by Roz Watkins
‘Promise, promise,’ I said.
She reached to un-loop the noose from her neck. I released my breath.
She slipped. Her feet dropped from the edge of the rock and she slammed downwards. She was caught, her neck still in the noose, hands clutching at it. She was making a terrible wheezing noise.
I screamed and lunged towards the dangling legs, my head full of that other time. I snatched at Rosie’s calves, trying to push her up to release the pressure on her neck.
A crash and it was dark. Completely dark, like I’d been blinded. Rosie’s torch was gone. My heart battered my ribs like a wild animal trapped in a cage. My eyes stretched wide in their desperation to detect any hint of light. I couldn’t find my torch in my pocket without releasing Rosie’s weight.
Something grabbed me from behind. I yelled and flung my head around but could see nothing. My breath came in desperate gasps.
It was Ben, and he was helping me support Rosie.
A torch clicked on. Jai was beside us. He scrambled past.
Rosie gasped and choked. I tried to lift her higher, but she collapsed at the waist, so the weight of her upper body was suspended by the noose. I saw Jai behind, scrabbling to climb onto the rock Rosie had fallen from.
I shouted into Ben’s ear. ‘Can you hold her any higher?’
Jai yelled and crashed to the floor. ‘Shit, it’s slippery!’ I was dimly aware of him at the edge of my vision, hauling himself to his feet, and up onto the rock, standing, pulling at the noose with frantic hands.
‘Rosie, help him,’ I shouted. She tensed and got heavier.
We crashed to the floor, Rosie’s weight forcing the air from my lungs.
Jai jumped from the rock, panting heavily. ‘Jesus Christ.’
Ben extracted himself from the pile of us and leapt to his feet. ‘Right. Quick. Follow me! We could be in the shit here.’
I stood and grabbed Rosie’s hand. ‘Come on.’ She staggered to her feet, gasping and clutching her neck.
Ben moved towards the tunnel.
‘I can’t go in there,’ Rosie’s voice was panicky. ‘It’s this way out.’ She pointed to a roomier pathway to the left.
Ben reached for Rosie’s arm and tried to pull her. ‘That other way’s longer and it might be flooded.’
Rosie resisted and started crying. ‘I can’t go in there.’ She was going to get us all killed.
‘Wait there.’ Ben dashed off to the left. The three of us stood in the gloom, shivering.
A couple of minutes later, he reappeared. ‘Totally flooded. No chance.’
Rosie’s sobs grew louder. You could want to die but still be scared. I knew that.
‘Come on,’ Ben grabbed Rosie. ‘Go behind me. Hang onto my legs. We’re going.’
Rosie cried gently but did as she was told. Ben turned to us. ‘Hold the rope,’ he said. ‘Pull yourself through with the rope. The lowest section might be flooded.’
Jai’s voice was quiet. ‘What do you mean, flooded?’
‘I mean, to get through, you may have to hold your breath whilst dragging yourself through the lowest part of the tunnel underwater.’
Rosie started to whimper. I wasn’t far off whimpering myself. ‘Can’t we sit it out?’ I said. ‘Wait for the water to go down?’
‘Aside from possible hypothermia,’ Ben said. ‘This whole cave floods. Right to the roof.’
I said nothing, but pictured us freezing and frantic, the water rising.
Ben shuffled into the tunnel, pulling Rosie behind him. Jai hung back and let me burrow in after Rosie’s skinny legs. His panicked breathing was loud as he crawled in behind.
The air inside the tunnel felt thick. The walls were slimy against my fingers and the roof sat low over my head. I shuffled through, gasping with fear, trying to keep up with Ben. Then he stopped.
‘Okay,’ he shouted. ‘A ten-foot section’s flooded. It’ll be rising all the time. We need to go. Follow me. Take the deepest breath you can, and pull yourself through on the rope. It’ll be easier than crawling. Just do it. I’ve got a diving torch so stay as close as you can if you want to see anything.’
And he disappeared with a soft gurgle.
My breathing came faster and faster. I couldn’t do this. But Jai was behind me. I couldn’t let Jai die. He actually valued his life. He should have gone first. I took a huge breath and pulled on the rope. Entered the water. The cold was a physical shock, like being punched. I wanted to gasp. It was almost impossible not to gasp.
I pulled myself forward through the freezing water, my eyes shut and panic rising in my chest. I crashed into something. Rosie’s leg. She was blocking my way through. What the hell was she doing? I flailed around, trying to feel what was going on. I opened my eyes in the murky water. A faint, diffuse light was coming from ahead but nothing was clear. Rosie’s legs thrashed against the sides of the tunnel. My need to take a breath was almost overwhelming. I tried to push myself backwards and crashed into Jai behind me.
I felt something pulling at my ankles, but I couldn’t seem to let go of the rope. The harder my ankles were pulled, the harder I hung on. A part of my brain knew this was wrong. But I couldn’t let go. Darkness was closing in from all sides. I was beginning not to care, to feel remote from it all. I felt an odd incredulity and slight embarrassment that this would be how it ended. Stupid people dead in a cave. All the suicidal thoughts I’d had over the years and now I was going to die accidentally. And I realised I wanted to live.
Chapter 40
In my moment of extreme calm, I saw Rosie’s shoelace caught on a protruding nose of rock. I tugged it towards me and it popped free. Rosie’s legs thrashed around my face and then disappeared into the darkness.
I gripped the rope with both hands again and knew I had to take a breath. I opened my mouth and gasped. Water flooded my throat. I coughed and more water gushed into my nostrils. I felt pure, white terror.
The rope jerked in my hands. I didn’t let go. It moved, pulling me through the water. Something grabbed me. My face scraped on rock. I was out of the water, lying on the cave floor, coughing, panting, gasping. Tears streamed from my eyes. My stomach constricted and I vomited a violent stream of water.
Rosie was hunched beside me, her body bent forward with huge wracking coughs.
Then Jai was crouching down, saying something I couldn’t understand. Grabbing me and trying to get me to my feet.
Ben’s voice sounded far away. ‘Come on!’
I forced myself up and teetered on jelly legs. I was dimly aware of Ben lifting Rosie to her feet and dragging her forward. My brain felt black; nothing made sense except coughing and coughing and getting this water out of me. But with Jai clutching my arm, I stumbled after Ben’s retreating body.
I passed into a kind of auto-pilot, staring at Rosie’s legs and putting one foot in front of the other, hunching over to avoid the cave roof, still spluttering but feeling the blackness gradually lift as we stumbled through the dreadful passages of the Labyrinth.
Eventually, we reached the final cavern, and Ben helped us drag ourselves out. We staggered across the car park and piled into Ben’s Land Rover, Jai in the front, Rosie and me in the back. The car was filled with towels, blankets, spare jumpers, and even those foil wrap things they give marathon runners. I muttered incoherent thanks and admiration.
Ben ignored me. ‘Get out of your clothes. All of them. Quick.’
We did as we were told, with freezing, swollen fingers and in silence, bashing each other with awkward elbows and knees. We stripped off our wet clothes, the extreme situation making us unselfconscious.
Ben twisted in his seat to reach for a T-shirt. And there was his tattoo. I hadn’t meant to look, but then I couldn’t look away. I sat open-mouthed. It covered his whole chest and stomach.
He paused with the shirt ready to pull on. ‘Do you know what it is?’
It was drawn in blacks and greys. It evoked the forbidding feel of the place, but also showed the route through.
All the twists and turns. ‘It’s the Labyrinth,’ I whispered.
Rosie didn’t look, and Jai flicked his head round briefly, then reverted to staring forwards in the manner of men forced to get naked near each other.
Ben pulled on his T-shirt. ‘I couldn’t seem to let it go. After… that girl.’
‘That’s why you remembered the route through.’
He gave a quick nod. ‘Get yourselves wrapped up.’
We sat with the engine running and the heating on full, shivering like spinning washing machines. Our teeth actually chattered.
Jai turned in his seat. ‘What the hell happened in there when you got stuck?’
My voice shook with cold. ‘Rosie’s shoelace caught on a bit of rock.’
‘Christ almighty,’ Jai said. ‘Why won’t teenagers tie their bloody laces properly?’
The question hung in the air unanswered. I gave Rosie’s leg a reassuring rub.
‘I tried to pull you out backwards,’ Jai added. ‘But I couldn’t shift you.’
‘Sorry. I think I was hanging onto the rope in a sort of deranged panic.’
‘Trainers aren’t your serious caver’s footwear of choice,’ Ben said.
Jai laughed. ‘Oh my God,’ he said. ‘I’ll be having nightmares about that till the end of my days.’
I laughed too. Then we were all laughing, shakily, even the recently suicidal amongst us.
‘Yeah, thanks for that,’ Ben said, ‘Next time you fancy a bit of caving, count me out.’
*
Half an hour later, we were warmed up, dried off and clothed in towels and our spare jumpers. After thanking Ben so many times he started to get irritated, Jai and I walked across the freezing car park to our respective cars. Rosie came with me and I gave Jai my house keys so he could let himself in and put the kettle on.
I phoned the Station and arranged for a sympathetic uniform to meet us outside Rosie’s house. Before I could be asked any awkward questions, I invoked the Peak-District-mobile-signal-effect, and ended the call.
‘Sorry about my trainers,’ Rosie said as we pulled out of the car park.
I turned to look at her, huddled in the passenger seat in the oversized jumpers. ‘Don’t worry. You didn’t ask us to come and rescue you.’
The roads had turned to rivers and the rain was still lashing down. Twigs and small branches drifted down with us like flotsam and jetsam as we drove along in our little bubble of light.
‘My initials weren’t on the cave wall,’ Rosie said quietly. I glanced at her and she gave me a quick smile. ‘I didn’t mean for anyone to understand that tweet. I don’t know why I did it.’
‘What did it mean?’
‘I’m going to turn into a monster, aren’t I? A useless drooling monster who can’t walk or talk or—’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘But I was going to be Theseus too. I was going to kill the monster.’
‘Rosie, you might be unwell, but you’ll never be a monster.’
‘Well, maybe the Minotaur wasn’t either. Maybe he just needed to eat. Anyway, Mark helped me. Talking things through.’
‘You stayed there Thursday and Friday nights?’
She gave a little nod. ‘I like the dogs and cats. And Mark. He’s not all hysterical like my mum can be.’
‘He encouraged you to kill yourself?’
‘No. He didn’t try to make me do anything. But he was angry with that other lady. He spoke to her on the phone after you came, and he kept saying, ‘You’ve got to have the test, you can’t go through with it.’ I got a bit scared and sneaked out.’
‘You knew I was there?’
She nodded. I felt sick. She’d been so close and I’d missed her. Trusted Mark Hamilton.
*
I left Rosie in capable hands but didn’t go inside with her, since I was clothed only in a towel, four jumpers, and a piece of tin-foil. I told her I’d be back the next day to talk, and set off for home. Jai had thoughtfully left the parking space right outside for me, so there was no need for a half-naked dash.
Once inside, I banged the thermostat up to twenty-eight degrees even though I knew it never made it over nineteen, and found Jai in the kitchen making tea. I was still shivering.
I dug out a sartorially uninspiring collection of clothes for Jai, including a pair of comically short jogging pants and a fleece Gran had bought me one Christmas, bafflingly and insultingly in women’s XXL. We withdrew into the kitchen, closed the door and stuck the fan heater on.
Hamlet marched up and down, shouting as if I’d been missing for days. In fact, it had only been a couple of hours, but I couldn’t believe how much more positive I felt.
I rooted around in the cupboard to find oats, while Jai sat at the kitchen table with a stunned look on his face. Hamlet crawled onto his knee and gave him one of his slightly spiky massages.
I grabbed the bag of oats and squinted at the sell-by date. Only a year over. Oats couldn’t really go off, could they?
‘So, you discovered your sister?’ Jai said hesitantly.
I turned to him, oats in hand. Looked down at the packet. ‘Yes. I was ten.’
‘Oh my God, that’s terrible. I mean, I knew there’d been a suicide in your family, but that’s just—’
‘I got home from school, went up to her room to see her…’
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘No. I want to. Bottling it all up hasn’t worked so well for me.’ I shuffled oats and milk into a pan in random quantities and stuck the mix on a hob. ‘I’ll probably cock the porridge up, you know.’
‘It will be fine. As long as it’s hot and vaguely edible.’
‘That’s top level in this kitchen. But I’ll stick cream in it, that’ll help.’ There were few dishes that weren’t helped by cream. ‘Anyway, so, I wanted to apologise. I’d said something terrible to her. It seems ridiculous now but I was actually jealous of her. She got all the attention and I thought my parents preferred her. I thought they wished it had been me who’d got ill, not her.’
‘Oh, Meg. You didn’t want Peter Hamilton’s brother to think he committed suicide. You knew how that felt.’
‘They’d had an argument too. He’d have blamed himself just like I do.’
‘It was kind of mean of your sister to do it that day. Before you’d had a chance to make things right.’
I’d never thought of it like that. Never thought about Carrie’s responsibility in all this. But it was true. I’d only been ten. She was fifteen. Hadn’t she thought about the effect it would have on me?
I gave the porridge a final stir, dished it out into bowls and poured double cream on the top. I even found some Demerara sugar. I sat down and skidded a bowl across the table to Jai.
‘A culinary triumph,’ he said.
‘It is for me.’ I added copious amounts of sugar and stirred my porridge round and round but didn’t start on it yet. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I suppose my career’s in ruins, so what the hell. I think deep down I’ve always felt like I basically murdered my sister. Except the rational part of me knows I didn’t. She wanted to kill herself, and it was nothing to do with me. She’d spoken to Mum and Dad about it.’
Jai stopped chewing. ‘They knew she wanted to die?’
I nodded. ‘I only just found out.’ I lifted a spoonful of porridge, then put it down again. ‘Anyway, on that day, well, I walked into her room and… we had this big A-frame ladder that lived in the spare room, for when you had to change light bulbs. The ceilings were those high ones you get in barn conversions. The ladder was in the middle of her bedroom. She had the best room, with the vaulted ceiling. To make up for all the other stuff she didn’t have.’ I stirred my porridge. Could I do this? I took a gulping breath. ‘So, she’d rigged up a noose from the highest beam and she was hanging from it.’
‘Oh my God,’ Jai whispered.
‘So, I ran and climbed up the ladder. I don’t know why really, maybe I thought I could
save her or it was just an instinct. I grabbed hold of her but she was dead. I started screaming and fell off the ladder. Broke my ankle and it got overlooked, with… you know, with everything else going on. So it set wrong.’
‘Your limp.’
‘Yes, my limp.’
‘I always wanted a limp when I was a kid. Or maybe a withered hand.’
‘You what?’
‘There were so many of us children, I wanted to be different.’
‘My God. That’s a new perspective.’
‘I know. I’m weird.’
‘It’s not that great actually.’ I lifted my ankle and placed it on my knee. ‘See how it grew this big chunk of callous where it didn’t heal right. It means the joint won’t move properly and I’ll never have a slim, ladylike ankle.’
‘It makes you unique.’ Jai was unusually still. ‘It must have been really hard though. With your sister.’
‘It was.’ I swallowed. ‘You’ve heard I had time off with stress a couple of years ago?’
Jai paused mid-chew.
‘It’s okay, Jai. Everyone seems to know. I had a sort of break down after I was called to a suicide. A young girl who’d hanged herself. It triggered all sorts of memories. I had counselling and apparently I need to let go of my guilt over my sister. But how am I supposed to do that?’
‘Was that why you left the Manchester force?’
‘Partly. Everyone knew about it. They were fine but I felt like they were treating me differently. But then everyone seems to know about it here too.’
‘Craig has a friend…’
‘Yeah. Good old Craig. Did you know he phoned me earlier? Anyway, it was partly to be near Mum too. My dad left shortly after I started uni and she’s been on her own since then. Which is fine. But now she’s having to look after Gran. When the chance came up to move back here, it seemed to make sense.’
‘And the scenery’s better here.’
‘It is. Although there are too many heights for my liking, and I’ve kind of gone off the caves.’ It was such a relief to talk, as if I’d been carrying a bag of bricks around with me, and now I was unloading it, brick by brick. ‘And this recent fear of heights, I think it’s all about my sister too. I’ve had some flashbacks.’