"Oh, babe," she said. "Oh no. There was an accident?"
He couldn’t breathe, couldn't see, couldn't speak. He thought he might be having a heart attack, but eventually the panic receded and he gulped down great lungfuls of air.
"Why did I follow her?" he whispered. "If I hadn't followed her…"
"You'd had a shock," said Kim. "You were scared. You weren't thinking straight."
"Don't make excuses for me," he shouted, so forcefully that she let go of his arm and moved back. "Sorry," he said, seeing the momentary fear in her eyes. "Sorry, love. I didn't mean to shout at you."
"No, I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry. I can't even imagine what you must have gone through. It makes my stupid problems look lame and weak."
"I'm a killer, Kim," he whispered, staring straight ahead.
"No," she insisted, tugging at his arm.
"I am. No charges were brought against me, but I wish they had been. I wish I'd had to go to court, to pay a price, a legal price. I want to do my time, Kim. I owe it to them."
"But, Rhys, that's what you're doing. You've put yourself in prison. Here, alone, running this farm single-handed, up at five in the morning in all weathers. Prisoners have it a hell of a lot easier in a lot of ways. They get to watch TV and play pool and have friends and stuff."
He shook his head.
"Do you know what, Kim? I shouldn't have you in my life. I shouldn't have anyone."
"It's too late for that," she said urgently. "I'm in your life now, and you're in mine. You've paid the price. You've cut yourself off from everything here, and nothing you can do will ever bring Hannah…or Romilly…back. I'm sorry, so sorry, for what happened. But it was a horrible accident."
"I don't even know what I would have done if I'd caught up with her," he said, still staring at a fixed point on the wall, a little peeling section of paper. He should see to that.
"Then there's no point wondering. You just can't know."
She put her arms around him and he let tears escape, tears that hadn't been cried for two years.
They lay back down and held each other until emotional exhaustion wrung them out and nudged them into sleep.
Chapter Eight
When Rhys woke up, dusk had fallen and there was a Kim-sized space in the bed. He sat up, his head thumping from all the tears he'd shed, rubbed his eyes and looked around.
"Kim?"
He got out of bed and checked the bathroom, but it was empty.
He called down the stairs, but the only response was a volley of manic barking from Skip.
Grabbing his dressing gown from the peg, he hurried down to the kitchen. The bags of clothes on the table were gone, but in their place lay an envelope.
His heart undecided whether it wanted to hammer or sink, he swiped it up and tore it open.
He had to wait for his hands to stop shaking and his eyes to focus before he could read it properly. Although he didn't want to, he sat down and took a few breaths.
Now. Now he could read.
"My darling Rhys," it said in her endearingly rounded handwriting. "I didn't know which way to jump and I decided in the end I had to think of you. This is the hardest decision I've ever made in my life, because I've fallen for you big time, and if I had my way, I'd stay with you as long as I could.
But I won't bring you anything but trouble, so I've made up my mind to go back to Jonathan."
He put down the letter and clutched his head in his hands, his low croon of 'Noooo' frightening Skip so much that she stopped chasing her tail around his chair, sat up and licked his hands.
He skimmed over the rest of the letter, over her protestations of undying love and her hopes that he would move on in life and meet somebody worthy of him and be happy. She had made her bed, she said, and she would just have to lie in it. Without him. But, while she was lying in it, she would always be thinking of him.
He shook his head and shouted, "For fuck's sake, woman!" so that Skip stared up at him with troubled brown eyes. "No," he said to her, wagging his finger in her surprised face. "No, you are not doing this. I said over my dead body, and I bloody well meant it. Right."
He stood up, waving the letter, trying to work out which of the eighty things he needed to do he should deal with first. Dress? Feed Skip? Grab his car keys?
He was halfway up the stairs, Skip at his heels, before he noticed a post script on the other side of the paper.
"P.S. Sorry about taking the Land Rover. I'll get it delivered back to you as soon as I'm back in London. K xxx forever."
"Shit!" he shouted, running to the bedroom window and seeing that the Land Rover was indeed missing from the yard.
How long ago could she have left? He'd been asleep for two, maybe two and a half hours. She could be halfway to London by now. How was he ever going to catch up with her? He could hardly take the tractor down the M4.
He was going to have to take the bike.
Grudgingly, he dressed in an ancient set of brown biker leathers. The vintage bike and its accoutrements had been part of the farm fixtures and fittings when he bought it. He had been meaning to sell them at auction for ages, but never got round to it. Now he thanked his lucky stars he'd kept it well-maintained and in working order instead of leaving it to moulder in the shed like the previous owner.
He put down three bowls of dog food for Skip, plus a meaty bone to gnaw on, and called the owner of the neighbouring farm.
"Dai, yes, sorry to bother you, I've got a bit of an emergency and I have to go to London, just for a day or so. Any chance one of your guys could come over and check up on the sheep tomorrow morning? Yes, I hope to be back by evening. I'll put the spare keys in the chicken coop. And if he could give the dog a bit of a run out as well…fantastic. I owe you one. Yeah, bye."
He found the gloves and old-fashioned helmet with goggles buried under a pile of waxed jackets and wellies, put them on and ran out to the shed.
It needed a change of oil, but the petrol tank was full and the tyre pressure just right. He jumped on, revved the engine and set off through the yard, waving a regretful farewell to Skip, who had jumped up at the kitchen window.
It was lucky he knew these lanes and winding byways so well. Kim didn't, and neither did the Land Rover have GPS, so she may well have taken a wrong turn. The thought that she could still be stuck up on top of a hill somewhere nearby cheered him as he rode through the village, ignoring the stares of evening drinkers outside the pub.
Soon enough he was on the main roads, heading south east, trying to decide whether to use a motorway or stick to the smaller, friendlier routes. He guessed Kim would have made straight for the motorway, though, so he took a detour to Cwmbran and from there to the M4.
It was dark now, and the roads filled mainly with late holiday traffic and haulage vehicles. Soon enough, the huge spars of the Severn Bridge loomed up, marking the boundary of Wales and England.
He bade a mental goodbye to Wales and rode across, looking out into the estuary at the moonlit Bristol Channel.
On the other side of the bridge, at the entrance to a services area, he noticed a great many flashing lights. A police car had flagged down a vehicle. A Land Rover. His Land Rover.
He almost swerved across the lanes in his haste to get over there, but managed to control himself sufficiently to arrive safely at the little hard-shoulder assembly.
He felt sick with anxiety. Was she hurt? What had happened?
He parked the bike, leapt off and ran to the lights.
A police officer tried to hold him back, but he shook his head.
"That's my car," he explained breathlessly. "What's happened? Is she OK?"
"The driver, sir?"
He nodded frantically.
"My girlfriend," he said.
The officer raised his eyes. "Kizzee?"
"Is. She. OK?" he snarled.
"Yes, she's fine. Is that where she's been, then? With you?"
"I'm not here for celebrity gossip, thanks. I just want t
o see her."
"With respect, sir," said the police officer, putting up a hand, "you could be anyone. An obsessed fan, for instance."
"Tell her Rhys is here."
"One moment, sir."
He went over to the cordoned-off area a few metres away and spoke to one of the people who stood in the way of his catching a glimpse of Kim.
When he came back, he beckoned Rhys forward into the thick of things.
"Kim," he called, hurrying towards his Land Rover.
"Is this your vehicle, sir?" somebody was asking, but he ignored the question, spotting Kim sitting on the passenger seat of the car with the door open, looking rather apprehensive.
"Oh my God, goggles," she said, putting a hand to her mouth. "Look at you."
"Never mind look at me, what the hell do you think you're playing at? What's all this?"
"We had to pull the lady over, sir, for speeding," explained a copper. "And then we noticed who she was."
"I haven't really driven a car since I passed my test," said Kim with a guilty grimace. "In 2006."
"Look," said Rhys to the officer who appeared to be in charge. "You've booked her. Can we go now?"
"She's listed as a Missing Person," he replied. "Got to alert the network."
"Do you need us here to do that?"
"Well…I was thinking she ought to come down to the station."
"She's fine. You can see she's fine. What if we go up to the services over there and get something to eat and that's where we'll be? OK?"
"Hmm." The officer looked Rhys up and down. "I don't know. There's procedures."
"She hasn't eaten in about eight hours. Have you, love?"
Kim nodded. "I'd kill for a burger, to be honest."
The officer shrugged.
"All right then. If she's OK with it. But you stay in the service area – you don't leave. Is that understood?"
Rhys inclined his head with a tight smile and went to get his motorbike, piling it into the back of the Land Rover. Then, with the police car behind him, he drove up to the little service area. It offered nothing more than a burger bar, a coffee shop and a small newsagents, but it was better than the hard shoulder of the motorway at least.
"Are you insane?" he asked brusquely, taking her hand to help her out of the vehicle. "What did you think you were doing?"
"Didn't you read my letter?"
He kept hold of her hand, walking across the bleak asphalt and dried grass to the entrance.
"Yes, I read your letter."
"But you came after me?"
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know."
They walked into the burger bar and ordered some food. The dumbstruck look on the server's face confused Rhys for a moment until he remembered. Kizzee, not Kim.
"I'll bring it over," he said, once his jaw had finished dropping.
As they turned to leave, he called, "I'm glad you're OK. I've got all your tracks on my iPod."
"That's torn it," muttered Rhys, sitting down at a formica table. "You're back in the real world now, aren't you?"
Kim smiled sadly. "I didn't know what else to do. Someone would have tracked me down in the end. And you would have been in for a load of grief. And you've had enough of that in your life."
He reached out and clutched at her hands.
"That's done with," he said. "I'll take any amount of grief for you. I don't care about Jonathan Webb and his evil empire. I'm here to take you away from that. Just call me Luke Skywalker to his Darth Vader."
"I prefer Han Solo," she said with a cheeky grin.
"Fine. Han Solo then. And Skip can be Chewie."
"Awesome."
They smiled and, for a moment, nothing else existed but the two of them. The burger bar, the service area, the world was all somewhere far outside.
Then there was a giggle of teenage girls and a flash of cameraphones and the world swung back into sharp focus.
"It is her!"
"No way. Did you get a good shot?"
"Who's he?"
Kim stood hurriedly, almost unbalancing the counter boy, who was on his way over with their order.
"I haven't given my permission for any photographs," she said, "and if I see any of these pictures anywhere, I'll sue the arses off you. Do you get me?"
The girls shrunk away with mumbled apologies, but continued to watch the scene avidly from their corner of the joint. Pretty soon all of them were texting like fury, the little bleeps blending in with the endless electronic chorus of the gaming machines.
Kim sat back down and Rhys gave her a wistful little quirk of the lips. This was how it was going to be for a while, he realised. Perhaps permanently. Kim being recognised everywhere, flashbulbs, catcalls, requests for autographs. She looked so tired and all he wanted to do was get her back to the farm, where she could be safe.
"What are we going to do, Rhys?" she asked, popping a french fry into her mouth.
"I really don't know, love. I know what we aren't going to do, though, and that's go to London."
"Yeah, I just want to go home. I mean, the farm. I mean…"
"It's your home, if you want it to be. I can't offer you glamour."
"What do you mean? Shearing sheep is the height of chic. Hey, that rhymes. I could turn it into a lyric."
"You don't have to give up your singing."
"I think I will. Anything I do without Webb will be a breach of contract. It's probably strictly karaoke for me from now on."
"We'll figure something out."
"I don't really care. I'll sing to the sheep. It'll do for me."
"You're very special, you know?"
"Yeah, so special I got caught speeding, like a twat."
"Well, I'm glad you did. Or you might be in London now."
The conversation lapsed as they devoured their food, keeping a wary eye on each new customer. A succession of double takes, gasps, whispers and a few autographs requests peppered the meal.
When a reporter from the Bristol Evening Post appeared, complete with photographer, Rhys decided enough was enough and pushed the cardboard remains of their meal away.
"Right, we're getting out of here," he said, taking Kim's hand and pulling her through the growing throng of gawpers.
He found the police officers leaning against the wall around the corner, drinking coffee.
"Any chance you can keep the vultures off her?" asked Rhys. "She's getting mobbed here."
"We're coppers, not bodyguards," said one of them.
"Right, well, we've had enough of being the main attraction round here, so I'm taking her up to that motel over there." He pointed at a low white building on a slope above the service area. "Any objections?"
The police officers shrugged and carried on their conversation.
Rhys marched Kim up to the motel and through its doors. He checked them in in his name, though the woman behind the counter clearly recognised Kim but was too polite to say anything. As soon as they were through the double door to the rooms, he looked back through the glass to see her picking up the phone and dialling.
The police were going to get an awful lot of sighting reports tonight, he thought ruefully.
"Not exactly the Ritz," said Kim, throwing herself down on the threadbare duvet. "But who cares? As long as we're away from prying eyes. Jeez, I'd forgotten how annoying it is to have people constantly crowding around." She took a sniff. "Smells a bit funny though."
Rhys sat down beside her, his mind racing.
"How long have we got? Before Webb or one of his minions turns up?"
"Do you think he will?"
"I bet he knows you're here already."
"Fuck. I don't want to see him. I never want to see him again."
"We'll just have to tell him that."
"But what about his dodgy friends? How will we ever be able to sleep easily in our beds again?"
"He doesn't scare me, love. If you let him put the frighteners on you, he's won. My guess is, he's all talk."
"Convincing talk. Very convincing."
"Kim, if anything bad happens to us, his name'll come up straight away. He won't risk it. He'll count his millions, find another next big thing to latch on to and move on. I hate to think of him treating another girl the way he treated you, but…" Rhys shrugged. "You're the one I care about."
Kim snuggled close to him. "I thought I was so lucky, winning Voice of Britain, but that wasn't real good luck. Real good luck was running into you."
"I feel the same, love." He put his arm around her and held her close, kissing her hair.
"God, it's noisy out there," said Kim after a while, heading over to the window and leaning over the sill. "Shit! The car park's full of people."
Rhys thought about telling her to come away, but he was distracted by the sight of her pert little arse in those short shorts he'd bought for her. Crisp and white, they outlined her curves to perfection. Perhaps she could bend over just a little bit further…
"They'll see you," he warned, shifting a little on the bed as his cock twitched.
She looked over her shoulder at him.
"So what?" she said impishly, wiggling her bottom.
Oh, that did it. He rose off the bed and came to stand behind her, holding her by her hips and pressing his pelvis into those rounded cheeks.
"So," he said, slowly and deliberately, "they'll all see me get my hands on you."
"Ooh, exhibitionism, you kinky bastard," she said, but she made no attempt to elude him or move away from the window.
Nobody had seen her yet, Rhys judged, looking down. They were all focused on the entrance of the building, clamouring at the doors. A few near the back looked as if they were about to break away and peer through some windows.
"You don't sound too shocked," he said, moving one hand up to cup a breast. Anybody looking up at that moment would have seen it.
"Rhys!"
"Oh, you do now."
"They'll see."
He withdrew his hand, but noticed before doing so that her nipple had hardened against his palm and was clearly visible through the thin cotton vest top. As usual, she wasn't wearing a bra.
"They'll see your nipples anyway," he teased. "Look at them. You can't miss them."
"Shut up, you pervert."
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