Thrown (16 page)

He reaches over and cups my cheek and leans forward. I kiss him but it isn’t like before. In the back of my mind I curse Peter Macbeth for ruining what Stoker and I had. It wasn’t purposeful but his words and their consequences have ripped me from the only boy who ever made me feel. This just isn’t fair.

I break the kiss and sit back in my seat.

He knows something is wrong. It’s probably written all over my face.

‘What’s the matter, Amy?’

‘I need to ask you some things.’

‘Sounds serious.’

‘It may be, Stoker. I don’t know. I need you to be truthful with me.’

His own face looks serious now and he sits facing me waiting for my questions.

‘You said you came by the bookshop earlier but I was talking to someone. So why didn’t you come into the shop? I would have thought you’d come in and wait. Or did you know that the person I was talking to wasn’t just a normal customer? You knew who that person was, didn’t you?’

He doesn’t answer me at first. He looks at the rain droplets rolling down the windshield and seems to be considering what he’s going to say.

‘I want the truth, Stroker.’

He looks at me and says, ‘Yes, I knew who he was. Macbeth.’

‘The police detective who interviewed you about my aunt’s death.’

‘He spoke to me, yes.’

‘And you know why he spoke to you?’

He sighs and says, ‘Something about an oil stain and a link between me and her.’

‘So what is this link?’

‘It’s nothing, really.’

‘Stoker, don’t lie to me. You fixed my aunt’s car as a favor.

Mechanics don’t do that as a rule.’

‘I liked Beth.’

‘How much? How well did you know her?’

‘We were friends.’

‘Seems like an odd friendship to me.’

‘Why? You’re a lot like her and
we’re
friends. At least I thought we were.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean that you don’t have the right to question me like this. It’s like an interrogation. You don’t trust me?’

‘How can I trust you when I find out that there are things you haven’t told me? You’ve been arrested for fighting. You had contact with my aunt that interested the police after she died. You didn’t tell me any of that.

How can I trust you?’ The tears come now, streaming down my face in hot stinging trails.

Stoker leans forward to take me in his arms but I can’t have that…I can’t have him touching me right now. I open the door and get back in my own car. I sit there crying and I don’t even know why. I didn’t get the answers I needed and I’m no closer to knowing anything. Stoker’s door opens and he comes around to my window, knocking on it with his knuckles. I press the button on the dash that locks the Volvo.

‘Amy, let me in.’

Even though I’m crying, I feel the familiar numbness inside. Maybe I’m only crying because I know this situation deserves tears even if they don’t have the force of emotion behind them. This isn’t right. I should be feeling more pain than this.

‘Amy.’ Stoker’s rapping on the window opens the cuts on his knuckles and his blood turns the rivulets of rainwater red on my window. ‘Open the door.’

Somewhere over the sea, lightning flashes followed by the low growl of thunder. The rain hisses off the cars, forming a mist over the paintwork. He shouldn’t be out in this. He needs to get back to his car. As long as I’m here, he won’t do that.

I start the Volvo.

‘Amy, no!’

I reverse and turn the car around so I’m facing back up the dirt road.

In the rearview, Stoker is standing next to his car in the hissing rain watching me. I slam the car into first and peel off along the dirt road and the further I get from him the smaller he becomes in the mirror.

Eventually he blurs with all the rain streaks and I stop looking in the mirror at all until I hit the main road and I’m on my way to Promise House.

There are things there that can help make me feel.

*

Stoker

I don’t know what the fuck just happened.

It was going so well until Macbeth put crazy ideas into Amy’s head.

Maybe I should go after her. Speak with her. But what could I say that would make any difference to how she feels? She doesn’t trust me so anything I say now could be seen as a lie even though I would never do that to Amy.

I hardly feel the rain beating down on me or hear the thunder groaning in the sky behind me. My mind is wrapped up in the situation between Amy and me. I thought she was the girl who could change my life. I only wanted to make her happy. But I’ve fucked it all up.

I get into the Astra and drive towards the main road. I know where I’m going even though I can’t remember deciding I was going to there. I haven’t been there for over a year.

Not since the accident.

I don’t even know why I’m going there except that somewhere in the depths of my mind I think I may find answers there. Answers to what, I don’t know. I don’t even know the question.

I arrive there twenty minutes later and now the storm is rolling in from the sea in full force. Angry black clouds cry rain and spit lightning and the wind pummels the grass and trees on the cliff road.

This place seem so innocuous, just a bend in the road. But this is the exact spot that my life took a freefall into tragedy and my mother’s and brother’s lives were ended.

All because of a loose lightbulb. It turns out that the reason the other driver stopped his car on the road was because he heard a rattling in his engine. So he stopped to investigate. The noise came from a loose screw that had found its way into the engine housing and started rattling about.

Because of that screw, three people died.

Fate can turn on the smallest things sometimes.

I pull off the road into a parking area to stop history repeating itself and I get out into the storm. The wind threatens to blow me off my feet so I lean into it and climb through the hedge onto the grass on the other side by the cliff edge. It’s only ten feet from the road to the edge of the cliff, which is why I was thrown all the way over the edge and into the sea below without hitting the ground.

This bend is the only part of this road where that could have happened.

Fate can play the cruellest tricks sometimes.

If I had died along with Mum and James, would it matter? There would be three graves side by side in the Sea Road Cemetery but would anything else be any different?

Dad would be just the same as now, getting drunk every night and pulling old photos out of the shoebox.

If I was dead would he get my photos out too or would he still leave them in the box?

I think I know the answer to that question.

I walk to the edge and look down at the hundred foot drop that saved my life. The seas is deep here. The cliffs angle down into the depths and the only place where the water gets shallow is the rocky are I pulled myself onto fifteen months ago, my wounds stinging from the salt water and the state of shock and the pain making me black out.

The wind coming inland tries to push me away from the edge. I lean into it and step closer to the drop. Everything changed on the day I went over this cliff edge. I stopped being myself and tried to become my dead brother to please Dad. I relegated my own interests to stolen time and secret painting sessions.

Beth could have changed that. She was going to change that. But even then I was worried that Dad would be losing me just as he lost James.

In reality, he lost me a long time ago.

When I went hurtling away from the crash that killed Mum and James and fate decided to throw me over this edge to the sea below, I left my real self in the dark waters. When I crawled onto those rocks, I lost my own identity by trying to be James for Dad. I was denying the fact that my brother was dead. Gone. He was unique. And now he was dead.

I can’t love Amy fully unless I’m myself. Dean Stoker. And I do love her. She deserves the real me, not someone who lives a certain way to avoid facing hard truths.

James is dead.

Mum is dead.

I love Amy Anderson.

I shudder against the cold rain and take a step forward so I’m standing on the very edge, the angry water churning a hundred feet below me.

I take a step into nothingness and suddenly the rocky cliff face is speeding past me and I’m falling through the storm towards the sea.

*

Amy

I sit on the bed. A single razor blade glints in the light from the lamp on the nightstand. This will help. This will make me feel.

I pick it up carefully between my thumb and forefinger and hold it up in front of my eyes. My face is reflected in the razor blade, hideously distorted by the metal just as Stoker’s face was blurred by the rain. It’s hard to know what’s real anymore and what is illusion.

Pain.

Pain is real.

I move the wickedly sharp blade to my left arm, the thin edge hovering above the scars. Stoker kissed those scars. He saw them and he wasn’t repulsed by me. He made love to me.

Love.

So if I’ve just broken up with the man I love, I should feel pain. A lot of pain.

I draw the razor across the skin just below my shoulder and I bite my lip at the sharp pain that arcs through my nerves and makes me wince.

The blood is warm as it springs from the wound and trickles down my arm. A single tear rolls down my cheek.

Outside, thunder rolls heavily across the evening sky, shaking Promise House.

I position the blade lower, over my bicep. I need more pain.

*

Stoker

The water is like concrete, knocking the breath out of me when I hit it.

I exhale as I go under, my lungs emptying of air as the force of my fall takes me down…down…down into the depths. The last time I was here in this water everything was calm. There was no storm then. Now, the surface is choppy with waves. At the moment that is irrelevant though because the surface is far above me and an undercurrent is dragging me further away from it.

I struggle against the irresistible pull of the current, flailing my arms and legs uselessly. I barely have any breath in my lungs. I know what will happen of I don’t get to the surface soon. Blackout. Drowning. Death.

Would it be so bad? Maybe this is what was supposed to happen fifteen months ago. Maybe I’ve been living on borrowed time and the grim reaper has brought me back here to take what is rightfully his.

No, I can’t die.

Amy.

I love Amy.

I stop struggling against the sea and I feel its rhythm moving all around me. Back and forth. Currents pulsing like a metronome.

Instead of resisting, I kick out gently with the movement of the current, using a sweeping motion of my arms to propel my body upward.

Two more strokes from my arms and I break the surface of the water, my lungs pulling in oxygen.

I let the waves take me towards the rocky shore and when I get there, I climb out of the sea. Lying on the rocks, I regain my breath and wait for the warmth to return to my body.

I’m alive.

*

Amy

I hesitate, the edge of the razor blade pressed against my skin. I’ve never known a storm like this. It hits the house and shakes it, rattling the windows. I’m about to go ahead and cut again when I think of Mr Tibbles. I haven’t seen him since I got home. Surely he isn’t out in this weather. Cats hate rain and storms and he has his cat flap so I’m sure he’s in the house. So why haven’t I seen him? Probably hiding somewhere.

I try to return to the business at hand but I can’t stop thinking about the cat. I have to know he’s safe. Stoker and I brought the cat from Penzance together and I have to make sure the cat is OK. I don’t try to rationalize it.

‘Mr Tibbles?’ I call out. I listen for a meow or the sound of his paws on the stairs but the rain and thunder make it hard to hear anything else.

I’m not going to be able to do anything else until I know he’s OK so I wrap a bandage around the cut in my left arm and go out into the hallway.

‘Here kitty. Mr Tibbles.’ From somewhere downstairs, I hear a sad meow.

So he’s inside but he sounds like he’s in pain or distress.

I go down to the hallway. ‘Mr Tibbles? You here?’

Another cry. This time I can locate it as coming from the living room.

I go in there and get to my knees, peering under the sofa to see a huge pair of green eyes staring back at me.

‘Mr Tibbles, you scaredy cat.’

He starts to purr but stays where he is. I can’t coax him out no matter how much I talk to him.

I don’t feel like going back upstairs just yet. I want to call Stoker. I made a mistake not trusting him earlier. What is in the past is in the past.

I can’t keep living my life looking backward all the time. I just wish I’d handled the confrontation in his car better. He was right to tell me to stop questioning him. I can’t just interrogate him like that.

I hear a noise outside and headlights sweep through the window as someone pulls onto the driveway. I go to the window and my heart leaps when I see Stoker’s car. Running to the doorway, I fix my hair and clothing as best I can.

I hear him step onto the porch and I open the door. When I see him, I gasp, my hand going to my heart. ’Stoker!’

He leans against the doorframe, his eyes half-closed. He is absolutely soaked to the skin. His hair hangs down in his eyes. He’s dripping water everywhere and at first I think it’s from when he was standing out in the rain but he smells like the sea. Why the hell would he be in the sea? He staggers forward and I keep him upright by holding onto his jacket. He feels so cold.

‘Come on,’ I say, ‘this way.’ I lead him into the living room and tell him to remove his clothes while I build a fire and get blankets. I bundle logs and fire starters into the fireplace and light the arrangement with a match. Stoker struggles out of his clothes and I fetch him a towel from the downstairs bathroom. As he dries himself, I rush upstairs for blankets off one of the spare beds. By the time I get back down to him, he’s curled up on the sofa, eyes closed.

I lay the blankets over him and put his clothes out by the fire and wonder if I should take him to a hospital. How the hell did he get in this state? I don’t rule out the hospital but I put it on the back burner for now.