She was cold, and her feet ached. It was intolerable: the standing, the uncertainty, the sense that she had got stuck somehow and she couldn’t work out how to free herself. Was this what old and out-of-date felt like? Standing on a cliff edge knowing something important was going on around you but with no way to get to it?
Footsteps sounded behind her.
‘Here.’ Alastair shoved the flask at her. ‘Coffee. The good stuff, not instant.’
‘I thought meals weren’t provided?’
‘Ain’t a meal. It’s coffee.’
Vivian was grateful for it. Alastair helped her pour and she sipped as she considered him. She couldn’t be sure but there were definitely fewer ragged edges to his clothes today and he’d tried shaving. Unsuccessfully.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, Alastair.’ Vivian sighed. ‘Absolutely nothing. I’m not waiting for anything because nothing is coming. I couldn’t find a boat. And anyway, if I had, what was I going to do? I’m nearly seventy. Did I think I could ride in, a geriatric in a rowboat, and save the day?’
She stared at the island. ‘What is happening to her over there? What are they doing? You see the smoke, don’t you? You heard that sound?’
Alastair nodded. They both watched the smudge of grey as it funnelled down to a point hidden by the island’s hills.
‘This is like one of those awful anxiety dreams you get when you’re a parent. You have to get to your child but you can’t, no matter how hard you try, or how many roads you go down, and then you wake up in a cold sweat, relieved it was all a dream. Except I’ve been trying to wake up for bloody days.’
He poured her another cup of coffee; the wind was getting in through the gaps of her coat and making her shiver.
‘I’ve summoned the troops of course.’
‘Army?’ He frowned.
‘Nearly.’ She smiled. ‘I’m part of a … well, we jokingly call ourselves The Menopausal Army. Of course, that joke’s a bit past its sell-by date, now. We’re well out of the menopause. But we raise awareness on issues we think are important. People call us conspiracy theorists. I prefer the term “activist”.’
‘Menopausal Army …’ Alastair chuckled, then said more seriously, ‘But maybe we should call the police? Seems like this ’as become somethin’ they should deal with …’
Vivian shrugged. ‘I have a horrible feeling that it doesn’t matter who comes, or how many. By that time, it’ll all be over. It’ll be too late.’
It felt like the day before getting sick, Vivian thought, when you weren’t sick yet, but you could feel it developing: the hot rasp in the back of the throat, the thirst, the headache building behind your eyes. There was nothing to do but wait for the universe to pummel her.
So, this is where she would be when it came.
‘Gotta boat, if you want it.’
Vivian’s gasp hitched in her throat.
‘What?’ she whispered.
‘Gotta boat,’ Alastair repeated, not looking at her but out towards the island. ‘Didn’t tell you about it before, when you asked, but … well, I’ve been doing some thinking since then. I’m done with this place. I likes the quiet but there’s quiet and there’s dead. Time to move on.’
Vivian was too scared to breathe.
‘Your girl,’ he said quietly, ‘I remember her. I remember them all. They looked … tired. And sad. All of ’em. I took the money because it was offered and they were a big, important business, they told me. But now? Your girl. Flames and smoke.’ He paused and stared at the horizon. ‘You wouldn’t know because everyone’s gone now but this used to be a good place once, a happy place. It shouldn’t be this.’
He screwed the cap back on the flask and cleared his throat.
‘I think I can get a boat. If you want to get there, we can try.’
Emptiness all around her: sea, sky, land for miles.
‘I do,’ Vivian breathed. ‘I want to get there.’
‘Right then.’
He stalked off and Vivian knew she would need to hurry after him. But she wanted to hold this moment in her head, this fluttering of hope once more, this feeling that she could still do something, she could still ride to the rescue of her little girl.
Two geriatrics in a rowboat.
Because that other feeling was still there, wasn’t it? The sick feverish belch of something horrific lying in wait for her. It was coming. No matter what she did, how much she scurried around, how many people she roped into her cause, it was always there. She hadn’t ever deserved a daughter like Thea; she’d got lucky.
And her luck was about to run out.
Chapter 59
The worst part was leaving Rosie.
They wrapped her in monk-made blankets, closed her eyes and smoothed her hair.
Another body to leave behind.
Then they dragged away the things they’d piled in front of the door as a barricade and both put their hands over the doorknob, looking at each other one final time.
‘Ready?’
‘No.’ It was the first word she’d spoken since Rosie had died. ‘Wait.’ She picked up one of the cuddly monks from a nearby shelf, blew the dust from it and placed it gently in the crook of Rosie’s arm.
They pushed the door open into a harsh, white world.
The air scoured Thea’s eyeballs, which was good because they needed it. She took a deep breath and blinked at the snow and a sky so blue it looked like a glass bowl over them. Time had slipped away from Thea since she had left the lighthouse, but the daylight had a freshness to it that felt like morning. The gift shop had swallowed a whole evening. A day had gone past. Only a day.
They walked, quickly, to the cover provided by the copse of trees, Thea taking unsteady, drunken steps. Weirdly, she’d felt more awake in the dim light of the gift shop. Out here, the daylight seared its way through her eyes and burned a headache into her temples. A part of her wanted to slump into the snow and sleep until the white covered her up completely. She stabbed the point of the scissors into her palm and kept walking.
Despite thinking of them back at the Centre, there had been no time to get boots or warmer clothes and Thea’s feet were soon soggy and freezing again. At any moment she anticipated the whine of a bullet zinging past her ear, and then another into her spine where she’d fall, like an animal tracked in the woods, bleeding out and terrified until someone came to cut her throat.
No, no, no. No thinking of things like that. Think of the plan. It was ambitious to call it a plan but it was all they had. Rory and the other sleep techs had seen a map of the island at their own orientation day where all the no-go areas had been pointed out.
‘Just around from the main beach is a cove, not a beach, kind of like a rocky outcrop and a cave where a boat could, in theory, be hidden from view. Launching it would be tricky though because of the rocks.’
They would launch it. It wouldn’t be the hardest thing she’d had to do over the last few days. The boat would take them to land and they would escape. They would make it. The universe owed them that.
Amongst the trees, feeling safer even though they probably weren’t, they both took a second or so to look back at the Sleep Centre. Framed by arching branches, it took on a sci-fi gothic all of its own. It was a smoking husk, the two huge spheres now half destroyed, charred streaks running down their curves, their insides spilled out onto the snow where the explosions had thrown them. Thea had been here a few weeks ago. She had taken this path with Harriet, but it had been night then and she had been full of … trepidation, yes, but also excitement. Because this place had held a promise for her then, a nebulous hard-to-believe promise that she could be fixed, that she could live the kind of life she imagined others lived: bright-eyed and energetic.
‘I’ve been hallucinating,’ she confessed.
Rory turned to her.
‘Twice, I think. I refused Delores’s trial but … well, there was at least a week wearing those bloody discs where
I was waiting for Rosie to be well enough to move … anything could have been tested on me in that time and I think, maybe, it was …’
No whirring black objects appeared in the sky, but she gazed at it anyway because it was easier than looking at Rory.
‘I didn’t sleep. And I felt fine.’ She paused and chewed on her lip. ‘And we know what happens after the hallucinating …’
Blank stare. Drool.
Rory took a moment before he said anything. ‘You probably need to just get some sleep.’
And it was exactly what she’d wanted him to say. Lie, if he had to. Each time she blinked she was afraid that the blink would go on for far too long.
They trudged through the wood towards the beach, but at least they trudged together. Thea liked the way the trees closed in around them, not just because their branches blocked out much of the sky, and what could be flying in it, but because they felt friendly. Soft peeling bark and cushiony velour moss – not hard-edged concrete, glass that shattered too easily and a glossy plastic sheen that could close over a person’s face.
Their steps were muffled by the snow.
They would make it, Thea thought again, even though their steps were leaving a clear and easily trackable print right from the door of the gift shop.
She was aware she should say something to Rory. He was walking beside her and hadn’t said much since the gift shop where they had sat side by side, shell-shocked.
‘All I could think about was you.’
That was something that needed a reply, wasn’t it? The thing was, Thea couldn’t even begin to think what her response to that should be. She had spent much of her sleep-deprived life a dead tree, hollowed out and brittle, the nothingness at her heart grown around by fragile, flaky layers. But she had seen pictures of fires inside those hollowed-out trees, a deep, burning orange.
It could happen.
‘The beach.’ Rory put an arm out to stop her. She’d been so engrossed in her own thoughts she hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings. They hid behind one of the last trees before the copse gave way to the shore.
There were people milling about on the beach, wrapped up in padded coats and thick boots that made Thea’s feet throb with jealousy. A small boat, no bigger than the one that had brought Thea to the island all those weeks ago, was moored nearby.
‘But, I don’t think everyone is here yet. We can’t leave!’
That was a voice she recognized. She peered around the tree at Harriet only a few metres away from her, tucked up in a coat that was more like a duvet and gesticulating at a man with his back to them, dressed in black outdoor gear with a crackling walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.
‘Ma’am. We have orders. We only have a few people left to evacuate and we’d like to do it while we’ve got the weather with us.’
‘But, the explosions! We all heard them—’
‘Controlled explosions. The building is unsafe. Everyone will be accounted for and, anyway, that is not your concern—’
‘But …’ Harriet sighed and looked around her, as if searching for help in her argument, shifting her weight from foot to foot, undecidedly.
Instead of seeing help, however, what she saw in its place was Thea.
Chapter 60
The world did not freeze whilst the two women stared at each other because that is not what worlds do.
Harriet didn’t gasp, or point; she didn’t even raise her eyebrows. Thea held herself very still, fixed by Harriet’s gaze, a pinned butterfly too exhausted to even wriggle.
Perhaps Harriet’s eyes widened a little, perhaps she stared for a little too long – whatever the reason, the man with his back to them shifted and half-turned his head.
‘Ms Stowe? Are you all right?’
There was only Harriet and Thea and the look stretching between them like putty, binding them. The rest of the beach, Rory, the boat – all of that was just scenery.
‘I …’
Thea was aware of the cold snow she was kneeling in, how her kneecaps had numbed. She was aware of Rory breathing next to her and the wrinkled bark of the tree that had not hid her well enough.
Harriet snapped her gaze back to the black-clad man. ‘I’m fine.’
Thea pressed her forehead against the crumbling bark of the tree and felt her heartbeat thud in her throat.
The man turned and peered into the trees. ‘You looked as if you’d seen something,’ he said suspiciously.
Thea darted out of sight.
‘What? No. I didn’t see anything …’
There was a pause big enough to contain a whole life. Rory was pale, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cold.
She heard snow crunch and squeak as footsteps moved closer to them.
‘Wait!’ Thea could hear the panic in Harriet’s voice. ‘I think it was a … a fox or … something …’
‘This is an island, Ms Stowe. There aren’t any foxes on here. Unless they swam across.’
More crunching. Closer again.
‘No! No, of course not! My imagination, been here too long, probably. I should get on the boat, yes? Like you said?’
But the crunching continued, far too loud, far too close and then, suddenly, there he was, near enough for Thea to see the light blinking on his walkie-talkie and the grey in his hair, near enough to stretch out and grab his leg. He had his back to them. Harriet came floundering behind, snow puffing up around her steps.
‘Over there!’ She pointed in the opposite direction to Thea. ‘That’s where I was looking. Not that there’s anything there. I’m just spooked by this place. Shouldn’t we go back?’
The words tumbled from her too quickly, too loudly. Thea couldn’t see the man’s face, but she imagined he was eyeing her with a frown.
A few electrical signals from brain to neck muscle, a small movement of the head as it turned; that would be all it would take from this man. He would find her and Rory and that would be it. Whatever “it” turned out to be. Thea suspected it did not involve a trip back to the mainland and a warm drink.
But, miraculously, the man headed over to where Harriet pointed. Whilst he was walking the few steps away, Harriet turned to Thea, two hectic spots of red on her cheeks, her eyes huge, the panic thrumming off her as if she was a badly played theremin.
That’s when Thea saw their tracks, fresh trails in the snow, leading right to them.
Harriet saw them too and, checking that the man wasn’t looking, stumbled over to them, dragging her feet and taking great gouges out of the snow as the man bent to inspect something further away.
They could hit him, Thea thought wildly. She cast about for a weapon, a handy tree bough or one of Harriet’s stilettos, except she was wearing snow boots with useless flat rubber soles. Thea could tell Harriet was thinking the same thing but there was just snow and the rocks on the beach were too far away.
‘I should get on the boat, now, hmm?’ Harriet tried again, moving to block his view of Thea and Rory’s tree as they shifted around it, trying to keep out of sight.
He stood up and turned, wiping the snow from his gloved hands, leaving white patches on his trousers. Harriet moved and then Thea could only see her boots, the way that clumps of snow clung to the waterproof material, before melting. There one minute, then gone.
There was just the quiet of the trees, a gentle shushing of branches rubbing together, most of the leaves long fallen and rotted away. There was no birdsong and daylight crisscrossed the snowy forest floor in a delicate latticework design. If the man saw her, all that would be left of her would be a dent in the snow.
Above her, Harriet crossed her fingers behind her back.
The walkie-talkie at the man’s waist crackled.
There was a tinny voice that Thea couldn’t catch, but then the man spoke. ‘What? Say that again? Over.’
Harriet shifted her feet. Crackle, crackle, a smudge of a voice.
‘Copy that.’
More crunching of snow.
�
�I’ve got to go back to the Centre, Ms Stowe. But I’m getting you on this boat first.’
‘Of course! Of course. Lead the way.’
Harriet’s boots disappeared and the footsteps retreated. Thea wished she could have seen Harriet’s face one last time, to somehow show her in a silent look that she was grateful, indescribably grateful for what she had just done and that she would remember it – and her – for as long as she lived.
However long that was to be.
‘Let’s go,’ Rory whispered.
Chapter 61
The blank whiteness of snow on the ground started to make Thea’s eyes ache. It burned through to her brain.
She felt very visible as they veered off through the trees and started to climb sharply, roughly following a coastal path. Thea’s leg muscles protested at the sudden exercise. She wasn’t sure if it was the brightness of the snow, or the lack of food, drink, and sleep but the world was starting to spin.
Her shoulder remained stiff from the fall she’d taken with Ethan at the lighthouse but she kind of quite liked that dull ache. In a way she didn’t want it to heal because when it did, there would be nothing left to remind her of him.
Ethan was already fading.
Rosie was a body they’d left behind.
They only had ghosts for company.
The track started to level off and they found themselves on the cliff path once more, acutely aware that they could be clearly seen, two little sitting-duck silhouettes against the sky. So they crawled the final stretch, hands numb from the shock of the snow.
Thea’s body took over. All she had to do was keep putting hand in front of hand, knee in front of knee; it was simple. Her brain snagged and caught in a loop that would have made no sense to anyone but her: she was a burning tree and, on each of her branches, ghosts were tied like bobbing balloons.
Burning tree, ghost balloons, burning tr—
Finally, in front of them were the rough stone steps that led down to the cove.
‘Down there.’ Rory pointed. ‘That’s where the boat could be, if it’s still there.’
The steps were treacherous, the kind of stone that was lethal when wet and positively murderous when covered with ice and a smattering of snow. Though it wasn’t elegant, they took the steps toddler-style, sliding down on their bottoms: more elegant than slipping and breaking a leg, or tumbling head-first into the rocks.
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