Falling For You (12 page)

‘Thank you,’ she says stiffly. ‘Jack’s always been most hospitable to us and I know you take after your father.’

Mum
was hospitable to you too, I think crossly. I know she was. I bite my tongue but the words come out anyway.

‘Let’s agree not to bring my mum into any of it,’ I manage to say evenly, ‘and I’m sure we’ll all get along just fine…’

‘Well,
really
!’

‘Darling,’ my uncle pops his head round the kitchen door and we all look up expectantly. Right now I’m almost hoping he’s going to tell us he’s found some way to get them out of here. That they’re going to go.

 ‘Nothing doing, I’m afraid.’ His voice sounds strange, a little strangled. Am I imagining that he’s looking at me rather darkly? Has he just heard our uncomfortable exchange? He shakes his head at my aunt, and she raises her chin, flashes her pretty green eyes and puts on an obvious ‘brave face’.

‘It’s what we expected,’ she says. He squeezes her hand.

‘Um, Rose,’ he beckons me with his head now towards the hall.
A quiet word
, his whole demeanour seems to say. He wants us out of earshot of the others. ‘Perhaps you’d come and … give me a hand bringing in a few fresh logs for the fire?’

Mrs P bustles about, suddenly busy showing Carlotta where everything is in the kitchen, opening all the cupboards and drawers as my aunt looks on unenthusiastically.

‘If it’s about what my aunt and I were just talking about in the kitchen…’ I take in a breath, as me and Ty reach the hall, ‘well, I was a bit upset, that’s all. I’d prefer it if she didn’t bring up my mother.’ 

‘Oh.’ He looks immediately apologetic. And surprised. ‘What did she just say?’

‘I can’t remember the actual words that were used. I think …’ I mumble, ‘I was a little sharp myself. We did both apologise.’ I look up at him through my fringe. ‘If that’s what this is all about …?’

‘It isn’t.’

Oh. I feel my shoulders stiffening.

‘It’s about what you were proposing before; my brother …’
H
e’s got that apologetic look on again and my heart sinks right down to the damp Wellington boots which I’m now slipping back onto my feet. We’re going out to the log shed so he can talk to me in private but it’s going to be bloody cold out there.

If he’s going to say he can’t help, then he might as well just say it here and now …

‘They’ll be asking to see our passports and security clearance in a short while, Lawrence.’ Dougie’s batman Arjuna nudges me gently and I open my eyes for a fraction of a second.

‘We are still in the militarised zone. They may enquire about your purpose of travel …’

My purpose of travel
… I turn my back to him, away from the too-bright sunshine pouring through the window of the jeep. I know what my purpose is. But I was asleep, such restless sleep. Perhaps it is the rows of all the bombed-out houses that we’ve passed along the way that’s stirred this up? All chunks of concrete and bits of mangled metal. I’ve seen the damage bits of falling masonry like that can inflict on anyone who’s trapped underneath. The smell of the plaster stays in your nostrils for days after; the dust and the cold and damp, they clog up your insides till you think you’ll never be free of it, but the worst thing of all, perhaps, is the hours that must be spent alone inside the prison under the masonry, waiting for release.

Such a thing I could not endure again, I know this. I know what I would do to avoid it. I close my eyes and once more the old memories from England are there, hovering like flies inside my churning mind;

Was he dead?

 I bent over double, meaning to catch my breath but all I did was throw up over the wet bark of the silver birch in front of me, heaving the empty contents of my guts till my stomach felt turned inside out. I couldn’t run anymore, I couldn’t stay away, and yet I couldn’t go back either …

When I glanced over my shoulder the last golden sliver of the sun was just disappearing through the forest canopy. Soon it would be dark. I leaned against the tree trunk and contemplated that fact without relish. I didn’t want to spend another night alone in this place. I didn’t want to be in the dark.  I’d already used the last of my matches and tonight there would be no moon, it would be black as hell.

 And I was already in hell.

So far, forty-eight hours had elapsed since … since it happened.  I could have used that time to put a hundred miles between me and here but all the while I’d been going round in circles, something keeping me tied to this place as surely as a predator remains tied to its prey. Partly, I suspected, it was because I hadn’t hung around to discover how much damage I’d done.

And I had to know.

I sucked at the back of my hand which was scratched and bleeding where the hawthorns had torn at me as I’d run. I felt as if my legs were going to give way beneath me any minute. Where to go now? Who to turn to? But if I carried on a little further - just a little way up from here, I might find shelter for the night at the old ruin. If I was lucky I’d have some tins and packets still stashed away up there from all the other times I’d needed to get away. I might even still have a candle or two, an old lighter to give me light. It’d been a year or so since I’d last had to do this but there might still be some provisions left up there ... 

I spun round, hyper-alert then as a pin-prick of light caught my eye, advancing towards me through the trees. They were still out looking for me, damn it. I’d made sure to stay out of sight for the first twenty-four hours.  On the first night, I stayed immersed in the river for three hours, till I was frozen so bad I thought my bollocks would drop off, till they led the dogs away. I have no idea how they didn’t manage to find me.

 When they didn’t, I made a decision after that, that I wasn’t going to be caught. If I could survive that, if I could make it through that stormy, fuck-scared August night, then I could survive anything. I could go on and live a life, a good life, if I chose to. I wouldn’t have to spend God-knows-how-many years rotting in a jail cell.

But now they were back. I turned to run but my ankle twisted against a jutting-out root and I went down, face-first, into the mud. The pain seared through me like a lighted brand and I couldn’t get up. For the first few minutes I couldn’t even think about getting up, and by the time I could, my pursuer was on me.

‘Lozza!’ WTF?

‘Marco … what are you doing here?’ I could make out Marco’s worried face in the gathering dark. His round arc-shaped eyebrows, his high forehead covered by his jet-black hair.

 ‘I’ve been looking for you for hours - for days’ I thought; I’ve never heard his voice sound so high-pitched. He wasn’t scared of me was he?

‘What are you looking at me like that, for?’ Marco knew me well enough. He’d worked for my father for years. What I did the other night
... he must have known I’d never meant it to go so far. He must have known why I did what I did.

‘Don’t you know, man?’ He stopped, looking at me remorsefully and his reaction to me freaked me out, because it could only mean that things were worse than I yet knew. That I had done much more damage than I’d ever intended to.   I looked him straight in the eye and asked him the one thing it scared the life out of me to ask and yet I had to know; 

‘Is he dead?’

‘Lawrence,’ Arjuna’s voice is more urgent now. ‘Come on, sir.’ I open one eye, groggy, and my travelling companion is tugging at my sleeve. The jeep has already drawn to a halt. Ahead of us, a military checkpoint with two bus-loads of passengers still has to be sorted through but for some reason we’re the ones who’ve been flagged to the side.

‘Have your luggage out please sir, and ready for inspection.’ The young guard who unsmilingly glances through our papers hands them back now through the window.

‘They’ve taken the couple who were up ahead of us for a body search,’ Arjuna notes uneasily.

‘Not a problem,’ I force my thoughts back into the present and my mouth tastes acid. ‘They won’t find anything on me.’

Not unless they plant it,
his strained silence seems to imply. Have they recognised my name, is that it? I wipe the sheen of sweat off my face and Arjuna hands me the water bottle.

‘How much further?’ I sort out the passports I’ve just been given and pass him back his.  We’ve been travelling along this bumpy, hot and humid road for nearly forty minutes now. By my reckoning we can’t be that far away from the tin-roofed shelter at… I scrabble in my pocket for the slip of paper Dougie wrote on this morning - Hospital Road. That’s where we’re due to pick up the shuttle that’ll take us to the air base at Palali.

‘Not far. Another two kilometres maybe
…’ Arjuna’s distracted, fretting about what the military might want next, so I leave him be, peering through the dusty window instead. To the far left of us I can see the remains of yet another bombed-out house along the roadway. Some of the tourists from the bus up front have come out of their vehicle and are taking snapshots.

 When you see these bombed houses from the outside it hardly seems possible anyone could survive. But I know Sunny was trapped in a pitch-black pocket underneath the beams for some four days and nights. No food, no water. All he had was the dust-saturated air. By the time they'd brought him to me he’d been shrunken with dehydration, covered from head to toe in blood and dust and he’d got the bewildered, wide-eyed look of the newborn on his face – that look that said ‘
Oh, here I
am. I’m here, then
.’  I remember the first thing he’d said to me, quite calmly and in his halting English was that he’d known all along someone would be coming for him; that he would be saved. 

Something about that simple faith of his touched me deeply. I’ve never worked out quite why but I know it gave me a deep sense that here was someone it would be worth going the extra mile for; someone worth saving.

‘You are with an
International Aid Agency
,’ Arjuna stresses once the guard is out of earshot. ‘When they ask - you are returning to your family for the holidays.’

‘I know, Arjuna.’ He doesn’t need to read me my lines. I feel an unexpected flash of affection towards my companion, nonetheless; Dougie’s tasked him with making sure I get safely out of Colombo and he means to see that I do. Because of the urgency of it and with me not speaking the lingo, Arjuna’s accompanying me all the way down.

‘I’m gonna be all right, okay?’ I’ve got to keep a low profile, I know. I just need to get out of this country. But because right now I’m on a mission on Sunny’s behalf, and because I know Sunny is somehow blessed, I’m convinced I’m going to be helped.

‘Remember to smile.’ Arjuna isn’t smiling. He hands me a
dosa
 - a paper-thin rice and lentil pancake he bought at the roadside at the last checkpoint where we were stopped for a while with nobody checking anything. ‘Eat this. Guilty men can’t swallow. It’ll help keep you looking - innocent.’

‘I
am
innocent,’ I protest.  I pat my passport which I’ve kept in easy reach on my lap, all the documentation to show who I am, where I’m coming from and why I’m going home. In my backpack I’ve got the names and numbers Dougie’s given me for people to contact regarding Sunny’s medical care once he arrives in the UK. There are at least two charitable agencies who support international efforts in cases like Sunny’s and I have details of the back-route, short cut movers and shakers who, once they make their mind up to help, can get things going. Almost miraculously, Dougie has already spoken to one of them, and he’s promised to speak to the second person too, an old-time friend of his, in advance of my arrival in the UK.

This part of it I know is Sunny’s grace; all the difficult, impossible-to-solve parts of this puzzle seem to be melting away before my very eyes. It’s the seemingly easy bit that I’m really worried about.

‘A man in a hurry always attracts attention in these parts. You are no VIP, Lawrence, and no other UK aid worker gets the star treatment,’ Arjuna notes
.
‘
T
he flight from Palali to Colombo - nearly seven hundred rupees.
Plus
my fare. Everyone else gets the bus. So - until I set you on that plane back to the UK I’m on tenterhooks.
Innocent or not
.’

I know he is referring to the Sri Lankan who I decked a few nights ago. I know that’s why Dougie has gone to all this trouble to get me out of here but right now that isn’t what’s preying most heavily on my mind. Arjuna’s dark eyes take me in penetratingly and for one moment I fear he can see right into the shadows, into all the murkiness and the memories I’ve spent the last five years hiding from.

‘Is he dead?’

‘He isn’t dead, Lozza.  Just … what did you do it for, man?’

I’d looked at Marco painfully, leaning my body weight against the tree behind us. My father wasn’t dead then. The thin hysterical sound of laughter that came out of my lips didn’t sound like me at all; it sounded like someone else.  If he wasn’t dead then I wasn’t a murderer. It also meant that I would never again in my life know what it meant to be free; to be safe. When he caught up with me, my father would crush me like a beetle underfoot, that’s what would happen. ‘What in heaven’s name possessed you?’