Читать книгу Down to Earth - Melanie Rose - Страница 12

I awoke to the tantalising smell of bacon and eggs and lay with my eyes closed, wondering where I was. Calum and I never ate a cooked breakfast. He was a fruit and muesli man, Abbey usually had cereal and I liked fruit, yoghurt and toast. Opening my eyes, I glanced at the empty space beside me, the pillow still slightly depressed where someone had recently slept, and I remembered with a jolt where I was.

With the realisation that I wasn’t in my bed, the rest of the previous day’s horror reared its ugly head and my heart gave an involuntary flutter of fear. Had I really been catapulted six years into the future? Yesterday the signs had certainly indicated that, but how could such a thing be possible?

In the thin light of morning the idea seemed preposterous, as I lay snug and temporarily safe under the warm covers. I found myself thinking over all the alternatives to the impossible and the unthinkable. People didn’t simply disappear for over six years in the blink of an eye and return to find that the world had moved on without them. My task, therefore, was to discover a rational explanation for the strange events of the day before. Somehow, something or someone had altered my perception of what had happened after I’d exited that aeroplane. I merely had to discover who would want to do such a thing to me and why.

Scrunching my eyes tightly closed against the light that was filtering through the gold and black curtains, I curled into a ball, trying to think of at least one credible answer to my list of questions.

My mind began to snatch desperately at various scenarios. From what I’d heard, some con artists concocted elaborate scams to extort money from unsuspecting ‘marks’. Apart from the worrying fact that it had been dark when I’d landed, someone could have superficially altered the state of the airfield, hidden my car to ensure I walked to the nearest – and only – refuge, which had been the pub, where they had plastered leaflets and posters of me as ‘missing’ and left a copy of a specially altered newspaper in a place where I couldn’t fail to spot it, with the fictitious date on it.

It wasn’t outside the realms of possibility that someone had drugged me before I’d jumped so that I was confused about the timings. Maybe after Graham, Ingrid and Kevin had exited the aircraft the pilot had flown somewhere else and returned to drop me over the airfield hours later to confuse and disorientate me. They’d certainly succeeded in doing that, I thought grimly. The question was why? I didn’t have much to offer except my overdraft and credit card bills. So why would anyone want to do such a thing?

But then again, if the pilot had been involved, surely the jumpmaster had to have been in on it too? I recalled Matt’s reasonably easy acceptance that it was me on the phone calling him from the pub. If I’d really been missing for six years wouldn’t he have been more suspicious at a voice on the end of a phone claiming to be me? And it was Matt who had made sure I had his number in my pocket; he who could have insisted on taking me home last night to Calum or my parents, but didn’t. And it was easy enough to get a haircut to give the appearance of having aged …

Giving a little groan of despair, I curled tighter into the ball, pulling the bedclothes right up over my head. I wanted to go home to Calum. I knew I would be safe there. I’d throw myself into his arms and he’d laugh and tell me not to be so silly – I was fit and well and had never really been missing at all.

Listening carefully for sounds on the stairs, I decided the safest course of action was to get up and dressed, pretending to Matt that I was still suckered in to his strange fantasy world, and make a break for it as soon as an opportunity arose. Swinging my legs out of the bed, I rested my bare feet on a luxurious wool rug before crossing the polished oak flooring to the bathroom.

Locking the door securely behind me, I spent several minutes in the shower, washing away the grime of the previous day before wrapping myself in a large black towel and padding my way back out into the bedroom.

Matt was standing in the middle of the room with a mug of tea in his hand. I gave a small squeal of fright and nearly dropped the towel. Grabbing it just in time I hung on to it tightly, staring at him with wide eyes. He grinned appreciatively when he saw me.

‘Making yourself at home, I see.’

I felt the blood drain from my face and willed myself to sound normal. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

He crossed to the bed and placed the mug on the bedside table. ‘I’m glad you’re already up. I was going to wake you. There’s someone downstairs I think you might like to see.’

‘Really? I didn’t think anyone knew I was here?’ I sat on the edge of the bed and sipped at the hot tea. ‘Thank you for this, it’s just what I needed.’

‘I took the liberty of calling Kevin.’

‘Kevin?’ I was genuinely surprised. If Matt had gone to all this trouble to lure me here, why would he have called someone I knew? Particularly someone who had been in the plane with me before I had been drugged and possibly kidnapped? It didn’t make sense. ‘You mentioned Kevin last night, but I honestly don’t know him that well. He’s only been at the company a few weeks and he keeps pretty much to himself.’

I watched him over the rim of the mug, wondering. Matt couldn’t have concocted such an elaborate plan alone, he’d have needed help. Was it possible Kevin was involved too? Matt could have planted the boy at Wayfarer’s Insurance company where we worked, to make sure he was with me during the charity parachute jump. A memory of the spotty nineteen-year-old lad shyly handing me a cup of coffee in the mess room half an hour or so before take-off planted itself in my mind. That would have been about the right sort of timing for a drug to kick in. Looking down into the mug in my hand now, I almost choked.

‘Six years ago Kevin might have been something of a loner, but we’re good friends now,’ Matt was saying. ‘He’s got some wacky ideas, but he’s a good guy at heart – and he has an amazing way with computers and technology.’

I handed the mug back to him with the tea half drunk and offered a strained smile.

He grinned at me. ‘But I’ll let him tell you all about it. Come down when you’re dressed and join us for breakfast.’

When he’d gone I tried to remember every detail of the previous day. I recalled thinking how grey and drawn Kevin had looked – not that I could imagine him ever having a ruddy complexion with his pale freckly skin and reddish hair, but I’d put that down to nerves about the forthcoming jump and his hopeless infatuation with Ingrid. Had the pair of them invented some weird alternative reality for me?

Keeping a wary eye on the door, I slid open the top drawer of Matt’s bedside cabinet. At first glance there didn’t seem to be any clues hidden amongst the few personal bits and pieces, but then I noticed an envelope-sized piece of shiny white card in the corner looking tantalisingly up at me. Hearing nothing outside, I reached quickly in and drew the object out, turning it over in my hand.

A black and white photo of me smiled back at me. My chest tightened immediately and my breath caught in my throat. It was a copy of the snap Calum had taken the week before; the one that I imagined had been used on the posters I’d seen in the pub. With shaking hands I hastily put the offending article back into the drawer, sliding it tightly closed as if sealing the photo back into its place might lessen the impact of what it suggested.

I realised I couldn’t sit there forever, I needed Matt and Kevin to think I was going along with their plan – whatever that was.

Eyeing the blue jumpsuit with distaste I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and T-shirt, realising I had little option but to put them back on. It was either that or go downstairs looking like a temptress in a dolphin T-shirt. I shuddered at the thought of how easily the scenario they’d invented had had me jumping into the parachute instructor’s bed.

‘Idiot,’ I mumbled to myself under my breath. As an afterthought I stepped back into the jumpsuit, wriggled it over my jeans and zipped it up to my neck.

Once dressed, I crept downstairs to find Matt standing with his back to me poring over a sheaf of papers at the kitchen counter, while a stocky man of about my own age sat at the breakfast bar, hunched over a fried breakfast. My gaze passed over him and rested on the back of Matt’s head. I noticed the way his hair curled against his neck, just touching his shoulders, then tore my eyes reluctantly away, reminding myself that he was part of all this … whatever this was. And Calum was at home probably anxiously awaiting my return.

Switching my attention to the man, who definitely wasn’t the Kevin I remembered, I watched as he scooped egg yolk onto the fried bread and forked it into his mouth with un -disguised relish. He had the same reddish, curly hair as Kevin had had and the same pale face, sharp nose and freckles, but there the similarity ended.

Inching further into the room I stood awkwardly, not really knowing what to say. Shifting from one foot to the other, I managed what I hoped was a reasonably bright sounding, ‘Hi.’

I couldn’t have elicited a more dramatic reaction if I’d pulled the pin on a hand grenade and rolled it into the middle of the room. The man passing as Kevin looked up and stared at me. For a couple of seconds his eyes fixed on mine and then, as if in slow motion he dropped his fork onto the plate with a clatter, splattering drops of egg yolk onto the work top. He shot to his feet, eyes and mouth gaping and backed away from me as if expecting me to explode into a thousand tiny pieces.