Читать книгу The Blame Game - C.J. Cooke - Страница 14

I’m wool-headed this morning after last night’s escapades. Not nearly as sexy as it sounds. I woke up to use the loo around two in the morning and heard noises outside. I went to check and saw a man moving around in the garden. At least, I think I did. I was so sure last night and now I’m not. I feel so guilty. I woke Michael and he went after him. He was gone for over an hour. The longest hour of my life. When I saw him coming in through the door I almost collapsed with relief. He was sweaty and out of breath, but not injured.

‘Did you find him?’ I said, my voice trembling. I found myself looking him over for signs of blood.

He set the torch back in the block on the kitchen bench. ‘No. It was too dark.’

‘Didn’t you take a knife? Where is it?’

He sank into a chair by the table and wiped his face. ‘Dropped it.’

I waited for something more – where he’d been, details of a confrontation with an intruder, a fight. A narrative of any sort to put all the questions whirring through my head to bed. Michael wouldn’t make eye contact.

‘But … you were gone for ages. I was out of my mind … I was absolutely beside myself, Michael. Did you catch up with him?’

He rubbed his eyes, stifled a yawn. ‘I followed him into the trees and then I turned back. I got a bit lost, though. Luckily I saw the lights from the bay through the trees and followed them home.’

I gasped. ‘You were in the rainforest?’

He was tired, keen to shrug off the memory of it. ‘It was pitch black. Couldn’t see a thing. One minute I was on the road and the next I was surrounded by trees and frigging monkeys.’

I studied his face. He looked amused by the memory of being surrounded by monkeys, not bothered at all by the fact that he went racing out after a suspected intruder.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, deciding that I had somehow got it all wrong. I’d let my paranoia get to me. ‘But … you really didn’t see who it was?’

He gulped back a glass of water. ‘That’s what I said.’

‘But who could it have been?’ I said. ‘Why would someone have been outside?’

‘Are you sure it was someone?’ Michael said, and I did a double take.

‘You saw him, Michael. You went after him …’

‘I was half asleep. I spent an hour walking in circles in the bloody jungle.’

And there it was again, the edge of guilt against my skin. I looked down, ashamed. ‘Sorry. I think we were both possibly being paranoid.’

‘Both of us?’ he sniped back.

I fell silent. I had been absolutely sure that I had seen a dark figure, a man moving through the garden and up the bank, but just then doubt slipped in, like a lie sliding inside a truth.

‘Let’s just go to bed,’ he said, rubbing his face. ‘We’ve got a long drive back to the airport tomorrow.’

No one is happy when we shut the door on the beach hut for the last time. Reuben has his headphones on but is clicking his fingers and stamping his feet in the way he does when he’s particularly stressed. Saskia is long-faced and holds Jack-Jack extra tight.

‘Maybe we can come back next year,’ Michael says cheerily, though I catch his eye and give a small shake of my head as if to say, let’s not make promises we can’t keep. I have no idea how we’ve afforded this trip, never mind how we could possibly afford round two in a year’s time. We’re still paying off Reuben’s iPad, for crying out loud.

We spend the first hour of the drive to the airport in a gloomy silence. In reflection of our mood it starts to rain, and before long it’s coming down in great sweeping chains. The air feels cooler, which is no bad thing. Grey cloud spreads out across the sky. It’s been blue skies and belting heat for six weeks straight. Saskia decides she needs to wee every four minutes, so we pull over for the dozenth time and let her go at the side of the road.

‘I’ll drive for a bit,’ I tell Michael as he heads back to the driver’s side. ‘You have a nap.’ I’m not completely comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road but I feel guilty at the dark circles under his eyes.

The kids settle down in the backseat, Saskia holding Jack-Jack tightly and looking mournfully out the window, Reuben plugged into his iPad. Michael folds his arms and leans his head against the window. I find a British radio channel and turn the volume just enough to hear. Enjoy the lack of traffic, I tell myself, forcing optimism. It’ll be bumper-to-bumper when you get back home.

About an hour into the journey a white van appears as we approach a bend, moving at high speed along the road towards us. Instinctively I press the brake as I reach the curve of the road. The van draws closer. It appears to be speeding up. Odd, I think. And dangerous. Why speed up on a bend, especially when the road is wet?

At the very last moment, the van veers sharply into our lane, two tyres lifting off the tarmac as it swerves and plunges straight into us.

There is no time to react.

An explosion of metal slamming into metal, the sound of tyres screeching like a wounded animal, the air slashed by screams. An airbag explodes in my face and the car careens wildly, glass shards whipping through the air.