by C. L. Taylor
‘Malcolm!’ I grab hold of his hands and pull. ‘You need to get out. NOW.’
As his bum lifts off the sofa and he lurches towards me I howl with pain. My shoulder’s still in its socket but it’s unbearably painful.
‘Out!’ I shove Malcolm in the direction of the window. ‘Mel! Help him get out.’
Then, pulling my jumper up and over my nose and mouth, I venture out into the lobby and almost collapse with relief as Trevor’s brown hiking boots appear at the top of the stairs.
Chapter 51
We sit on the wet grass, panting, groaning and coughing as the rain speckles our sooty skin and the wind whips at our clothes. Everyone is awake now. Katie is sitting on Melanie’s lap, her face buried in her neck. Her soft sobs punctuate the roar of the wind and the low growl of the sea. Malcolm is sitting beside them, his shoulder pressed against his wife’s, his face turned towards the hotel. They both look wan and tired, grey with shock. Joe, lying flat on his back on the grass, stares silently up at the grey sky.
‘Trevor?’ I turn to the man sitting on his rucksack at the edge of the group. His right hand shakes so much as he lifts his water bottle to his lips that he has to use his left to steady it. ‘Are you okay?’
He continues to drink, avoiding eye contact.
‘You saved their lives.’ I gesture towards the other guests. ‘They’d be dead in their beds if it weren’t for you.’
I jump as Trevor launches the water bottle at the hotel, his face twisted with rage and frustration. It curves through the air and bounces off the wall of the hotel, spraying the patio with water. He’s thinking about Christine. After he carried Joe, fireman-style, down the stairs, he dropped him out of the window then helped Malcolm and Fiona to get out too. I waited for him to escape next but, instead of clambering through the broken window, he ran back into the lobby. The paint on the dining room door was blistering and bubbling. It was so hot I felt as though the skin was peeling from my face.
‘Trevor, no!’ I grabbed at his arm but he shook me off.
‘I need to save her.’
‘If Christine’s in there she’s already dead.’
He continued to stare at the door. I don’t think he was even aware that I was standing next to him, but my lungs were burning in my chest. Every cell in my body was screaming at my brain to get out.
‘Please.’ I pulled on his arm. ‘If you go in there you’ll die. I’d never forgive myself. Please. Please, just get out.’
He took a step closer to the door and reached a hand towards the handle.
‘Trevor, if you open that door we’ll both die.’
‘So run.’
‘No.’ I tightened my grip on his arm, then buried my face in his coat as I coughed violently, my lungs burning each time I sucked in the thick, black air. Trevor tried to shake me off but I clung on, my voice growing hoarser and weaker each time I spoke. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘I need to save her,’ he said again and took a step towards the door, dragging me with him.
I screwed my eyes tightly shut and braced myself for the inferno but, instead of being knocked off my feet by the backdraught, I was hauled back into the lounge, in Trevor’s arms. I screamed as he lifted me through the window and the rain hit my face but Trevor didn’t drop me onto the patio and turn back. He stepped through the window with me. Seconds later there was a noise like a bomb going off and the lounge was engulfed by flames.
‘Anna’s right,’ Melanie says now. ‘You saved our lives. You both did.’
She kisses Katie on the head then gets up, squinting as she walks towards us. She extends her hand as she nears Trevor.
‘Thank you doesn’t seem enough,’ she says as he pulls his hood up over his head, slides his hands under his armpits and tucks his chin into his chest. ‘It’s not enough. I’m in your debt. We both are.’
Melanie’s hand drops limply to her side. Our eyes meet and she mouths Thank you, then walks back to her niece. Trevor rocks gently to and fro, his eyes closed. It’s all too much for him; he’s blocking us out.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Malcolm shuffling to his feet. I gesture at him to stay where he is but he ignores me. His head hangs low as he drags his bare feet through the wet grass. ‘I won’t hold out my hand,’ he says gruffly as he stops in front of Trevor. ‘Because you’re a better man than me and I don’t deserve your forgiveness but I … I want to say sorry. I … I have no words … no excuses, no explanation for why I did what I did but I am deeply, deeply sorry.’
Trevor continues to rock silently and Malcolm turns to go. He manages to hold it together all the way back to Melanie and Katie but when he sits back down on the grass he wraps his hands over his head and sobs.
Trevor mumbles something I can’t make out so I lean closer. ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear that.’
He turns so sharply he makes me jump. His pupils are huge behind his misted glasses and his eyes dart everywhere but in my direction.
‘David,’ he says under his breath.
‘What about David?’
‘I saw him die.’
For a second, I have no idea what he’s talking about but then I remember. He went for a walk after breakfast, just before David’s heart attack.
‘You were outside, weren’t you?’ I say softly. ‘You watched Christine giving him CPR.’
He makes a low groaning sound and screws his eyes tightly shut.
‘I’ll make sure you get help, Trevor. When we get back to the mainland.’
‘Will you?’
‘Sorry?’
He shoots me a swift sideways glance. ‘Will you get help too?’
My throat tightens and I stare up at the sky, blinking away the tears that prick at my eyes. Now I’m the one who can’t speak.
I expected there to be a discussion when I announced that I was going to attempt to drive the Land Rover across the island; that one of the men would insist on coming with me. Other than Joe wearily shaking his head, no one reacts. The fire and the Valium have taken the fight out of them. All they can do is sit and stare as the hotel burns.
Damp air fills my lungs and the wind whips my hair from my face as I run away from the hotel, my hoody clinging to my skin and my wet trainers slapping on the patio slabs. I skid and nearly go over on my ankle as something darts out from the bushes and zips across my path but I don’t stop to check on the cat. Instead I continue to run across the driveway, my feet crunching on the gravel, each breath getting shorter and shallower with each step. I slow as I approach the Land Rover and double over, coughing up horrible black lumps of phlegm. When I force myself upright again, my right shoulder throbs so much that I almost throw up, but desperation forces me on and I open the driver’s side door. My stomach sinks as I fit the keys in the ignition, start the engine and pull away. Joe and Malcolm were right about the petrol gauge: this car’s running on fumes, but if I can get it across the river I’ll walk all the way to the other side of the island if I have to.
I check the rear-view mirror as the car rolls down the driveway. In the few short minutes since I left the others, fire has engulfed most of the hotel. Thick black smokes pours through the window frames, flames dancing where once there was glass. The further away I drive, the more my breathing slows and, when the hotel finally disappears from sight, I let out a long, slow sigh of relief. Christine started the fire, there’s no doubt in my mind about that, and she took the front door key so we’d all burn to death. But where did she go? I half expected to find the Land Rover gone but, without the key, there was no way she could start it. Gordon’s cottage then? Is she hiding in there, or in the grounds of the hotel? What was her plan – to watch the hotel burn, wait for help to arrive then stumble out of the bushes crying that she was the only survivor? If she has been hiding out she’ll have seen us escape and me leave. Have I abandoned the others while they’re still in danger? The thought makes my breath catch in my throat. No, there’s no way she’d try something with them all grouped together and co
nscious. She’d continue the charade, make out she’d been for an early morning stroll or something. The thought should calm me but the uneasy feeling in my stomach doesn’t fade. Something’s been rankling at me since I got into the car, something that’s not sitting right, but I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is.
I lean back into my seat and, as the river draws closer, I check the fuel gauge again. It hasn’t moved. I read somewhere that a car can run for between thirty and a hundred miles on an empty tank but I’ve got no idea whether that’s true or not, or how far the car has already travelled. The river doesn’t look as fearsome as it did yesterday but I’m still going to have to gun the car to get across it. I tentatively roll my shoulder back and forth. It aches but it’s not unbearable. If I do end up in the water, the last thing I’ll be thinking about is whether it hurts.
I move down a gear as I approach the river and then it hits me, the thing that’s been bothering me. The driver’s side door opened when I pulled on the handle. Joe hadn’t locked it after our failed river crossing. Instinctively I glance up at the rear-view mirror.
And Christine stares back.
She stares at me wordlessly, her cold blue eyes glittering in the mirror. I am frozen by fear. With the windscreen in front of me, Christine in the back seat and the seat belt strapping me in place there is nowhere I can run to, nowhere to hide. It’s just me, Christine and this car. It’s the only weapon I’ve got.
‘Hello, Anna, I’m so glad you—’ Christine begins but her sentence turns into a scream as I yank the steering wheel round to the left and the tyres slip on the muddy track. I keep my foot on the accelerator and lean my weight into the steering wheel, swinging the car round in a complete U-turn.
I twist round in my seat as I power the Land Rover back up the hill and away from the river. Christine hasn’t got her seat belt on. She’s clinging on to the door handle with one hand and reaching into the pocket of her hoody with the other.
‘Take your hand out of your pocket.’ I floor the accelerator, forcing us both to sit back in our seats.
‘I don’t know what you—’
‘TAKE YOUR HAND OUT OF YOUR POCKET.’
‘I’m not doing—’
‘It was you. You followed me, leaving me messages telling me to sleep.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
The green-brown of the fields flash past in a blur and the hotel looms on the horizon like a fiery beacon.
‘Why did you come after me?’
‘I didn’t come after anyone.’ She bounces up and down in her seat as I turn off the track and power the car along the grass and past the cottage. ‘Anna, please!’ she screeches. ‘You’re going to kill us both.’
‘Isn’t that what you want? You burned the hotel down.’
‘It wasn’t me. I swear. I woke up and – Anna, please. Slow down.’
The car rumbles and bounces along the grass and I change gear from third to fourth. Five hundred metres until the edge of the cliff and the blue-grey sea that stretches into the sky. My heart is thundering in my chest and my palms are damp but my mind is clear.
‘Why did you want to kill me, Christine? Because of Freddy? Did Steve tell you to come after me?’
‘No!’ she screams. ‘I don’t know who that is. Anna, you’ve got this all wrong.’
‘You wanted to punish me, didn’t you?’
Three hundred metres. Frightened gulls launch themselves into the air and wheel around on the air streams, crying silently, their voices eclipsed by the roar of the engine.
‘How dare I live when everyone else died? Is that what you thought?’
Christine doesn’t reply; she’s found her own weapon, the syringe she’s just pulled out of her pocket.
I laugh – a strange, manic sound I don’t recognise, an explosion of anger and exhilaration. I was right. She was behind it all. She tried to kill me and she’s not going to stop until I’m dead. But I’m not afraid any more. I am completely disconnected from my feelings. The sun has edged its way over the horizon, striping the sky with red, gold and pink. It’s beautiful. The most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen.
‘You wanted to punish me,’ I say as the white-haired woman in the back seat stares at me, eyes narrowed. ‘But I did that all by myself.’
I look back at the light, dancing on the sea, the sky striped like a scarf and the warm orange glow of the sun. I can’t imagine never seeing that again. Or feeling the wind on my face and salt on my lips. I can’t imagine being dead.
One hundred metres.
Christine clings to the headrest of the front passenger seat as she gets to her feet, the syringe held aloft in her right hand. She lunges at me, aiming for my neck. ‘Don’t be scared, Anna.’
‘I’m not,’ I say as I bend away from her and slam on the brakes.
Chapter 52
Christine
I thought I was done, that there were no more souls to save, that I could retire after a lifetime of nursing and caring and close the door on other people’s pain, guilt and regret. And then the car crash happened.
I knew it was serious when I was asked to leave Critical Care to help out in A&E for a while; not an unusual request in the current short-staffed climate and I was happy to step in. What I didn’t expect was for it to be so terribly distressing.
When you work at a hospital there’s always a possibility you might come across a patient you know, but no nurse, no grandmother, wants to see the battered, broken body of her grandchild wheeled into A&E. I didn’t recognise Mohammed at first, his face was so bloodied and swollen, but when I looked at his chart my blood ran cold. I’ve never cried at work, not in forty-six years, but I couldn’t bear to look at him and I ran to the toilet and cried bitter tears. When the door squeaked, signalling that I was no longer alone, I dabbed at my cheeks and regained my composure, forcing myself to smile brightly at a junior nurse as she washed her hands. Later, when Carol and Ali came to visit Mohammed I was the picture of professionalism again. I stood at the end of the bed, smiling and nodding as my daughter held her son’s hand and sobbed loudly, seemingly oblivious to the pain in his eyes. Ali patted Carol’s back, looking everywhere but at his son’s broken legs.
Shortly afterwards I had to return to Critical Care and it was there that I learned from Becca Porter, a competent if naive young nurse, that the young woman in bed two had been driving the car that had crippled my grandson and killed two others. My chest swelled with pity for Anna Willis. Asleep since her operation, she had no idea of her colleagues’ fates. How would she feel, I wondered, when she woke up and discovered the truth? Devastated, that’s how. Broken. Guilty. Haunted. She’d blame herself for what had happened for the rest of her life. There was no way I could let another human being suffer like that. Sadly, I wasn’t able to do more than nick her skin with the injection before I was interrupted by her boyfriend and I didn’t get the chance again.
After Mohammed was transferred to Neuro Intensive Care I sat with him as often as I was able, listening as he poured out his soul. It was distressing, seeing him in so much anguish, and I felt impotent rage at my inability to diminish it. But then something unexpected happened. When I talked to my grandson about the accident and asked him if he’d like to see Anna he said no. He didn’t want to see her, he wanted her dead.
It was a sign. I had been wondering how I’d spend my retirement and now I had a purpose. Everyone else I’d helped was either comatose or unconscious but Anna Willis was very much awake. A new challenge but one that I relished. I would be her guiding light.
Something miraculous happens to a woman after she passes the menopause and abandons hair dye and embraces her natural colour and middle-aged spread. Without admiring or curious eyes cast in her direction, her grey hair and lined skin help her blend into her contemporaries and she disappears. Poof! The invisible woman. No cape or superpowers required. I found it disconcerting initially. Not because I missed the admiring glances of men – I’d never be
en an attractive young woman; handsome, maybe; striking, if you were being kind – but because I felt as though I’d been relegated to a different class, a less worthy one where I was barged in front of in queues, ignored by shopkeepers and patronised by telemarketers. I was still a nurse, a professional, but I was being shoved out of the way by society because of the simple fact that I’d aged. After Mohammed’s accident, I put a lid on my sadness and embraced my invisibility. I followed Anna without once being seen. I mingled with the mourners at the funeral, hid in plain sight in the crowd outside the courthouse and wandered through the supermarket with a basket over my arm and an innocuous expression on my face. No one gave a second look to the white-haired woman wandering through the streets of North London at five o’clock in the morning as I delivered my third message to Anna by tucking it under the windscreen wiper of her car. I thought my messages would bring her comfort. That I wouldn’t have to help her to sleep and she’d make the decision to rid herself of her guilt and pain by ending her own life. But no, she struggled on, looking more pinched and pained each time I saw her. It hurt my heart, knowing I’d failed her.
It took me a little while to realise that Anna had moved out from the flat she shared with her boyfriend (he, the interrupter) and I’ll admit I felt a fleeting stab of panic when I realised I had no idea where she might be, but then dear Becca Porter supplied me with Anna’s next of kin details, as well as her home address, and I made a phone call.
Anna’s mother was wary when I rang to ask how her daughter was doing. I didn’t give my name. I’m not that foolish. But her uncertainty turned to gratitude when I explained that I was a nurse who’d looked after her daughter at the hospital and that it was a courtesy call to check that she wasn’t suffering any side effects from her medication. Imagine my surprise when she told me that not only was Anna fully recovered but she’d also moved to the Isle of Rum to take a job at the island’s only hotel.