by Helen Young
‘I didn’t take a turn.’
Luke felt the whites of his knuckles tighten.
‘If you want to kill me, just do it.’ Camilo turned. He had been crying. ‘She was mine to give, all right? She never belonged to you. I picked the ugliest and I told him to have fun, is that what you want to hear?’
‘So I might attack you?’ Luke leaned in close. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Well, you should!’ Camilo’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I did it for him! I brought her here because my uncle asked it. So you might come.’
‘No, you didn’t know what they’d do at all. Felisa said that. Even now she’s defending you.’
‘What does it matter?’ Camilo cried. ‘She preferred you and I hated you for it. Why shouldn’t you suffer?’
‘Help her now.’
‘How can I do anything? After this, she’ll hate me forever.’
Luke looked inside the room again. Osorio was missing.
‘Camilo, listen to me, you know that your uncle is dangerous. He has no intention of letting her leave. I’m sure of that.’
‘It might be better if she died. Who will want her now?’
Luke hit out. Camilo fell backwards from the veranda onto the lawn and Luke followed, pinning him to the ground. He sent blow upon blow after the first. ‘If you want to die, I’ll kill you.’ It had come at last, that need to destroy that he thought he lacked. Here it was.
‘I want to die!’ Camilo cried through winded breaths. He didn’t fight back. Luke raised his fist again. No, Camilo wouldn’t fight back. Luke forced himself off and sat panting on the grass. In the distance, the men came running over. Camilo put up a hand and they stopped. His lip was split and bleeding.
‘I will help you. Please, Luke.’ He spat blood onto the grass. ‘Please, take her far away from here. Away from me.’
‘How can it be done?’
‘When the house is asleep there’s a way through the trees that breaks into open farmland. No fences. It’s about eight miles to the next village from there. They’re loyal to Gaitán. There might be a chance. And then you can take a car perhaps, far north to Barranquilla. Flights are still leaving from there.’
*
The room Luke had been taken to looked out over the back of the house. He went over to the window and forced himself to look at the trees but there was nothing there. The body of Karl had been cut down. Mrs Draper would never know what happened to her husband. He couldn’t think of that now. Camilo had chosen three in the morning, when the house was asleep, to show them the way. Even now, Luke could hear the men’s hyena-calls coming from below. They might come for her again. He couldn’t stop them all. He put his ear to the wall. Felisa, Camilo said, was sleeping in the room next door. As long as the men stayed far below, he could wait, he wouldn’t have to act, not yet. Camilo was their only hope. Luke rose and went over to the door again, pressing his ear against it. Nothing. Where was he? It was almost time. Perhaps something had gone wrong? He pulled open the door and crept out into the hall. It was deserted. The courtyard below was quiet too. Luke went along the balcony to the next door. He tried the handle. It was locked. Inside the room, the handle was turned a second time. Felisa. Neither of them spoke. They were too aware of what it might mean and they had survived this night, he thought. She was safe, for now. How would she feel, though, when she knew they depended on Camilo? He heard the maid’s footsteps on the stairs and slipped back to his room. He waited another thirty minutes and still Camilo didn’t come. Exhaustion sent him back to the bed where he collapsed.
He hadn’t meant to fall asleep and he woke in a panic. Outside of the window the moon was high. He checked his watch; it was late, closer to four now. Camilo hadn’t come. There was someone else in the room with him, though. He turned over.
‘I’ve killed him,’ she whispered in the darkness.
He sat upright. Felisa stepped forward. She had a knife.
‘I’ve slit his throat.’
He went over to her and took the knife. It was light in his grip. He looked down to find a letter opener.
‘Camilo?’
‘No, his uncle. He came to my room,’ she said, breathlessly. ‘He unlocked the door. He came… he came for me.’
In the moonlight her eyes were black.
‘Were you seen?’
She shook her head.
‘I should have been the one to kill him.’
‘No, Luke.’
‘I didn’t act when I should have.’
‘This wasn’t waiting for you,’ she said. ‘This has been coming for me for a long time.’
Luke rose. ‘Will you show me, Felisa?’
She nodded and led him back out onto the deserted corridor. The door of her room was closed. There was blood on the handle. Luke wiped it off with his sleeve, opened the door and went inside. Felisa followed behind. On the bed, it looked like Osorio was sleeping but as Luke got closer he saw the snarl on his face. An open mouth caught in the gulf between pleasure and pain.
‘He’s dead, you see.’
Luke nodded. She hadn’t slit his throat. There was a single puncture wound which must have opened an artery. Osorio had bled out fast. His face still wore the shock of it.
‘Let’s go.’ Luke took her hand and guided her away from the body and back out onto the landing. He closed the door.
‘What’s this?’ Camilo stood before them.
‘There’s been an accident,’ Luke said, moving towards him.
Camilo registered the stain on Luke’s sleeve. ‘One of the men?’
‘Yes,’ Luke whispered. ‘Camilo, we have to go. It has to be now.’
He nodded. ‘Follow me.’
Felisa didn’t move. ‘I won’t go with him.’
‘I had no idea, Felisa,’ Camilo pleaded. ‘I didn’t know what they’d do.’
‘There isn’t time.’ Luke turned to Felisa. ‘It’s the only way.’
She shook her head but went anyway. Luke took her hand. Camilo led them out of the room and down the stairs, passing away from the main door and across the courtyard to the back room which led to the second. The one she had been kept in before. She didn’t want to go in there at first but once they explained, about the window, she followed. Luke guided her upwards and through, realising, once he’d pushed the pallet onto its side, he could climb up and after her with Camilo’s help.
‘Go, and take her far away from here.’
From inside the room, Camilo reached up and forced something into Luke’s hands. It was his passport.
‘Thank you,’ Luke said.
Inside the room, Camilo must have jumped down from the pallet, because he never replied.
They set off behind the house and into the trees. Past the dog and the place where the body of Karl once hung. They ran and it felt like miles before they were clear of it. He held her hand tight. Glancing over his shoulders, he saw how the forest eventually swallowed up the hacienda. He thought of Osorio, dead in his bed. His plans would come to nothing and everything he’d wished to uphold, his idea of a country governed by the elite, reduced to rubble. He thought of Camilo too, going into the room and discovering his uncle’s body. He would set the dog on them then. He was sure of that. Luke pulled Felisa onwards and when she had to stop, he rested too, but neither for long. Other times they slowed to a walk but were always able to keep going. He wondered at her strength then, and at his. Nothing tried to stop them. He thought of the goddess at the lake. The trees were her army. In their stature, Luke saw more structure and stability than in anything he’d ever built.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to every single person who has read, advised, edited, reread, designed, queried, encouraged, whooped and generally celebrated this book with me over the last three years.
It’s not your names I want to acknowledge, but your actions. In a publishing culture where individuality is being systematically eroded by the bottom line, your integrity has proved itself limitless.
&n
bsp; Helen x
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Yulieth Adarbe Hernandez
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