Falling For You (40 page)

Falling and falling, and the night is so cold and black, it smells damp and earthy, my face feels wet with a little dribble that is coming out of my mouth and then everything is re-set and I am back there beside her.

‘
Isn’t
it true, Lawrence?’

I can feel my face darkening. I can feel all the troubles I have pushed to the back of my mind re-grouping suddenly, gathering like storm-clouds on a hill-side. 

‘I am nothing like my father,’ I tell her thickly. ‘Nothing.’

‘…you don’t love me, Lawrence.
I doubt
,’ the choke in her voice echoes into the stillness, ‘that you know what it is to care about anyone.’

‘
Go home, Rose
,’ I push her away from me again. ‘I’m not good for the people who love me. I told you that, I warned you about that before. Forget about me…’

When I walk away from her this time, the crunch of my feet against the snow echoing so damn loud I think that all the world must hear it, I can’t hear the sound of her following me anymore.

‘You Macraes - you’re all are cowards and thugs to the last man.’ She throws at me at last. ‘Even you.’

 Even me. I turn heavily onto my side and I’m suddenly aware of the floor in the ante-chamber beneath me smelling frozen and damp. The inside of my mouth tastes sour. God. I sit up abruptly, every bone and every muscle of me aching. Rose is not here with me. Have I been sleeping and only dreaming of her, then? I must have been. I left her... I left her in the chapel, I remember now. I screw up my eyes, angling my watch towards the small pin-point of light that comes through the narrow window to the left of me. My fingers and toes feel numb, which they did not do a moment ago.

Reality seeps back in. I climbed up here. Now I remember. I climbed up here and then I curled up into a ball and went to sleep. By my watch, I must have been dozing for nearly an hour.

Man, the dream seemed so real.  

You are all cowards and thugs
, I thought she said.
Even you

Perhaps she’s right.

It’s what I’ve always feared.

It is too quiet up here.

It is too dark, like a tomb. When I walk over to the other side of the pew to pick up my coat, my own footsteps sound edgy, sinister, make me feel as if there might be someone walking behind me. I have to force myself not to keep looking over my shoulder. I have to get out of here. I know now I have to try.

I’m going to have to make the call back home, aren’t I? The one that lets them in on the truth, uncomfortable as it is. I’m going to have to start re-forging my links with the outside world and the family will find out where I have really been, who I have been with. They will find out about Lawrence.

I push the chapel door open, half-hoping that he will be there, waiting, just outside. But he is not. The footprints he made earlier are still clearly visible though, right beside the door. The sight of them makes my heart jolt. It reminds me that only very recently we were still together. It reminds me that hardly any time at all has elapsed since everything we had fell apart.
Where did you go to, Lawrence?
Tentatively, I follow the line of footprints in the snow but they all end mysteriously at the tower ruin. I bite my lip, disappointed; the wind that’s got up now must have blown over all traces of his next tracks so I can’t see where he went.

He has gone though, hasn’t he?

That’s the key thing. He’s gone and I can’t stay up here alone any longer. The morning is misty, dank. A solitary rook is skimming the snow-topped canopy in the valley below. Everything is white, iced over as before and yet... something has changed. A low humming noise is coming from somewhere down in the valley now. I screw up my eyes to see. Two bright orange tractors, far away still, but definitely visible down at the bottom of the lanes have begun to clear the snow. The farmers are out at last, clearing the country roads. How come I didn’t hear them before? I can hear them now!  The realisation fills me with a ridiculous joy and relief; it brings a tear to my eye. It means that soon I will be able to get out of here.

It means... I need to call home.

There are three bars of signal on my phone this morning, but there’s a warning flashing too; battery low. On my eighth or ninth try, I get through at last. The phone rings in a crackly, breaking-up way, barely audible at my end. As it rings, I become aware of my palms feeling slippery, heart thudding harder in my chest,
pick up, pick up...
I feel nervous. It’s Carlotta who picks up eventually.

‘Hello?’ she seems to be saying. The line is breaking up, crackling badly.

‘It’s Rose, I tell her,’ shouting as loud as I can into the phone. ‘Rose!’

‘
Rose
…?’ she says. The sound of my aunt’s voice brings a whole chunk of life back into my mind. My normal life; the things I usually have to worry about from day to day.
Is Dad okay? Has everything been okay back at home?
I don’t know if I feel ready to reconnect with all that just yet. I don’t know if I want to.

‘Hello,’ she comes back to my silence, her voice as faint as an echo but I can’t make out her words after that. I imagine she’s asking me when I’m coming home. I imagine she’s giving me some news about my dad...

‘I’m not at Shona’s!’ I shout into the phone now, surprising even myself. ‘I’ve been… stuck up on the hill. I’ve been weathering it out at the old ruin…’ I pause, realising that I’m probably giving her way too much information all at once. 
Does she even know where this is?
I need to take things a bit slower. It’s Carlotta I’m talking to, here. I need to... calm down.

‘What did you say?’ she comes back now. I can’t make out, down this rotten line, whether she’s even heard what I’ve just confessed or whether she’s simply asking me to repeat what I’ve said. The family
are
going to be shocked when they know the truth though. The sinking feeling I had earlier hits me again. It’s not just where I’ve been, either. It’s
who I’ve been with
.

Lawrence
.

Uncle Ty is going to hit the roof.

Dad is going to... I gulp, filled anew with remorse for what I have inadvertently done ...
H
e’s going to be gutted. This is going to feel like a real betrayal to him, isn’t it?

If only I had known who Lawrence was! I didn’t mean for things to turn out like this. Surely - when I tell the family the whole story - they will understand that I didn’t know who Lawrence was. ‘Rose?’ She comes back now, the line momentarily stabilising; ‘Are you there?’
T
here’s an edge of impatience to her voice.  Now we can hear one another more clearly I get a sudden misgiving over how much it would be prudent to say.

‘Yes.’ I want the family to know the truth, get it over with. I have to tell them, don’t I? The thought occurs suddenly; Lawrence has confessed to what he did and now that I know it, I can have him apprehended. I
need
to have him apprehended, for Dad’s sake. For justice. I don’t let myself think of how frightened Lawrence was, of going to prison. I don’t let myself remember that he’s scared of being banged up, away from the daylight. That he cannot bear to be in the dark. I look around me at the empty courtyard and I think;
I need to do this soon, before Lawrence gets away too far. I need to let everyone know he has been here
.

‘I’ve got to... tell you something...’ I mutter. It’s just that I’d also really like to know they’re going to be understanding when they do find out. 

‘Rose, I can’t
hear
you,’ my aunt’s saying irritably now. ‘Speak up louder please.
Speak up
.’ 

I don’t want to speak up, though
. My throat closes in fear.

It’s too soon. This is all happening too quickly and I haven’t had time to think of what to do for the best. I know
she
isn’t going to be understanding, is she? Carlotta of all people. She will judge me, there’s no question about that. If I tell her what happened, she won’t give me the benefit of the doubt. She won’t think - Rose has made some mistakes, and one mistake has compounded the other until she’s found herself in this
unthinkable
position. She won’t think - Rose is dying inside now, because the man she loves has done something so terrible there is no way back out of this for either of them. She won’t think that. I can imagine what she will think.

Even now, even before I have come to the very worst bit, she’ll be thinking;
what else can you expect from Isla’s daughter? First the girl runs off. Then she lies to us about where she is, not caring about her dad or anyone else, selfish and untrustworthy. ..      

My fingers squeeze tighter on the phone.

‘Rose,’ she says slowly, deliberately, ‘Could you
repeat
what you just said to me, please?
’

I stare at the phone.

‘I’m going to have to ask for... everyone’s understanding,’ I say at last in a croaky voice. ‘Even though I know you’ll all be mad at me because I haven’t been upfront from the beginning about where I was...’

There’s silence at the other end as she must be taking all this in.

This is going to be much bigger than their reaction to me running off, the thought sinks uncomfortably. They’ll mobilise the police, of course. They’ll find Lawrence, wherever he is. He won’t get to speak to his mum. He won’t get to do what it is he risked
everything
to come back here to do - save Sunny.  My courage buckles and fails under the weight of it all. If I give him up now I’m scuppering everything that’s kept him afloat for the last five years; his hope that he can do some good, his hope that he can put things right for others.

His hope for redemption.       

‘Where are you Rose?’

Where am I
? I think blindly
. Where am I with all of this?
I haven’t had long enough to process everything yet. I haven’t had enough time to consider all the ramifications and all the consequences of any actions I take now, any revelations that I make.

‘Rose?’ A tautness, right over the top of her voice, betrays an instability beneath; her sympathy and understanding are like a thin crust of ice, I think; a veneer that will crack if I try to put too much pressure on it, too soon.

‘I’m not at Shona’s,’ I say again. At some level I’m not even aware of, I have made a decision, it dawns on me slowly. I am not going to mention Lawrence, am I?

Not now. Not yet.

‘Look, I’ve run out of food. And it’s real cold. The snow-ploughs have started clearing the lanes but the thing is I fell when I came up here. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it back down without help.’

Carlotta is stunned into silence for a moment.

‘There are reasons why I didn’t tell you straight away where I was,’ I tell her, my voice sinking. ‘I knew you’d all worry about me and I thought the weather would break sooner. I’m sorry,’ I say as she still doesn’t reply, ‘I’m sorry I ran out on you in a huff.’

That was a lifetime ago, I think. It was Christmas Day, the day I left home and came up here. That argument I’d had with my aunt - up to this minute, I’d forgotten all about that. But maybe she hasn’t. Maybe she’s thinking now that our argument was the reason I never came home Christmas night? That I’ve done all this on purpose? That I’ve stayed away because I was angry? 

‘Are you okay, Rose?’ she asks unexpectedly.

‘Yes. Look. I know it was wrong of me to run out on you,’ I admit...  
just as it is wrong for me not to be telling you everything else that I know right now
... My fingers are shaking so hard I think I’m going to drop the phone. Am I doing the right thing, here? God, am I doing the right thing? He’ll get away. Maybe he will get to help Sunny and maybe he won’t but I’m not doing anything to help Dad by my silence right now am I?

Oh, my word. I put my hand to my chest, trying to steady my own breathing, fearing she must surely hear that I’m holding something back, fearing that in saying nothing I am only betraying my dad all over again. Only this time I know that I’m doing it.

‘I always meant to come back straight away, Carlotta. I only meant to get Dad’s meds, and then I fell and I had to stay here. I made a mistake,’ I say, my voice stronger ‘I’m asking you to forgive me for that.’

In time, I know there is lot more I will need to ask their forgiveness for.

‘
Carlotta,
’ I say, uncomfortable when she doesn’t come back. Maybe she’s still taking in the fact that I’ve told her I was hurt and I never mentioned it when I spoke to them on the phone? Heaven knows what she’s thinking. It’s not even what’s important... why has she gone all silent on me?    

I stop, sheepish, suddenly realising that the line has gone dead. I try and recall when she last made a response to something that I’d said. How much of what I’ve said to her has she actually heard? The battery is still holding out - just - but the signal has broken up again.

Damn, damn! Stupid phone! I rush out through the softening sludge, make for the far point over the battlements where we’ve always been able to get a signal before, but there is nothing. She’s gone. Damn it. I put my phone back in my pocket, useless device that it is. I didn’t get a chance to make sure she knew where I was, did I? I blink, realising suddenly that I can’t hear the sound of tractor engines anymore, either. The tractors that were doing such a fine job a moment ago, clearing the lanes, seem to have stopped. Why have they stopped?