Falling For You (29 page)

I turn and make my way carefully back over the path he cleared this morning
.
I’m going to look out over the battlements because my pride won’t let me walk past him right now.
He’ll see.
He’ll
know
how mortified I feel. Besides, I tell myself, I want to see if there is any conceivable way I could get out of here today. I can’t stay here anymore! I don’t want to, I feel so ... so crushed because he’ll be well aware I was waiting for him. I must look so stupid in his eyes.  

But there is no chance in hell anyone’s making it out of here this afternoon. All that lies before me right now is a whole wide hinterland of pure uninterrupted snow.

I cross my arms in front of my chest, hurting, remembering; it is snow like the snow in the Austrian mountains I was once going to come hurtling down, isn’t it? Snow just like I’d imagined on that wonderful holiday that was supposed to have marked my transition into adulthood
.

 The brightly
wrapped parcel perched on top of Mum’s duvet had got to be some item of clothing, that much was obvious. Maybe a ski-jacket and some salopettes? It was the contents of the envelope - surely more than just a card?- that interested me more, though. I tore it open, all fingers and thumbs.

‘Happy Birthday Darling!’ Somewhere in the far distance my parents were smiling in unison, but there had to be some mistake. Where was my ticket to Oberlangau? The itinerary, all the details that my friends had already been poring over for a few days. I wanted to know what group I was in, who I was sharing a dorm with; all these things I had waited patiently to find out, and it was clear my parents were taking this whole ‘delayed gratification thing’ a little too far.

 I tore off the shiny wrapping paper, but inside, instead of the ski
-
wear
I expected, there was the faux fur jacket I’d spied in a catalogue months ago and hinted to mum that I fancied. That was way before the ski trip was even mooted. Where was all my other stuff? I’d looked at Mum and Dad, not yet crestfallen because I simply didn’t believe that that could be it. No. It could not. There had to be something else, surely? Maybe the ticket was in the jacket pocket?

I jumped on the smaller packet still lurking on the table. It looked like it might be a photo-frame. It wasn’t. It was a butterfly! Just like the one that had landed on the wall between me and Shona that day so many years before. Dad beamed at me expectantly.

‘Mum said you were keen on them,’ he explained shyly and I realised that he must have gone out of his way to find a specimen of the exact same species … only - this one was dead. It was mounted in a frame. It didn’t have quite the same appeal.

I swallowed down my disappointment at that, but then …

‘Try the jacket on, then!’ Dad rallied round and I let him help me on with it. When I surreptitiously felt in my pockets, feeling certain that this must be where they’d hidden the real prize … the ticket wasn’t in there either.

There wasn’t any ticket!

‘Thanks.’ I’m sure they took my choked-up voice to be a sign of amazed gratitude at their thoughtfulness, instead of extreme disappointment. I don’t think either of them had a clue how much I hated that jacket. Nobody noticed that I never got round to wearing it.     

They didn’t notice I’d chucked the framed dead butterfly into the back of my wardrobe and that never saw the light of day, either. Of course they didn’t. After that, things got a lot worse at home. Mum didn’t last for much longer after my birthday. She died in the spring.

Why the
spring?
Just when every other living thing on earth was pushing out in all directions, finding a foothold on life, she gave up on hers. And her dying was such a monumental thing, such a huge thing to hit Dad and me that suddenly the whole fanciful business of dreaming of school skiing trips seemed frivolous and wasteful. The  jacket - the last thing she bought for me - remained enshrined in its tissue paper, my resentment of it merely a reminder of my ingratitude. By dying - by choosing to die when she did - she had the last word, and her last word pinioned me like a butterfly to a mounting board. I felt … I felt as if I would never fly free again.

I turn back to look towards the chapel door, heartsick, hoping that Lawrence will have moved on by now so I can go back in. I need to go back in. I have to stop this; all this unrequited longing for things that I will never have. I have to get real, concentrate on what’s coming up for me when I do arrive back home.

I’ll have enough trouble to sort out then. They’ll all find out I wasn’t at Shona’s and I’ll be called to account for that. If they find out I was hanging out in the ruins with a stranger - after all those warnings - they’ll go ballistic! And I still have the other problem of getting my letter back.

Maybe that’s just another of my unrealistic expectations, too, the thought pops up out of nowhere.

I’m probably not going to get into Downing College, either, am I?

Realistically, in the cold light of day, I am chasing after rainbows. Chasing after a guy like Lawrence will turn out to be exactly the same thing.

When the phone went off just now I almost didn’t hear it, I was too busy gathering snowballs, chasing after Rose when I should have been concentrating. I fumble for the phone like a madman, pulling off my gloves because my fingers have gone so stiff, so frozen up I can hardly move them.

‘Hey.’ I say, hoping against hope that it’ll be Dougie’s voice back on the end of the line, someone who I know will have got on with it …

‘Good afternoon, Lawrence.’ It’s Arjuna.
Afternoon,
I think
, it feels more like the middle of the fucking freezing night, here.

‘How’s Sunny doing?’ There’s a long moment of static and I take the firebrand I plucked earlier and move out as far as I can along the courtyard, wedge it into a snowdrift further down. The last time I was standing right at this spot Rose came up and dusted the snow from my shoulders, I remember suddenly. I remember her little fingers, fluttering as soft as butterflies over my chest.

A few minutes ago, I nearly kissed her.

I didn’t mean to do that. That was madness. She threw that snowball at me, shocked the hell out of me even though she hadn’t meant to, clearly only wanted to play. I chased after her and when I caught up with her, the rest … the rest was just instinct.

An instinct I haven’t felt in a while, and this isn’t the time or place to feel it. I need to be more careful.

‘Hello, Lawrence?’ Arjuna’s polite voice is back on the line. I pick up his upbeat tone in an instant, different from yesterday. Good news, perhaps?

‘Good evening, Arjuna. How’s the little guy doing?’

‘Excellent. If it weren’t for the fact that they keep threatening to turf him out of his bed, I’d say, couldn’t be better. Yourself? I take it you’ve had a chance to catch up with your family?’ Pause.

‘Everything is in hand, Arjuna.’ I’m not going to give him any excuse to slack off at his end. ‘Everything’s going as planned,’ I breeze. ‘You have any news for me?’

‘Good news on one front. Your manager is due back tomorrow.’

Hallelujah!  ‘He’ll be back?’ The relief in his voice is echoed in my own. Okay. Arjuna’s not going to volunteer where Dougie got to, clearly.

‘So,’ I prompt ‘You have some news for me from Herr Lober …?’

‘Not yet.’
Not yet?
I bite my tongue. I knew this was coming. He’s wasted a whole day, that’s what he’s just done. But no matter, Dougie will be back on board tomorrow. The 27
^th
. That’s cutting it a bit fine for my liking, but ...

‘There is another matter that’s arisen here, though,’ Arjuna cuts through my thoughts now. ‘To do with Sunny.’

‘Yes?’

‘Questions are being asked about the wisdom of removing him from here. We’ve been thinking - if someone from his own family could be located …’
We’ve been thinking
, he says. Who’s
we?
I wonder irritably.

‘I tried that,’ I explain patiently. I already tried all that, what do they think? ‘Everyone’s dead, Arjuna.’

‘Perhaps you didn’t try every avenue, though? No offence intended,’ he hastens to add. ‘But, coming from outside, not speaking our language, you may not have been in as good a position to search. I’ve been looking into it all day
.
’

‘You’ve been spending the whole day trying to locate Sunny’s people?’ I stare at the phone in dismay. ‘Instead of chasing up the contacts that Dougie left us like I need you to?’

‘Only while I was waiting for Herr Lober to get back,’ Arjuna sounds faintly hurt. ‘I didn’t think he would, by the way, after all it is Boxing Day for most people in Europe.’

Boxing Day. 
I want to box your ears, that’s what I want to do …

I swallow, battening down my disappointment at the man because I’ve suspected all along that he’d be no ball of fire.

‘Look. I really need to speak to Dougie. Where is he? I can’t afford to wait, Arjuna.’

‘We can’t afford to do anything else.’

‘Will you stop being so damn mysterious?’ I blast him now. ‘At least tell me what’s happened to Dougie. Where’s he been at? Why hasn’t he been able to answer his own phone?’ 

‘He just hasn’t, Lawrence.’

‘Tell me why.’ There’s a pause and I can feel the man’s reluctance trickling down the line. Slowly.  Bit by bit.

‘He can’t because he’s been taken for questioning by the Sri Lankan Military Police. For aiding the flight of a suspected criminal from the country.’
Fuck
. I hit my closed fist against the unyielding stone wall to the left of me. 

‘He’s in prison ... because of me?’

‘They’re releasing him tomorrow,’ he assures me but my mind’s going ten to the dozen;
what if they don’t? What if they do what they so often do and promise one thing but actually deliver another? Dougie’s screwed. Sunny’s screwed.

‘In the meantime, he told me to tell you to carry on as if he were still in charge of everything. I’m doing what I can, Lawrence.’

‘I know you are, Arjuna.’ It’s not good enough, is it? It isn’t even in the slightest bit good enough.

‘You carry on as you were,’ he says blithely. ‘Enjoy time with your mother, have a good Christmas. Tell your family all the good things you’ve been doing in my country. They’ll be proud of you, Lawrence. We all are.’

‘Thank you,’ I try to keep my voice neutral.
Nobody here is proud of me. Nobody ever will be.

‘One of us will make contact with you at the agreed time tomorrow,’ he says. ‘And, Lawrence?’

‘Yes?’

‘You mustn’t mind me looking to see if I can find any of Sunny’s people over here.’

‘I don’t mind.’ You just won’t get anywhere, I think, I’ve already been through all of that.

‘He’s missing them, Lawrence. He’s been crying for them. It’s his family he wants. This dream of taking him to the UK is all very well but at the end of the day he’s still going to miss his people.’

‘
Miss who?’
I point out. ‘They’re all
gone,
Arjuna.’ He doesn’t get it, does he?

‘Ah, but I have discovered about fifty new people came into East camp about a week ago,’ he’s saying brightly. I groan, inwardly.
I went there
, I think.
I’m way ahead of you
. I put my hand over my eyes. I don’t say anything more because there isn’t any point.

 Frustrating as it is for me, he’s doing what he can. He’s not Dougie, that’s all. He can’t work miracles. I just have to be a little patient. I click the phone off. When I look down the path I cleared earlier to the chapel door, Rose is standing there looking awkward. She must be waiting to help me gather the logs we’re taking in for the night. 

I pull the firebrand up and go to hand it to her. She takes it without a word. She doesn’t give me any eye contact.

In the short time we have been out here it has already gone quite dark, but the firebrand casts out long streams of light. The ice crystals in the snowdrift behind her glitter and shimmer, lighting up her face in the most interesting way. She’s pretty, is Rose.  I remember that before, I nearly kissed her. She nearly let me. If I hadn’t caught myself in time who knows what it might have come to.

‘Your call came through then?’
S
he tilts her chin and her voice is as chilly as the air with more snow on the way. I suddenly remember that she must have been waiting for me, round the corner, probably with baited breath and a snowball in her hand all this time while I took Arjuna’s call.

Damn
.

‘Has anyone ever told you …
how incredibly beautiful you look when you’re cross?’

Rose throws me a scornful look.

‘Don’t even go there, Lawrence. That is the … the corniest line I’ve ever heard. You’re not good boyfriend material, remember?’

‘I’m not known for being the best advice-giver,’ I say helplessly, but she’s not going to be so easily persuaded out of her sulk. She turns to me the minute we’re inside, pulling off her damp gloves and scarf and putting them to dry over the back of the pew.

‘I want to go home,’ she announces. ‘Dad needs me and … and I shouldn’t be here.’ Does she honestly think either of us have any choice?

‘We can’t get out, Rose. You’ve seen the
…’

‘I don’t care!’
S
he pulls a tortured face and I see a new determination in her eyes. I imagine it must have been something like that which propelled her up here in the first place. I also glimpse the same profound sadness that I spotted before.

I’ve let her down, somehow, haven’t I?

‘I’m going to make a break for it out of here tomorrow, whether you want to help me or not and whether it snows again or not. I’m leaving here. I’ll ring the emergency services if I have to. I’ve got … I’ve got people at home who are waiting for me. I’m not staying here a moment longer after it gets to daylight. Do you understand?’

‘Rose ...’ I cajole, but she’s turned away from me, her face looking hurt and stiff.

She’s angry at me.

I pull off my sodden gloves, lay them beside hers on the back of the pew and she moves away from me abruptly. Is it because I nearly kissed her, before? Is it because I didn’t? Women are complicated creatures, that’s for sure.

 She’ll be missing home, that’s what it is. Like Sunny, it’s her family that she wants.

I remember what that feels like. Being up here, so close, it brings it all back to me; what it’s like to have people you care deeply about, things from home that you love.

I did once, too.

We took the jeep down the narrow lane past the lower back fields, my father driving crazy fast like a man does who is very sure of his destination. He never spoke a word and I didn’t dare to. Clearly he knew where Kahn was. All the way I could feel the growing despair and fear in the pit of my belly, not knowing what he could have done to my dog, not daring to let myself know the reason why.

He couldn’t have discovered our plan to leave, could he? He couldn’t! There was no way the bastard could have found out, only Mum and I knew of it. I’d spoken to no one and I knew she wouldn’t have, either. But my father could have sniffed our intention in the air, that’s the kind of man he was. He could have sensed something amiss in the lightness in my step in the morning, in the easy lifting of the burden from about my shoulders.