Carrie Goes Off the Map

by Phillipa Ashley

  ‘Can’t you just shut up?’

  Her mouth fell open. This wasn’t the gentle, placid giant she loved, but an angry bull of a man. She was shaking but she stood her ground, wound her five foot two frame up, and said, ‘Shut up? I asked you a perfectly reasonable question. Just because you’ve fallen out with the tribe, don’t blame me.’

  His knuckles whitened round his glass. He glared at her. She was angry herself and determined to face him down, because what he was doing was so unfair. Missing her last night, coming home pissed and behaving like a total shit.

  ‘I just won’t be treated like this, Huw. I won’t—’

  ‘Can’t you see how hard this is for me?’ he said softly.

  Her heart started ricocheting madly. She knew something was very wrong. ‘Hard for you? What do you mean?’

  He was staring down at his glass again, swirling the whisky round in circles. ‘I’ve been sitting here for hours wondering how I was going to do this, but it’s no good,’ he said.

  She felt a cold sweat breaking out on the small of her back. ‘Huw, what are you talking about? I don’t understand you.’

  ‘I don’t really understand myself, Carrie, but I do know there’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘Like what? Has your mother ordered the wrong flowers? Has the cake company gone bust?’ She tried one last stab at humor, pretending that he was only joking, that he wasn’t going to say something terrible, but he shook his head.

  ‘It’s been tearing me up for weeks, Carrie. I thought the stag weekend would help—make me realize that this was what I wanted, that I’d be fine once all this wedding shit was over, but it’s no good. I can’t do this to me, and certainly not to you, love. God knows I’ve tried, but I just can’t do it. Carrie, I can’t marry you.’

  Chapter 2

  Four months later, the sun was hot on Matt Landor’s back as he glared down at his boss’s face. The two of them were standing on the wooden veranda of the medical station, sheltering from the midmorning sun. Dr. Shelly Cabot was glaring back at him, arms folded, and Matt was trying desperately hard not to smile. If he did, she might think he wasn’t serious, and he’d never been more serious about anything in his life.

  ‘It’s not that bad, Matt. You’ll be back here before you know it,’ she said in the voice she often used before inflicting major pain on one of their patients.

  ‘It would be so much better if I didn’t go at all,’ he said, shifting position so she had to blink against the sun to answer him.

  ‘We’ve talked about this. You need to get out of Tuman and go home to England. Drink tea. Play cricket…’ she said.

  ‘Nice try, Shelly, but there’s a problem with that. I don’t drink bloody tea and cricket bores the crap out of me.’

  Shelly let out an exasperated gasp. ‘Matt, you know damn well what I mean. Go and do whatever the hell you Brits do. Get pissed and wreck a bar if you like. Just take a break. A proper break. For God’s sake, you could even try talking to someone.’

  That last piece of advice had Matt snorting in derision, but Shelly’s smile faded and her eyes hardened. ‘You’ve been here nearly a year and you’re overdue some decent leave. Even if you hadn’t been involved in the accident I’d still have expected you to go back home for a few weeks. After what’s happened, it’s an order, and if you don’t do as I say, so help me, I won’t have you back at all.’

  Ah, the accident. He’d known she’d bring that up sooner or later. It had been four weeks since it happened and he admitted he’d been shaken up by it… more than shaken, mate, a voice whispered in his head. He balled his hands into fists as he felt the tremor invade them, but finally let a smile touch his lips.

  ‘Shelly, has anyone told you how sexy you look when you’re pissed off?’

  Her mouth opened in an O. ‘You cheeky, sexist basta—’

  ‘Shhh. The children are listening.’

  On cue, a gaggle of kids burst out of the entrance to the medical station, swarming around them and dancing in excitement.

  ‘Dr. Matt! Are you going?’ a boy shouted.

  ‘When are you coming back?’

  A small girl slipped her hand in his, curling her warm fingers around his. ‘Why are you going away?’ she said, gazing up into his face.

  Matt held his breath. He couldn’t use a child to score points over Shelly, no matter how wrong he thought she was in sending him back to the UK, no matter how much doctors were needed in the remote South Pacific jungle community, or how much he wanted to stay. He smiled down at the little girl, who was now twisting the hem of her skirt round and round in her hands.

  ‘Do you have to go away?’ she said.

  He squatted down on the veranda so he could be at her level. ‘For a little while, but I’ll be back very soon,’ he answered, laying emphasis on the soon, knowing Shelly was listening to his every word and would understand him perfectly.

  ‘Good,’ said the girl. Satisfied, she let go of his hand and skipped off down the steps towards the stilted houses fringing the river.

  ‘Kids, can you let me say goodbye to Matt properly, please?’ called Shelly.

  Laughing, the children raced off, leaving Matt and Shelly alone again. He could feel the sweat pouring down his back, his shirt sticking to him. Above them the sun, white and blinding, beat down like a furnace but the fierce heat felt kind on his skin. It was natural. It reminded him of where he belonged.

  Leaning on the veranda rail, he looked out over the clearing, the village, and the river, to the lush jungle that stretched endlessly all around.

  ‘If you care about them, go home and take a break,’ said Shelly as the children piled into canoes at the water’s edge, laughing and squealing with glee.

  ‘That’s emotional blackmail.’

  ‘That you didn’t use on me when you had the chance just then. And that’s because you’re not the stubborn bastard you like us to think.’

  Matt kept his eyes forward. ‘Well, thanks for your support, Dr. Cabot.’

  ‘And thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Landor. Now, your carriage awaits.’

  She nodded at the rusty Jeep idling on the muddy red track that led from the medical center to the tiny airstrip twenty miles away. It was the only way out of the village, other than by canoe or on foot; the only route to reach patients in the outlying communities and the only way home.

  ‘You know this is ridiculous. You’re desperate for medics and you send one of your most experienced back home,’ he said as they walked down the steps to the track.

  Standing on tiptoe, Shelly brushed his cheek with her lips. ‘We can manage without you for a while, and despite what you think, you’re not the only hot-shit doctor in Tuman.’

  ‘I never said I was,’ he growled.

  ‘Really? You could have fooled me, the way you’ve been behaving, as if you want to take on the world single-handed. Jeez, you almost killed yourself.’

  ‘I’m fine. It wasn’t me that got hurt, remember?’ he said, trying to banish the memory of the accident, the smell of burning rubber, of spilled diesel, the panic that had threatened to overwhelm him, the sight of his friend Aidan bleeding and unconscious in the wreckage.

  ‘Are you okay, Matt?’

  Shelly touched his arm and Matt flinched.

  ‘You know damn well I am.’

  Shaking her head, she called to the driver of the Jeep, ‘Dr. Landor is ready to leave now.’ She turned back to Matt. ‘Have a good trip. I’ll see you in the autumn, if you behave back in England,’ she said, kissing him briefly. Then she was walking back towards the wooden veranda of the medical station, and he was turning his back and trudging towards the Jeep with all the enthusiasm of a man heading for the tumbril that would take him to the guillotine. Ahead of him lay a two-hour road trip to the airstrip, a hop on a Cess
na to the island’s main airport, and a long, tedious flight to London.

  Stretching out like a sluggish brown river lay four months of enforced rest and recuperation in England. Four months if he was lucky and could convince the powers-that-be at the medical charity that he was fit to come back and practice again. But there was one consolation, if you could call it that. He’d get home just in time for the wedding. An old university friend had invited him to be an usher; not that Matt liked weddings—usually he found catching malaria more fun—but it would be good to meet up with an old mate after all these years.

  Throwing his bags into the back of the Jeep, Matt climbed in beside the driver and grunted a hello. The engine started and he glanced round. Shelly was standing outside the medical center, her hand raised in farewell. The kids were dancing round her, waving wildly. Then the wooden huts became smaller, the river glittered one last time, and he was swallowed up by the jungle.

  Chapter 3

  It was June, and the tiny spare bedroom at Rowena’s cottage in Packley Village, Oxfordshire, was sweltering. Through the floor Carrie could hear the juicer whirring in the kitchen, and behind it, a CD was belting out the soundtrack to Ten Things I Hate About You. Closing her eyes, Carrie tried her magic trick again: the one, where, if she wished very hard, the past four months vanished like a puff of smoke.

  In some ways, she’d been lucky. That was what she’d tried to tell herself in the darkest moments, when she hadn’t been howling with pain, or sitting piggy-eyed with crying, using up tissues as though she was trying to kill off what was left of the world’s forests. She’d been lucky because she had her shocked parents to cancel all the wedding arrangements and explain the situation to their relatives and friends. She’d been even luckier to have Rowena, who had offered her spare room the same night that Huw had left her. Two o’clock in the morning it had been when she’d finally finished rowing and shouting and pleading and crying with him.

  Rowena had turned up at the farm in a taxi and taken Carrie to the cottage she owned in the village high street. She had sat up all night with her, handing over vodka and tissues and unrelenting sympathy. She had been one of the few people who hadn’t said: ‘You’ll get over it. You just need time.’ Or even: ‘There are plenty more fish in the sea.’ Instead, she had called Huw every name under the sun—and a few Carrie had never heard of—and offered to help her sabotage his tractor.

  For a few weeks, a couple of months if they were feeling generous, people had expected Carrie to wallow in self-pity, to indulge her grief; but then, quicker than she could ever have imagined—not that she had ever imagined—they’d expected her to get over it and move on. So she’d become an expert at nodding in agreement when they offered their condolences, smiling bravely and tactfully changing the subject. Everyone agreed how well she’d coped. ‘You’ve been so brave,’ they said. ‘You deserve a medal.’ Because that was what the world expected her to do: be dignified, stoical, and calm.

  But they’d forgotten how good an actress she was.

  The other Carrie—the one she wanted to be—had been a vengeful bitch from hell. In her dreams, that Carrie had maxed out Huw’s credit card on male escorts, outrageous handbags, and a full-page ad in the Farming Times calling him a heartless, spineless shit. In her dreams, Huw was strapped naked in the stocks, while every woman in the world who’d ever had her heart split in two pelted him with rotten eggs and rancid diet shakes.

  She opened her eyes to find a red-faced Rowena standing over her with a large wooden spoon. ‘My God, what are you doing?’

  ‘We are going into town,’ Rowena declared solemnly.

  ‘Okay, but what do you need the spoon for?’

  ‘We’re having a cooked brekkie first.’

  ‘That would be the royal “we,” then, would it?’ asked Carrie over the top of the duvet.

  ‘Don’t be a plonker. Not just me. You’re coming too.’

  ‘And resistance is futile, I suppose?’

  ‘Utterly,’ said Rowena, before sweeping out of the bedroom like Queen Victoria.

  Throwing off the duvet, Carrie shoved her feet into flip-flops and shuffled downstairs. In the kitchen, a pan of bacon and eggs was sizzling on the stove while Rowena filled two glasses with a gloop of indeterminate color somewhere between puce and sludge.

  ‘It’s a smoothie. Acai berries, wheatgrass, and pomegranate. Very healthy,’ she said as Carrie leaned against the door frame, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘But you smoke twenty a day, Rowena,’ said Carrie, eyeing the smoothie with distaste.

  ‘And this will redress the balance. All those antioxidants will cancel out my free radicals.’ She handed over the gloop, smiling. ‘Go on. Close your eyes and taste.’

  Not wanting to upset her landlady, Carrie swallowed, hoping she wouldn’t gag. She hadn’t slept that well; she’d been lying awake wondering whether she dared visit Huw at the farm to sort out their entangled financial situation. ‘Bloody hell!’ she spluttered.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ said Rowena proudly.

  ‘Is that Jack Daniel’s I can taste?’

  ‘I thought it would help it slip down.’

  ‘At nine thirty?’

  ‘Yes. Any objections?’

  Carrie slurped again; this time it tasted even better. ‘No. It’s delicious. They should hand it out on prescription.’

  Rowena grabbed her own glass and grinned broadly. ‘That was the first part of your therapy.’

  ‘And part two?’ asked Carrie suspiciously, wondering if the smoothie was a sweetener for some nasty medicine.

  But Rowena just smiled and said: ‘We’re going shopping with Hayley, and then we’re going for lunch at the Turf. Nelson’s driving, so we can have a drink, and you, my girl, are going to enjoy yourself if it kills you.’

  Chapter 4

  Twenty miles from Packley in the center of Oxford, Matt was lying in a strange bed in a strange room. Snoring gently beside him was a chartered accountant called Natasha Redmond whom Matt had known since the days when they’d been at boarding school together. He’d bumped into her in one of the city center pubs the previous evening.

  After getting home from Tuman, he’d unpacked, showered, and then headed to the Lamb and Flag for something to eat. He’d sat at an outside table, nursing a pint of Morrells and pretending to read a biography of Nelson Mandela so he could avoid getting into conversation with anyone. However, for Natasha, he’d made an exception.

  ‘Minty, darling, is that you?’ she’d shrieked, making him spill his pint and drop his book on the cobbles. He knew it was her without even looking; she’d used the bloody stupid nickname he’d had at school for a start. She was also purring; she did a lot of purring—that was what had attracted him to her in the first place when he’d met her many years before. Since then they’d got together occasionally when their paths had crossed.

  So when he’d seen her in the beer garden, with a girlfriend who’d discreetly disappeared after half an hour, he’d known where the night—and morning—would end.

  ‘Good morning, Dr. Landor, are you feeling any better?’ she asked throatily.

  Matt ran his hand down the length of her thigh, feeling it smooth and warm beneath his fingers.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said, stroking her and feeling her satisfyingly wet.

  Natasha gave a sigh of pleasure before closing her fingers around his. ‘This is all very tempting, Minty, but I’m going to have to pass on this one. I have to get up. I have a wedding to go to, as do you, remember?’

  Slipping out of bed, she padded towards the shower room, stark naked. He’d seen it all before, but he was still very impressed. Even at school, his teenage hormones had almost exploded at the sight of her in a skirt so short it broke every rule. But best of all, at no point had Natasha ever gone soppy on him or he on her. They were two of a kind, he
’d always thought. A good-time boy and girl, both desperate to throw off the shackles of education and get to university and the real world.

  Above the sound of the water, he could hear cars swooshing past the flat on their way into Oxford city center. He’d rented the place from an ex-colleague, a strait-laced anesthetist who’d probably have had a heart attack if he knew what had been going on in his bed. He fumbled on the bedside tabletop for his watch. When he couldn’t find it, he pulled back his share of the duvet and edged out of bed. Natasha emerged from the bathroom, half wearing a hand towel.

  ‘So you’re alive then, darling?’ she said.

  He rubbed sleep from his eyes as she stared meaningfully at his crotch. ‘I could be more alive if you’d come back to bed, woman. Failing that, I guess I’ll take a shower.’

  Natasha groaned. ‘I feel so awful about this, but I think I’ve just used the last of the hot water.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll manage.’

  Natasha pulled a face. ‘Oh gosh. I suppose we should have shared.’

  ‘Maybe a cold shower would be best, unless you do want to be here all day,’ he said gruffly.

  Half an hour later, his skin tingling in the cool summer morning despite a shirt, sweater, and jeans, he found her at the cooker making pancakes. She was wearing one of his T-shirts from Tuman. He didn’t tell her that the last time he’d worn it, he’d been syringing out a patient’s ears.

  ‘Natasha…’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, licking batter off her fingers in an almost pornographic way.

  ‘Are you around Oxford over the next couple of weeks?’

  She poured a cup of batter into the pan and swirled it round. ‘I might be,’ she said.

  ‘And are you…’

  ‘Shagging anybody else?’ said Natasha.

  ‘Well. Yes,’ said Matt. ‘Because you know how much I enjoy your company, but I don’t want to come between you and some bond trader from Dulwich Village.’