-quickening speed. For a split-second he felt icy water slicing at his fingers, and then he was lurching back up, up, his stomach barely arriving before he fell again, then up, and finally down once more, until he was bobbing like a badly wound yo-yo. He didn’t know what all the fuss was about.

  Driving back to the cabins, little Shaunna couldn’t get enough of her Uncle Andy, shouting his name over and again, pulling at an elasticated toggle on his sleeve and releasing it, as if she understood that the principle was the same. He was still buzzing with adrenaline, because the other things he’d done this week were fun, but he’d done them before. He remembered now: it was never about the quest itself, but the journey to get there, which was why he’d hated being stuck in Kathmandu so much. All of the preparation and planning for the trip: that was the part he loved, just like standing on that rail, waiting to dive off the edge of the bridge.

  Dan observed his brother through the rear view mirror, so completely enthralled by his niece and the attention she was lavishing on him. It was the first time he’d seen him look happy since they left for Nepal, and a sign that his heart was on the road to recovery.

  Back at base camp, Kris had given Jess a large vodka to steady her nerves, not that he thought alcohol was a particularly effective medicine, but at least she’d stopped crying and had permitted him to explain the full story to George, as she had conveyed it to him. Josh had waited until their room was vacant before he unlocked the bathroom door, and was now sitting on the bed, rehearsing an apology for his earlier irrationality. A short while later, he made his way outside, and sat down next to George, listening intently as Kris explained what Jess had done, while she sat staring into the depths of her vodka. George glanced sideways and he met the glance briefly, hoping it would be enough to convey how dreadfully sorry he was. George hooked his fingers through Josh’s and continued to listen.

  As Kris reached the end of his narration, Dan and Andy pulled up outside their cabin. Jess knocked back the rest of the vodka and went to get a top-up.

  “So,” George said, by means of clarifying what he’d heard, “Rob told her he needed the money to pay for an operation, she lent it to him and now she can’t get hold of him.”

  “That’s the long and short of it.”

  “He’s done a runner.”

  “I don’t know. A reunion is one hell of a length to go to just to prime your victim. Maybe he does have a heart condition and something’s happened to him, which is how she’s interpreting it.”

  “Well, there’s one way to f
ind out,” Josh said, as Eleanor came up the steps to their cabin, with James. He was all set to fill her in and get her professional opinion, but he didn’t get that far. There was something very wrong; he could see it in her face.

  “Ellie? What’s happened?”

  “Oliver’s gone missing. He was playing outside on the balcony, and I called him in for dinner, but he didn’t answer. I just thought he was having one of his sulks.”

  “We don’t know how long he’s been gone,” James said. He was operating on automatic, his face drawn, yet expressionless.

  “Could he have gone off to play somewhere? He really likes the playground,” George suggested. Eleanor shook her head.

  “We’ve already checked and he’s not there. Some older boys who were playing with him the other day said they haven’t seen him either.” Eleanor’s voice was rising in panic. Josh put his arm around her and led her over to the sofa.

  “Don’t worry. He can’t have gone too far. When did you last see him?”

  “About two hours ago,” James told him.

  “Presumably you’ve called the police?”

  “They’re on their way, but the nearest station is in the town. It will be dark before they get here.”

  “Right,” George said decisively. “We need to organise ourselves into search parties. Jess, go and tell Dan and Andy what’s going on, and ask Dan to bring the map Adele printed.”