Carrie Goes Off the Map

by Phillipa Ashley

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about your dream role? The part you’d really like to play.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a hard one. Oops!’ She giggled. ‘Hadn’t meant that to sound like a line from a Carry On film.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with the Carry On films, as I’ve said before,’ said Matt, pouring himself another shot. ‘Now, what part would you like?’

  ‘A very big one.’

  He laughed out loud and it suited him, but she wasn’t so tipsy that she couldn’t see what he was trying to do: draw her out, steer the conversation on to her. Cunning, but not quite cunning enough. He really wasn’t that bad when he’d had a drink and pulled the poker out of his arse. And the kaftan woman might have got one thing right: he was quite fit. His face came into focus. She liked the way his dark silky hair curled against his neck, and he did have lovely eyes; they were smoky blue-black fringed with dark eyelashes. She wondered, suspiciously, if he used mascara, and when she giggled, her bare knees bumped against his under the table.

  ‘I want to be Lady Macbeth,’ she declared, much too loudly. ‘Well, don’t look so surprised. Don’t you think I can play a coldhearted murdering bitch?’

  ‘On the contrary, I think you’re perfectly capable of it. I’m just getting rather worried about sharing the same space as you.’

  He drained his glass but made no attempt to pour any more, which was a good thing. A very good thing actually, because she had her beer goggles clamped to her eyes and she needed to see Matt for what he really was. Ugly, withered, and troll-like.

  ‘Matt…’ she began.

  He rested his chin on hand again, listening intently. ‘Yes, Caroline.’

  He didn’t look like a troll; she’d be lying if she didn’t admit that he was, in fact, horrendously sexy. Maybe some black coffee might render him less attractive.

  ‘Can I ask you something personal?’

  ‘Mmm. That depends how personal.’

  She wished he wouldn’t do that. Lean even closer and murmur.

  ‘I want to know,’ she said, leaning dangerously close herself, ‘just exactly what you did in Tuman that got you into trouble?’

  ‘So this is Truth or Dare, is it?’ he said.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘In that case, you have to offer me something too.’

  ‘Okay. Name it,’ said Carrie, more boldly than she felt.

  ‘Anything goes?’

  She knew she was a bit tipsy but she didn’t care. Matt was so close now that she could feel his breath on her neck. ‘Absolutely anything.’

  ‘Okay. Here’s my question. Do you still love Huw?’

  Now that, she thought as her heart sank, really was a hard one. He backed off slightly but he must have seen her swallow as she tried to keep her composure.

  ‘Crafty,’ she said, waving her glass at him with a wink, ‘and below the belt, even from someone whose job is asking uncomfortable questions.’

  ‘Yes, but I thought we were playing hardball. That anything goes.’

  She blew out a breath. ‘Do I still love Huw? What does that mean? I suppose I still think about him. I still feel… cut up when I think of what he did to me, and I definitely still hate him sometimes. The trouble is, I still think about the bastard far too much.’

  Matt shook his head gravely. ‘Sorry. You’ll have to be more specific than that. What do you mean by too much? For instance, have you thought about him today?’

  ‘This morning on the beach, I thought about him and what he might be doing right now. Him and her.’

  ‘You mean Fenella.’

  ‘Yes. Fenella.’ There, she’d managed to get her tongue round the name without gagging. That must be progress. ‘And I thought about him—and Fenella—on the journey here a few times.’

  ‘This doesn’t sound very promising, I have to say.’

  ‘Yes, but. You haven’t heard the full story yet. It might not be quite as bad as you think.’

  ‘And why’s that?’ said Matt.

  ‘Because I didn’t think about him tonight while we were at the play. Not for a single moment. In fact, he might not have entered my head unless you’d just asked your question.’

  ‘Which you still haven’t answered.’

  ‘Because I know this is Truth or Dare and I want to be honest, and being honest, I don’t know.’

  There. She’d been as open as she could, but Matt wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easily.

  ‘Would you take him back if he walked in here now?’ he asked.

  ‘No way.’

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Okay. If we’re being strictly accurate, I don’t think I’d take him back. Will that do? That’s the best I can do right now. Now, I’ve kept my side of the bargain and it’s your turn.’

  ‘I’m quaking,’ he said, but his hands were rock steady.

  ‘It’s the same thing I asked before. What happened to make you rush home from Tuman? Because if you’re planning on going back there, why are you back here now?’

  ‘I didn’t want to come home. I was sent back. For four months.’

  ‘Really? Robert said you’d done something heroic. Why would they send you back for that?’

  ‘My brother is a total wanker.’

  ‘I’m sure he loves you too. Now come on. I gave you an honest answer. You have to give me one.’

  Matt raised his eyebrows again. ‘Well, if you insist…’

  She kicked him under the table.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Don’t try and wriggle out of it, Matt.’

  He watched her while he rubbed his knee. She could see in his eyes that he was desperate to escape. For a moment she thought he might try to leave, but then he sat up and raked his hands through his hair.

  ‘Okay. The reason I was sent back was because of an accident. Well, they called it an accident; I prefer to call it a bloody stupid mistake. But that’s why I’m here now.’

  ‘When did this happen?’ asked Carrie.

  ‘About a month before Huw’s wedding. I’d already declined the invitation. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. You were unlucky, you see.’

  He looked to her to laugh but she folded her arms and said, ‘Don’t stop now.’

  Chapter 27

  He was aware he was playing with the shot glass and desperately wanting another drink. Also wishing he had a cigarette and wishing he didn’t want one so much.

  ‘I was on my way back from one of the villages in a Jeep and we hit some debris. A stump or a log, I don’t know what happened exactly,’ he told her. ‘The next thing I knew we were off the track, not that there was much of one. There was an almighty crash…’

  Then shrieking or screaming. Of birds or people he was no longer certain. When his colleagues had arrived from the medical center, they said he’d been knocked out. He wasn’t sure, though as soon as the Jeep had hit the tree, he knew he’d broken his nose. He must have smashed it against the windshield, because there had been blood on the glass.

  The one thing he’d never forget was the smell of petrol. It had made him retch. Then he’d known he’d had to get out. The instinct to run had been more powerful than he could ever have imagined. His heart had literally been trying to punch its way out of his chest as he’d forced open the door of the Jeep, the stench of fuel in his nose, knowing that it could go up at any moment. He’d fallen onto the ground, dazed but aware enough to know he had to get away from the vehicle.

  He would have run, he was sure of it, but then he’d heard a groan next to him and realized that he couldn’t get away because Aidan, his colleague, was still trapped in the Jeep.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘You see, I was fucked either way, or rather Aidan was fucked. My God…’

  He thrus
t both hands through his hair, feeling the sweat on his palms, his heart pounding, and the agony of the decision he’d had to make in a few seconds.

  ‘Matt?’

  At Carrie’s prompt, he forced himself to carry on speaking. ‘I knew that he probably had some kind of spinal injury and if I moved him I could be making it worse. I knew that if I pulled him out like that with my bare hands he could end up paraplegic, but I had no choice. It was that or let him burn.’

  He stopped, seeing the scene again, hearing the sounds, smelling the fuel, and remembering his own terror and confusion as he’d weighed up the options. No one was coming to rescue them, not for hours maybe. It was his call. His decision. His error of judgment, and Aidan had to live with the consequences.

  ‘I had no choice,’ he repeated as Carrie listened, hugging her knees to her chest. The first person he’d ever told. Ever really talked to about how he felt.

  ‘So you pulled him out.’

  He couldn’t look at her; he looked out of the window and against the night saw only his own reflection—and hers, white faced, opposite.

  ‘I managed to crawl to the other door. It was already open but I still had to drag him out. Do you know the only way I could do it? I told myself that he was just a great big bastard; a wing forward I had to tackle to win a rugby match. If I got him out, I’d have helped England beat Australia in the World Cup final. All I had to do was stop him from reaching the line and scoring a try. How bizarre is that?’ he said, shaking his head at himself.

  ‘Not bizarre at all. Who knows the way our minds work when… when we’re pushed to the limit,’ she said.

  You mean when you flipped at the church, he was thinking. Carrie, it’s not the same thing… but he said nothing. Didn’t want to hurt her.

  ‘Then what happened?’ she said softly.

  ‘I dragged him out of the Jeep and away from the wreckage until I blacked out. Totally fucking stupid thing to do, of course, but I was out of my head,’ he said. ‘Adey could have had all kinds of internal injuries but I didn’t have time to think. I wasn’t thinking at all. I don’t think I was even on the planet.’

  ‘But you got him out,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ he said, hardly hearing her now as the guilt overwhelmed him. She was going to want to know what happened next.

  ‘You pulled this Aidan—your mate—out. You saved him…’

  It was then he knew he’d said far too much. Way too much. It was the first time he’d spoken about it properly since he’d got back. It had been more unpleasant than he’d thought. All that bollocks they told you about baring your soul being therapeutic. He must remember never to tell a patient that talking helped—or to become a better liar.

  ‘The Jeep went up like a rocket; not, I have to admit, seconds after I’d got Aidan out, though that would make a better story. It must have been a good few minutes later, because the noise woke me up. I’m not sure what happened, to be honest, but I managed to find the radio in a bush and eventually the cavalry arrived from the base. It was them who saved Aidan, not me.’

  ‘And is he okay?’

  ‘He’s in a wheelchair. Unlike me, he won’t be going back to Tuman or playing rugby again, and that’s my fault. I probably caused the paralysis getting him out.’

  ‘Surely you can’t know that for certain. I’m not a doctor, but you—’

  ‘Had no choice? Carrie, I’ve heard all that from my colleagues. Maybe I didn’t have a choice, but it will never stop me from blaming myself.’

  She said nothing, just hugged herself tighter, and his heart went out to her. She was like a little girl, overwhelmed by what she’d just heard and, like most people, at a loss about how to respond. But then she surprised him.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked.

  ‘Me? Oh, just this,’ he said, touching his nose. ‘Plus a couple of cracked ribs. Serves me right for trashing a Jeep and Aidan in one go. Two for the price of one, eh?’ He laughed at himself to avoid telling her about his other—ha!—injuries. That he was not quite himself afterwards and had to be persuaded to come home after he’d lost it during one of the clinics they were running. He’d been about to stitch someone up after a minor op when suddenly he’d smelled burning. That smell, sickly, acrid, of burning metal and rubber had made him gag. He could no longer see his patient, let alone focus on what he’d been doing. All he could see was Aidan lying in the Jeep, the flames as the whole thing exploded. His hands had started shaking so much he’d had to hand over to his colleague. Then Shelly had turned up to find him sitting in the office with his head in his hands. It turned out that some of the kids had lit a fire in the clearing and thrown an old tire on it, but it had been enough to earn him a ticket home to England.

  Matt knew that even a moderate head injury could make you act out of character, could affect your emotions and perceptions for weeks and months afterwards. But the scans had shown nothing sinister and he was self-aware enough to know that blaming a bump on the head was easier than admitting he’d been shaken up and that he’d felt guilty.

  ‘I was driving too fast, I wasn’t paying attention. No wonder we went off the road,’ he said out loud.

  He and Aidan had been up all night attending a difficult birth in the outlying village, but being tired wasn’t an excuse. His colleagues had told him he’d been tired; he wasn’t to blame. But they weren’t the ones who’d crashed the Jeep.

  ‘You’re very hard on yourself, Matt. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. It could have happened to anyone,’ Carrie was saying.

  Okay, thought Matt, she was trying very hard to be kind now. She was speaking in a soft voice, because she felt sorry for him and wasn’t quite sure what to say. Inside he felt angry, embarrassed, and very much like lashing out at someone. He felt like saying: ‘Stick to the acting. Leave the sympathy and understanding to me. I’m a professional at it, remember, and so much better than you.’

  But he couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her face crumpling like a little girl’s, so he leaned forward and kissed her very gently on the forehead. Then he got up and headed outside before he said something he’d really regret.

  Chapter 28

  ‘Would you like to drive?’ said Matt as they packed up the next morning. ‘You might feel safer, considering.’

  She tried not to rise to the bait. Neither of them had mentioned the night before, neither the vodka-fueled confessional nor the kiss. She’d felt the kiss was the equivalent of a pat on the head: a signal to back off from his personal life. She’d felt dismissed, gently but firmly.

  ‘Actually, I’ve got a bit of a headache. Maybe you should drive. You haven’t got any Tylenol, by the way?’

  ‘Sorry. No. Try a cup of coffee. If it gets really bad, I’ll stop at a pharmacy.’

  ‘You are such a caring person, Dr. Landor.’

  Ignoring her, he pulled the map from the dashboard and opened it, frowning.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I thought St. Ives?’

  She shrugged. ‘Sounds as good a place as any.’

  They ended up at a site just outside the town. Matt claimed he’d stayed there when he was in his last year at high school. They headed down the steep streets into the town center, splitting up so that Matt could visit the Tate Gallery. Carrie was longing to go there too, but she was longing for some time on her own even more. Making an excuse, she wandered round the surf boutiques, window-shopping. She wouldn’t have admitted it to Matt, but money was becoming an issue. She’d be starting her teaching course soon and she needed to talk to Huw and sort out their finances, but the thought of seeing Fenella, her bump maybe showing by now, didn’t appeal.

  When she reached the Tate again, Matt was outside, chatting to a tall, dark-haired girl in jeans and a T-shirt so ostentatiously free of patterns and logos, Carrie knew they’d cost a fortune. He wa
s whispering something to her and she turned round sharply.

  ‘Hello, Natasha,’ said Carrie. ‘This is a surprise.’ She could have kicked herself. She hadn’t meant the words to sound sarcastic.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ trilled Natasha.

  ‘Not really,’ said Robert Landor, emerging from a nearby newsagent with a packet of cigarettes. ‘Seeing as Matt knew we were here.’

  ‘I didn’t know until yesterday,’ said Matt evenly.

  So the text Matt had received on the beach the day before wasn’t from Nurse Bryan or Stewart; it was from Natasha or Rob.

  ‘Does it really matter? I’m sure he meant to tell you,’ said Natasha.

  Carrie squashed down the unlikely but horrible thought that Natasha and Rob might want to share Dolly with her and Matt. ‘Where are you staying?’ she said, mentally crossing her fingers.

  ‘Not in a bloody camper van, that’s for sure. Bryony’s godmother has a gin palace down at the marina. We’re staying on that,’ said Rob.

  ‘That sounds very luxurious. Cozy too. Is Bryony here too?’ said Carrie, generous now she knew there was no chance of them sharing the van.

  ‘Fenella wouldn’t let her have time off, the evil witch.’ Natasha’s hand flew to her mouth, then she lowered her voice. ‘I am so sorry. I’m sure you never want to hear her name again.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Carrie, gritting her teeth. Matt’s face was impassive.

  ‘Of course. Anyway, you asked me about the yacht. Frankly, it’s dreadful. Really vulgar, all white leather and gold taps. You must come and see it,’ she said, stroking Matt’s arm as if he were a small furry animal.

  Rob gave a sigh. ‘Yes, you simply must, but for God’s sake let’s get something to eat first. I’m starving. Is there anywhere in this place that doesn’t serve bloody meat pies?’

  Surprisingly there was, and the four of them were soon sitting in a restaurant overlooking the harbor.

  ‘That was rather good, considering,’ said Natasha with a sigh, wiping a tiny trace of raspberry coulis from her mouth with a table napkin. ‘You know, I think I saw this place mentioned in the Sunday Times Style. A.A. Gill gave it four stars so I thought it would be heaving with men in patterned sweaters, all outraged by the size of the portions.’