Escaping Life

by Michelle Muckley

  Thirty six

  “Elizabeth! Where are you? Are you OK?” Jack knew that he sounded panicked. He didn’t want to alarm her, but what choice did he have? He knew that Edward was still at her house.

  “Jack! What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” He heard a beep on the phone. What was that? Did he tap the line? He’s listening!

  “Elizabeth, who is there with you? Is your father there?” He waited. No reply. “Elizabeth?” The phone was dead. He called straight back. Nothing. He thrust the phone into Gibb’s chest. “Don’t stop trying! We’re only ten minutes away!”

  As they drove like crazy men on a rollercoaster ride down the winding streets that led down into Haven, the Explorer nearly toppled a couple of times. Jack gripped the wheel harder and he felt the pull of his tightening shoulder.

  “Steady, Boss!” Gibb was shouting as he clung to the door handle as if it offered him some kind of protection, sure at some point they would turn over into the nearest hedge. But there was no stopping him; he wasn’t going to slow down. Elizabeth was there. Edward was there. He had to be there too.

  Elizabeth heard the faint sound of crunching gravel coming from the front of the house. It was almost impossible to hear over the sound of the waves, but she was sure that was what it was. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. He was holding her, her head pushed back, hanging over the cliff, his left hand gripped tightly around her neck. She couldn’t just hear the waves crashing against the rocks below her, she could see them too. With all her might, she pushed the images of her limp wet body draped over those rocks like a ragdoll tossed about by the power of the water, to the back of her mind. She wanted to fight him. She felt that same urge as in the kitchen, when he had been straddled across her and when she had looked for every angle to push him away, but she couldn’t fight now. Instead, she gripped his arm as tightly as she could, but her hands were limp and her wrists bruised. One false move and she was doing the best part of a base jump without the special suit or parachute. He looked back at the house, his right hand held up to his mouth. He had heard the car too. She knew as well as he did that they couldn’t be seen past the sheets that had managed to stay clipped to the washing line, even if whoever it was came around the back of the house. Edward looked back at Elizabeth, his finger pressed tightly up against his lips.

  “Sssshhhh!” he said, very quietly, although in truth, if he had spoken louder it would most likely still have gone unheard. They heard the voices at the front of the house.

  “Elizabeth!” It was faint, but she recognised the voice; it was Jack! She could hear him calling out her name as he hammered his fists against the front door. No response. Jack took one knowing glance at Gibb, who braced himself alongside him, shoulder to shoulder.

  “One, two, three!” They launched themselves at the front door and the weather-battered woodwork was too soft to withstand their combined strength and the frames and hinges caved in under their weight, sending them staggering into the hallway. They had already agreed their plan: Jack upstairs and Gibb to scour through the ground floor. Jack raced up, two at a time, his heavy black shoes feeling as light as a feather.

  “Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” No answer. He ran past the window that looked over the bay, and that would have given him an adequate view of the two figures stood on the edge of the cliff. Elizabeth saw him race past and she knew that he hadn’t seen her. He ransacked the bedrooms, yanking open the cupboards. He kicked in the one closed door. The bathroom. Nothing. He stood, sweating, perspiration pouring out of him through fear, or lust for the police chase. He didn’t know which. The sweat was rolling down his face and down into the small of his back as he rubbed his hand across his mouth in frustration. He charged back down the stairs, into the kitchen where Gibb was standing. He immediately saw the shattered mugs on the ground. Then he saw the blood. He could see that it led out to the garden, and he hoped that it was Edward’s and not Elizabeth’s. They followed the trail outside and he quickly formulated scenarios in his head where Elizabeth had fought Edward off and sent him flying, knocking over the chairs and dragging sheets away from the line on the way out of the house. Gibb spotted the smearing of blood on the hanging sheets. He looked at Jack, clicking his fingers to get his attention. Jack nodded; he had already seen it.

  Elizabeth was still rubbing her wrists as Jack and Gibb came into view. They emerged from behind the hanging sheets which were now flicking violently in the mounting wind.

  “Don’t do it Jackson! Leave her alone! Let her go!” All of Jack’s police instincts were on high alert. His eyes scanned the whole area: the ground, the loose rock immediately behind them, and Edward’s tight grip on Elizabeth’s throat. He was searching for a solution, but couldn’t see one. Edward turned to Elizabeth.

  “It could have been easy Elizabeth. We could have left this in the past where it belonged.”

  “Jackson, look at me! You don’t want to do this! She doesn’t need to die, let her go!” He and Gibb climbed over the post and rail fence, bringing them only metres away. Jack saw her green eyes, precious stones gripped in fear, her pupils pin tight as the sun beamed down on her face. No room for failure. She cannot die!

  “I killed my wife detective. I thought it was over. In the past.” He spoke loudly, his words only just audible over the wind that was whipping Elizabeth’s blonde hair up. “She brought it back. She made us face it. I told her that her precious Betty would pay the price. I warned her.” Elizabeth could see Jack and Gibb closing the gap between them. Her father turned to look at her. “She played with your life, Elizabeth. That’s how much she cared. Don’t feel bad for her.”

  “Jackson, come on. There’s no need to do this. Elizabeth did no wrong. Let her go.” Jack’s arms were outstretched, pleading with him like a slave before Caesar. “Jackson, don’t do it!” Images raced through Jack’s mind: images of his wife, his son, of Kate, of watching Elizabeth tumble down the cliff face, impossible to save. I can’t let her die! I can’t let anybody else die! I have to save her! Elizabeth felt a momentary release in her father’s grip around her neck as Jack came within feet of them. She knew that for her father, there was only one way out. He was cornered. She didn’t have any time left.

  “You were wrong about me, Daddy.” He turned back and glanced at her, his head flicking between the approaching cops and Elizabeth hanging over the cliff face. “You were so wrong.” She could see Jack. He was no more than an arm’s distance away. He was close enough to catch her, but if he came any closer, she knew that her father would take them both down the side of the cliff before facing the consequences of the crimes he had already committed.

  “How was I wrong?” He was talking to her, but his eyes were on Jack. Gibb was getting closer too.

  “I do have a weakness. You should have realised. It was Rebecca.” Before he could turn to look at her, she gripped her left wrist with her right hand and with as much force as she could muster, she launched her hand directly at the back of his head, the contact of her diamond engagement ring as hard as any weapon. It was enough to unsteady Edward on his feet and with his loosened grip, he fell forwards and she felt that she was free. In a flash she saw her father land at the edge of the cliff only inches away from her, his body kicking up ground dust. She felt the earth beneath her feet crumble, as she too, fell to her knees.

  “Jack!” She threw her hands forward as she felt her body slide over the edge of the cliff. “JACK!” He launched himself towards her, his body hitting the ground, his hands reaching out desperately for her outstretched hand. He took hold of her wrist but his grip slipped on the same childish watch that her father had bought for her. He stretched out his arm as far as he could and took a grip of her forearm. He had her, but at the same time, he felt the pull of his shoulder muscles and he felt her slip away further. “JACK! HELP ME!” He grabbed her arm tightly, ignoring the searing pain and the sounds of rock grating against rock as she kicked her bare feet beneath her, looking for any kind of purchase. He dragged her back,
throwing his own body weight as forcefully as he could behind him. He grabbed forwards, snatching at the waistband of her shorts and pulled her safely back up onto the ground, one hand gripping her, the other thrown back onto the fence. With her face almost buried in Jack’s chest, her hair red from the clay rich mud, she saw Gibb wrestling her father back from over the edge of the cliff. Before he could catch his breath, Jack was back on his feet and pinning his knee into her father’s back. Dragging him back from the edge, they handcuffed him to the fence. Elizabeth was on her feet and standing behind them as her father lay half on the ground and half propped up against the vertical post of the white fence. He looked beaten. Defeated.

  “It’s over, Daddy.” He looked up at the face that had haunted him as Elizabeth stood over him. He didn’t know if it was Rebecca or Elizabeth staring back at him. “We beat you.”

  Thirty seven

  The sirens had stopped blaring and her father had been driven away in a police car through what had resembled a sick carnival procession, with virtually the whole of Haven lining the streets, the residents having been encouraged out by the commotion of the racing police cars. Elizabeth sat in her garden looking out at the same bay over which, only thirty minutes before, her life had been suspended. Gibb was doing a fine job co-ordinating the local police, taking photographs of the scene and collecting evidence. Jack handed her a mug of hot tea, two sugars and plenty of milk.

  “Thanks,” she said as she smiled up at him. He sat down next to her on the step to the kitchen. The police team had already cleaned it up. The ambulance crew had dressed the cuts on her legs and knees too, and the cut to her lip that she’d sustained somehow in all of the commotion as she’d slipped over the edge of the cliff.

  “Your sister was a brave woman, Elizabeth.” She sipped her tea. Too sweet, but she needed it. It tasted like syrup to her. “She had strength, and guts.”

  “I can’t believe that she had seen him? Why would she see him?”

  “It looks like it was only once or twice and just long enough to tell him what she was going to do. She couldn’t take the lies anymore, I think.”

  “She was always tough, but he was right. I was her weakness. She loved me so much.” She looked down at her broken hands, skin flapping and grazed. “Is Graham on the way?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t tell him much on the phone. I just said he needed to come home as there’d been a development.”

  “You could say that.” She giggled as she said the words, but it was the kind of giggle that teetered on the edge of tears. Her laughter hung on the precipice between love and hate, good and evil. Pleasure and pain. Joy and sorrow. It was the place she had lived for the past four years of her life, and yet she had had no idea. For all the torment that she thought she had endured, she had in fact been living blindly, her life shrouded in lies. Jack and Rebecca had lifted that shroud away from her. “I can’t believe I didn’t think about the cigarettes. It should have made sense.”

  “Elizabeth, we see life through our own eyes. The truth is only what we allow it to be. If we don’t believe it, what is it that makes it real?” He drank a little of his own tea. “You could never have imagined it was your father. Just like you could never have imagined Rebecca being alive and living as she did.”

  “For me.” She looked around to Jack. She saw his big brown eyes, those that had always looked like they had carried so much hurt, always turned down at the corners, heavy and burdened with sorrow. Yet today, as she had slipped over that cliff and felt the surge of the wind smack her legs against the unforgiving rock, she had seen strength beyond imagination in his face. “Now I have to make that worthwhile. Make it count for something.”

  He knew that she was right. The hurt and pain: they never really disappear. Instead, they simply change form. They morph from that knotted, suffocating feeling that sickens your stomach, which incapacitates you, which silences you and bleeds your life away. Slowly and with time, that same force that once gripped you like a vice can be moulded, dominated, and controlled. It can become the force that drives you forward like fuel to an engine, or energy coiled up in a spring. He knew that it would be that same force that would compel them both to build a new life from the ashes of the one that got left behind.

  The End

  Thank you for reading Escaping Life. The following pages contain a free sample of my first novel, The Loss of Deference.

  More information can be found on my website, www.michellemuckley.com, or it can be purchased directly through amazon.com or amazon.co.uk

  Sample of The Loss of Deference

  One

  Will awoke to the sight of his breath hitting the cold November air. His body was cold, and the extra blanket that he had draped across the bed last night had not sufficed. He felt Molly’s warm fingers brush against the nape of his neck, and pimples ran to the base of his back, his hairs upright stealing away the heat. He wondered how she managed to stay warm all night long. With the warmth radiating from her he ached to move closer, hold her and stay with her, remove himself from the day ahead, but her touch was no more inviting than the chill of the early winter frost, and Molly was already turning away from him.

  As he sat on the side of the bed, placing his feet on the well trodden pile of the carpet, the cold air scratched at his skin. Stretching his hands across the back of his neck, he began to knead and press at the knots that he could reach, extending his head left, and then right. His back ached recently, and this regular morning routine was not really helping. He stood and moved towards the window. Leaning against the cold exterior wall he brushed aside the curtain. It was still dark outside, but for the one remaining streetlamp. The neighbours were sleeping, no warmer he suspected than he was, and the birds had not yet risen to wake the world with their song. The clock read five-fifteen.

  In his semi-lucid consciousness as he staggered towards the door, he could see Molly’s skin, as soft and delicate as pink tissue paper, exposed and gauze-like with goose pimples running up both arms. Will crouched beside her, and he thought again of returning to his bed, jumping in and allowing the covers to wash over and envelop him. He would hold his wife, and warm her with his love alone. Instead, he lifted and tucked the extra blanket underneath her body and as he did so, she turned into the sheets to cocoon herself, as if to state ownership on the little comfort that was on offer. Placing a gentle kiss on the tip of her nose, as if not to damage that which is so delicate, he realised that save her finger tips, she was in fact as cold as he.

  As he moved out of the bedroom and past the doors that closed off unused rooms, Will entered the bathroom, the floor chilling the soles of his feet as he moved from carpet to linoleum. Turning on the lime scale-covered tap, he plugged the sink and waited for it to fill with hot water. The steam hit his face, mixing with his warm breath, forming small cumulus clouds of water vapour. He slid his hands back and forth across their opposite arms, up to his shoulders and under his t-shirt to generate some heat. He winced as the edge of his t-shirt caught the scab on his left hand, peeling it back like a banana skin to reveal the wound in all its glory, and now looking as fresh and bloody as the day it was sustained. It really wasn’t healing all that well. To be honest, he was slightly concerned that it might be becoming infected, as the edges were starting to look a strange mix of green and yellow. Blood dripped into the sink, contaminating his fresh bowl of water, before he re-covered the wound with the remaining available scab. He lathered the soap onto the flannel and washed his face, before moving onto his neck, arm pits and finally his feet. This cleansing routine not only predated his current employment, but also suited it, the only minor adaptation being the omission of a shave. It was more economical to bathe later when he and Molly could share the water, even if they no longer shared the bath. After drying himself with a towel that was probably ready to be replaced with a fresh one, he started to warm up. He rummaged in the bathroom cabinet. Spare soap, spare flannel. He was sure he had seen the plasters in there yesterday.


  The clothes he had stepped out of last night lay in the same untouched heap that he had not so strategically placed the previous evening. He would describe them as practical, if a little worn, but serving a purpose quite nicely all the same. Molly simply described them as dirty, and also, a little smelly. There was no point in changing them every day, and besides, even if he did, the fresh outfit would get just as dirty. A grimy pair of jeans, t-shirt and thick jumper was pretty much the uniform of his colleagues. Thanks to the same rusty nail, sticking out of the reception desk at work, which was responsible for the currently weeping wound on his hand, his jumper was also starting to look a bit worn – the hole in the left-hand side of it aligned very well with a similar hole in his t-shirt. The well healed incision on his torso, he was pretty sure, was going to leave a scar. That wound had healed so much better than the bloody wound on his hand. Before dressing himself, he made another effort to preserve the remaining scab and pressed it lightly back into the open wound. On the cold and idle radiator there was a pair of thick socks, the type that you would put under hiking boots to be sure that your toes would stay warm and dry on an eight-mile walk. These, however, were clean and fresh, as they were each day, courtesy of Molly.