Losing You (28 page)

This was where Alix and I had been just a few hours ago. The road veered to the left, past a couple of houses. The red tail-lights followed it, going gradually down a shallow slope, but now, against all my instincts, I stopped. I couldn’t risk Rick seeing me. He reached the coastal road and the car stopped at the junction. To the right was Charlie’s newspaper route, which dwindled to a track, then a boggy path that led to the treacherous marshes and borrow dikes. To the left, the road ran along the low, subsiding cliffs, then turned inland again, away from the cliffs, the dikes, the land that slid and melted into silted mud and salty water, and back towards the causeway.

I watched, leaning over the wheel, ready to move forward. There were things I felt, but at a great remove – the sharp pain of my swelling ankle; the numb cold of my fingers and toes; the soreness behind my eyes; the nausea in my throat; the rough chafe of my jacket against my neck; the hollowness in my stomach; the pressure of my bladder; the bang in my skull. My skin felt too thin and frail to contain the way it hurt to breathe, the way it hurt to think, the way it hurt to be alive and not moving, not racing like a giant with huge avenging strides, like a dragon with monstrously beating wings, to where Rick sat and considered what to do with my daughter.

‘Hold on, Charlie, my darling. I’m coming. I’m coming to get you. Just hold on.’ I don’t know if I spoke out loud or not. Her name throbbed in my blood.

The two tail-lights disappeared and instead I could see the glow of headlights in the mist ahead of the car. Rick had turned left. My eyes were accustomed to the dark now and I could see the dim shape, hardly more than a shadow, of the road ahead of me. I reached the junction, turned left and saw once more the red tail-lights. It was impossible to judge the distance and for a moment I had the illusion that the two red lights were floating in front of me as if on a screen. But I was on the east side of the island now, heading north: there were still some streaks of light behind the clouds. Soon it would be entirely dark.

Where was Rick heading? We were on the most deserted, remote part of the island. I barely knew it and I tried to remember the layout of the roads here. The direction Rick was driving along the coast would eventually lead to the causeway to the mainland but I was almost sure that the
road didn’t reach that far. It petered out into a track and then into impassable marshland where the sea wall had collapsed.

The red lights had vanished. I stopped the car, blinked, rubbed my eyes and stared into the darkness. There was nothing now but grey behind the clouds, and along the horizon, lights from houses on the mainland. I made myself consider the possibilities. The lights could have been hidden by a dip in the road. He might have turned off again. He might have stopped and switched off his lights. Was it possible that he had spotted my car and was waiting for me? What was I to do? Waiting for the lights to reappear was the safest option, but also the most potentially disastrous. If the lights didn’t reappear, I might have lost Rick completely. No. I had to continue and take the risk. Was there a chance he would hear the car, even if he couldn’t see it in the darkness? I rolled down the window. The wind off the estuary blew wetly into my face. I felt sure he wouldn’t hear the car unless it collided with him.

I started to move forward slowly at little more than walking pace. I stared into the darkness so hard that my eyes ached with the effort. My frustration was almost unbearable. I wanted to switch on the headlights and accelerate with as much power as I could but I was sure that if I did so I would lose any chance of finding Charlie for ever.

The silvery sheen of Rick’s car loomed out of the darkness and, even at that crawling speed, I nearly ran into it. I braked and felt the scrape of gravel under my tyres. Had Rick heard anything? I switched off the engine and sat still. I looked round, expecting his face to appear at the window. There was no sign of any movement. Outside was just blackness. I picked up my mobile and found the police-station number.
When it was answered I didn’t ask to be put through to anyone. That would take too long. I just said, in a voice as calm as I could manage so that they wouldn’t think I had flipped into a florid state of hysteria, ‘This is Nina Landry. I have found my daughter but she is in great danger. Come immediately to the end of Lost Road. Turn left where it meets the coastal road and drive as far as you can. Where the road ends, you’ll find two cars. We’re there. Come at once. Have you got that? End of Lost Road, turn north towards the causeway. It is urgent. Urgent. Life and death. Send an ambulance.’

I ended the call. Was there anything in the car I could use? I remembered a possibility. I opened the glove compartment and was almost blinded by the light that came on. Inside there was a roadmap, the car user’s manual and a small torch. I tried it, pointing down at my feet so that nothing could be seen outside the car. A thin beam illuminated my trainers. Thank God, thank God, thank God. I slipped it into my pocket.

Trying to avoid making even the smallest noise, I opened the car door. Again a light came on inside the car. I stepped out and shut the door. The light stayed on. I cursed silently. He might not hear anything but that light would be visible for miles. I took a deep breath, opened the door an inch, then slammed it. The light vanished. I was in darkness again but damage had been done. My eyeballs seemed to be swarming with fluorescent micro-organisms.

I tiptoed round Rick’s car. Empty. He had gone. I tried to think of anything else from my car I could use. I edged my way back to the boot and opened it. Another light came on, but hidden under the lid. I almost laughed, almost cried, to
see the luggage I had packed for the airport, long ago, many years ago, when we had been going on holiday. Something heavy, something solid. To one side there was the long black plastic bag containing the car jack. I had never opened it. I pulled at the drawstring and tugged out a long steel handle. That would do. I pushed down the lid and looked around.

I didn’t even know in what direction Rick had gone. Think, Nina, think. He had moved across the road and parked on the right-hand side. Surely he had gone in that direction over the grass, the marshland and the mudflats that led to the water and the mouth of the estuary. This was the worst of signs. I had been hoping, against the evidence of the tide booklet he’d bought, that he would lead me away from the water to a barn, a shed or an outhouse. I didn’t know this landscape well but I had walked with Sludge on blustery windy days and I knew there were no buildings there, scarcely even a bush to shelter behind. Nowhere for a living person to be imprisoned. I knew that I mustn’t think about that. I must do what I could.

But which direction had he taken? Rory had always laughed at me as a woman who could lose her way in her front room. I couldn’t afford a mistake now. I started into the darkness. My world had been reduced to darkness. I would have felt as if I were floating in outer space, had it not been for the soggy grass soaking through my shoes and the wind off the sea that I could feel against my skin. The flicker of light, when it came, was so brief and faint that I thought it might be another trace of the light in my car still scarring my eyes. But no, there it was, a sick, wavering firefly, sometimes obscured, by grasses or ferns, sometimes disappearing altogether but always returning. It was real.

I held the torch below my knees, pointing it at the ground. Around me was rough grass but I was on a narrow path. Bent forward I walked as quickly as I could. I couldn’t see any of my surroundings but I could feel the path carrying me towards the light. My posture was agonizing but I had no choice. I had to keep the torch lit. Driving on the road, the Tarmac beneath my tyres, was one thing, walking on this narrow excuse for a path, snaking through the marshes and mudflats, was quite another. One wrong step to either side and I could be falling down a bank and lost. But for Rick to catch a glimpse of the light was unthinkable. So I scuttled onwards like a crab.

After a few minutes I switched off my torch, stood up and had to stop myself gasping because I was almost on top of him. The torch he had been carrying was now on the ground and he was squatting to one side doing something I couldn’t make out. I crouched down, hoping that the scrub around me would provide some concealment.

He had apparently placed the torch so that it threw a pool of light towards him. I wondered where we were. I could hear the sea close by. I put the handle into the same hand as the torch and felt the ground. It was gravelly, even sandy. And wet. We were right by the water. I could feel the high tide round my feet. And what was this, just beyond us in the rising waters? It was hard to see through the pool of light to anything on the other side but I squinted and saw the dimmest, most shadowy of shapes against the cloudy sky. What could it be? It was solid with straight lines. But there were no buildings out there on the sand and mud. Rick owned a boat. Could he have moored it there? Was that where he had stowed Charlie?

Even in my frenzied state, I couldn’t make that work in my mind. The boat couldn’t have been moored in a place where the water was just a few inches deep at high tide. I wasn’t a sailor but even I knew that. But something was there, looming solid in the darkness.

I rummaged through my memory. I made myself look back to those awful winter days after Rory had left, wandering the remote paths of Sandling Island with Sludge, those walks in the stinging northerly gales when I hadn’t known whether the tears were of grief and anger or just the wind. I thought and remembered and suddenly I knew. Then I could see it clearly. It was one of the pillboxes left over from the island’s defences during the war. With that I realized everything and saw with utter clarity what I must do and that I must do it immediately. As it was, there was almost no hope but otherwise there was no hope at all. I took the steel handle back into my right hand and held it firmly. The important thing now was not to think. I needed to feel and act. I stood and took a few steps forward, all that was necessary to close the gap between us. As I approached him I brought my right arm back. From his crouching position Rick looked round as I swung the metal bar into his head, catching him above his left eye. He gave no sound. There was just the ringing, crunch of the metal bar on his skull and he folded up on the ground. I wanted to continue, to beat his skull to mush but there was no time for anything.

I turned away from him, dropping the bar on to the ground, and shone my torch out over the water. Its frail light skewed on the small inky waves and then, as I raised it higher, picked out the massed shape of the pillbox. I ran towards it, splashing through the icy water that rose rapidly to my knees
and then thighs, slowing me down. I gasped at the shocking cold, which almost took my breath away. My jeans clung to me, my feet sank into the muddy sand, salty water stung my face and made my eyes weep. ‘Charlie!’ I shouted, as loudly as I could, wading forward, surging through the breakers, cursing the thickness of my sodden jacket, which held me back. ‘I’m here. Wait. Darling – darling, just wait.’ For I had the sense that every second, every fraction of a second, might count now. Like atoms being split, the world could fracture at any moment.

My voice rolled out over the sea and broke somewhere in the distance. There was no answer. Silence lay all around. I flung myself the last few yards, holding the torch high above me so it didn’t get wet, staring through the darkness for the opening, which I could hardly make out. Black on black. Depth on depth. I reached out my free hand and found the wall at last, rough and gritty under my fingers. I followed it with the torch’s beam until I found the opening, and fought through the rapidly rising waters to stand at the entrance at last. The pillbox, which had once stood on the cliffs and now lay in a wreck at their base, was tipped askew, so that its small doorway was tilted slightly upwards. This meant that the tide, which had been temporarily held back by its walls, was gushing in rapidly.

I shone my torch, my dim puddle of light, into the interior. And there was nothing. Nothing but water, rolling at the door and calmer further in.

‘Charlie!’ I called, in a voice that cracked apart. ‘Charlie!’

And then the torchlight touched on a shadow, a blur the shape of a water-lily. I leaned in to shine my torch directly on it. I heard my breath catch in my throat, for what the frail
beam of light picked out was a pale patch barely breaking the surface of the incoming water. A tiny island of flesh in the flood, like the belly of an upturned fish. A mouth open like a gill, pursed for oxygen.

For a moment, I couldn’t move. Then, with painful slowness and care, I inserted myself into the pillbox’s small opening, feeling my jacket rip, feeling rough stone against my hands and face, blood and salt in my mouth. The sea came up above my waist and then, as I moved forward, up to my neck. But I didn’t dare make any rough movement, for fear of splashing water into that tiny, pitiful mouth. I was terrified that my bulk would make the level rise enough to submerge it entirely. With tiny steps, I shuffled towards my daughter, one hand still holding the torch high, the other reaching out to touch her dear drowning body.

And at last my fingers found her – the stretched stem of her neck and the seaweed tangle of hair. ‘It’s all right, dear heart,’ I whispered.

Her eyes stared at me blindly. Her lips gasped at the remaining air. Water bubbled at her upturned chin.

‘I’ll get you out.’

I needed to put the torch down. I stared frantically around the clammy space until I saw a shallow nook, where the stone had crumbled. I crammed the torch into it, its light now shining horizontally, so that I could no longer see Charlie at all. I put my arms round her waist, under the water, and pulled. She rose an inch or so, heavy and unresponsive as a corpse, then jerked to a stop. She was tied down, but I couldn’t tell with what, or to where.

‘Wait,’ I hissed.

I sank beneath the surface of the water, my jacket opening.
I opened my eyes but could see nothing except the brackish swirl of the sea. I groped with my hands and found her legs. Her ankles were tied with something rough, thick and strong. A rope. I tugged at it hopelessly. My lungs were aching now. I followed the rope to where it stopped, knotted to something heavy and cold. I tore at the thick knot with my fingers, trying to wriggle it free, but I knew I couldn’t untie it. Not without seeing it, not under water, not in time. There was no time. I had seconds – Charlie had seconds.