I remember putting my passport in the secret pocket at the back. It’s still there, along with my wallet, a notepad, pen, and my mobile phone. The battery’s dead. Damn it.
My checked shirt is rolled up in there, too. I pull off my bloodied T-shirt and use it to wipe my armpits and neck, throw on the clean checked shirt. I see my shoes on the floor by the door.
I see a nurse walking down the corridor and my impulse is to call out to her, tell her to contact our next of kin and tell them what’s happened. But neither Helen nor I have parents, or any close relatives.
I sit back against the cold bars of the bed, weighed down by the knowledge that we have no one to call for help.
This is my family. I have to do it. There is no one else.
10
Helen
1st September 2017
I fight sleep for as long as I can, listening out for sounds of movement in the hallway. I have the distinct feeling of being watched. Not just a feeling – a gut-wrenching certainty. All the hairs on my body stand on end despite the crushing heat, my senses on high alert and my heart fluttering in my chest. I’m in excruciating pain and physically helpless against whoever is in the shadows, watching us. None of the nurses on the ward tonight understand me and no one helps. We are completely alone.
The white van coming towards us is a vivid, garish splinter in my mind, and my foot jerks, puppet-like, at an imaginary brake pedal every time I think of it. Over and over, this circular reaction, my body reacting to a memory that’s stuck in the pipework of my mind.
When my body finally caves in to exhaustion I dive deep into dreams and surface again with a gasp into that same terrible realisation of where I am, and why.
I dream of the fire at the bookstore, black clouds of smoke billowing out of the windows of the shop, ferociously hot. Michael and I at the end of the street helplessly watching on as fire fighters roll out long hoses and blast the flames with jets of water. In the dream, though, it is the beach hut that’s ablaze, not the shop. A figure running away from the scene, up the bank into darkness. I try to get Michael’s attention.
Look! Do you think he was the one who caused the fire?
Michael’s comment floats to the surface of my dreams.
Kids didn’t start the fire, Helen.
There is a tone in his voice that I can’t work out. When I wake, it continues to echo in my ears, making the slow transition from dream to memory.
A little after eight in the morning I hear voices down the hall: an ambulance is here to take Saskia to the hospital in Belize City. To my relief, they say that both Reuben and I can go, though for one terrifying moment I feel I’m abandoning Michael. He would want me to go.
But right as the nurses are helping me into the ambulance, Vanessa pulls up alongside us in her car. ‘The police have requested that you go to the station right now to make a statement about the collision,’ she says emphatically.
I tell her that Saskia is going for surgery right at this moment but she holds up her hands.
‘It’s not my call,’ she says. ‘The police have the last say. And they require you to go to them right away.’
It’s a heart-breaking decision to have to make, but Vanessa insists I have no choice. She says I have a legal obligation to give information on the crash and that it has to happen right away.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she says. ‘But this is out of my hands.’
I watch on, tears rolling down my face, as the ambulance pulls away with my daughter inside. It feels like someone is pulling off one of my limbs and dragging it down the street, out of sight. My instincts divide me, one shouting that at least Saskia will be safe in Belize City and the other shouting, Are you nuts? You’ve just let them take her away! You have no idea that they’re even real doctors!
At least the police will protect us. I’ll tell them about the trespasser, about the van driver who got out after the crash and looked over us without helping.
And perhaps they’ll assign Saskia a police escort to ensure she’s safe.
The police station is about half a mile outside the town of San Alvaro, which appears to be no more than a row of wooden shacks selling fruit, vegetables, and handmade rugs and clothing at the side of a dirt road. Children running naked in the streets. Stray dogs everywhere, their ribs protruding like comb teeth through patchy fur.
Inside the station, we are summoned to a small room at the end of the corridor. Vanessa pushes me in the wheelchair and a couple of police officers stop chatting at the front desk when they see us. Vanessa addresses them cheerfully in Kriol, but they don’t respond, their eyes fixed on me and Reuben, who is clicking his fingers and being extremely brave in this hostile and foreign place.
‘So, tell me what happened,’ Superintendent Caliz says once Vanessa, Reuben and I are sitting down by his desk in the small room. His eyes are hidden behind darkened lenses, the corners of his mouth turned down in a deep frown. A pot belly stretching out his beige uniform, badges on the breast pocket. Photographs behind his desk show him being decorated for service in the police over many decades. He flicks his eyes across Reuben who has his attention fully on the row of glass bottles by the window, filtering sunlight across the floor in a kaleidoscope of colours.
I notice that Superintendent Caliz has no pen in hand to transcribe the interview, no tape recorder. I glance at Vanessa and tell him everything that I can recall: the trip to Mexico, our fortnight at the beach hut, the trespasser running up the bank. Then, my heart in my mouth, I tell him about the crash, recounting it with tears streaming down my face. I have to tell him this so he understands why the van driver standing at the scene of the crash, watching us, was so cruel. Recounting this feels like I’m right back on the ground again beside Saskia, praying for our lives.
‘I feel afraid,’ I say, trying to be as clear as possible in my use of language so he doesn’t miss a thing. ‘I feel worried that this man is going to come back and hurt us again.’
Superintendent Caliz purses his lips, nods. ‘You were all wearing seatbelts?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say, confused.
‘Why your little girl go out the window?’ He makes a motion with his hand. It takes a second for me to realise he’s demonstrating Saskia being catapulted out of the windscreen of the car.
‘We were wearing seatbelts,’ I say, but my mind turns to the last time we pulled over to let Saskia go to the loo. Did I clip her seatbelt in? She was capable of doing it herself and I usually left her to it, but the rental car was old, a 1999 hatchback with tight, irritating seatbelts that she complained about. Guilt rivets me as I think that I didn’t check it. If I had, she might not be in coma.
‘You were driving, yes?’ he says.
I nod. ‘Yes.’
‘Why your husband not drive?’
‘The other vehicle drove straight into us,’ I say in a brittle voice. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered who was driving. He swerved into our lane, right at the last minute …’
He leans forward across the desk, his hands clasped, and gives me a murky look. ‘You buy drugs here in Belize?’
‘Drugs?’
Superintendent Caliz addresses Vanessa in Kriol. She falters, confused.
‘We were told that someone has been arrested,’ Vanessa interrupts, addressing him. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I had thought the police of all people would want to help, that the Superintendent would see the situation for what it is and offer to protect us. Michael lies unconscious in the hospital. Saskia is seventy miles away, in a hospital surrounded by strangers. Reuben and I are completely alone.
‘What’s he saying?’ I ask, and she hesitates before answering me.
‘They’ve arrested the driver of the van that crashed into your car,’ she says slowly.
I take a deep breath. ‘Good.’
But she shakes her head, as though I’ve misunderstood. ‘He is saying the crash was deliberate. The driver says he was paid to do this.’
A noise escapes my mouth. Every suspicion I’ve had has been correct, all my instincts ringing true. Someone was watching us. Someone wants us dead.
‘So, you’re completely sure,’ Vanessa asks me again. ‘No drugs purchased in Mexico. No reason for anyone to try and harm your family.’
‘This has nothing to do with drugs!’ I shout, the strength of my anger surprising everyone in the room, including me. ‘I told you! Someone was watching us at the beach hut and the next day a man crashed into our car. You say you’ve arrested him. Who paid him to crash into our car?’
Superintendent Caliz leans back in his chair, laces his fingers together and barks something in Kriol.
Vanessa processes whatever information he has shared before tilting her head to mine, her brow folded in confusion.
‘What is your husband’s name?’ she asks.
‘Michael,’ I say, confused. ‘Why?’
‘Michael Pengilly?’
‘Yes, Michael. Why? What has that got to do with the man who crashed into us?’
My voice rises again in desperation. She repeats this to Superintendent Caliz, then listens intently as he replies in Kriol. The air is suddenly loud with suspicion and menace. I had expected to feel safe here but instead I feel in even more danger than I did at the hospital.
Vanessa fixes me with a dark stare. She chooses her words carefully. ‘The van driver claims your husband paid him to crash into your car to kill you all and make it look like an accident.’
Her words are like a black hole, sucking me into it cell by cell, until all that’s left of me is a scream.
11
Michael
1st September 2017
It’s a shock to the system to be in a car again, right after the crash. I break into a cold sweat as we move through the streets, pushing through crowds of people – donkeys, too, and I swear some guy had an orangutan back there – and then a flood of cars that veer all over the place. The driver tells me there are no road lanes in this town. Looks like there are barely any roads either, at least not of the tarmac variety, despite the fact that there appears to be a car-to-human ratio of eleven-to-one. Dust rises from the tyres, making it impossible to see or breathe. Like driving through a sandstorm. The driver smokes weed, has some funky music playing loudly. He tries to strike up a conversation, asks if I’m a medical student at the hospital. I say yes and try to conceal the lie in my voice.
There’s a white phone charger trailing into the back seat over a couple of Coke cans. It’s a match for my phone. I say, ‘Can I use this?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he says. I plug in my phone and within minutes the screen flashes white. I scroll through my photographs, past videos taken by Reuben. I click on one of them and find it’s of the bookstore, pre-fire. The sight of it pierces me. His face appears large on the screen as he props the phone against the leg of a table, plucks a book off the shelf and then sits on the floor, cross-legged, filming himself reading. A pair of legs appears next to him after a few minutes. I watch as he glances up at whoever’s standing there, then goes back to reading. It must be a customer. She’s carrying a Sainsbury’s shopping bag. She steps over him, like he’s part of the furniture, then turns to him and snaps, ‘Why are you just sitting there in the middle of the floor? Can’t you see people are trying to get past?’
Reuben lifts his head and stares at her blankly before returning to his book.
‘So rude,’ the woman says off-screen, and instantly I feel an old urge to shout, He’s not rude, he’s autistic! Helen and I once said we ought to have that emblazoned on T-shirts and wear them whenever we went out as a family. One day Saskia came home from school and said her teacher had said she was very artistic. Saskia was quick to correct the teacher. ‘I told her that doesn’t mean I’m rude and ignorant, Mummy. Artistic people are just as polite as neuro-typical people. Isn’t that right?’
We had a laugh at that one.
I scroll through his other videos, one of him playing Minecraft, another of him drawing. I know Reuben is an amazing boy. Despite society’s obsession with status, personas, the endless barrage of visual culture, we still place a ludicrous amount of trust in what we see. On the outside my boy isn’t normal, and that’s still a problem. Helen and I vowed a long time ago that we would fight for our children to feel at home in this dying, messed-up world, to find their place in it. We would protect them.
And that’s precisely what I intend to do now.
I scroll through my gallery to find the photographs I took of the letters. Helen doesn’t know I opened them, but she knows we were receiving them. Why hide them from me? Every year, a new letter. And always on the date of Luke’s death to make a point. As if I could ever forget.
I took photographs of the letters in case she got rid of them. And I needed time to think about what the letters said, about why she didn’t tell me about them. There are many secrets in our marriage, but they pale in comparison to squirrelling away letters that contain so much threat. Helen’s forever accusing me of avoiding confrontation, and yet she was the one keeping these from me. Why? What has she got to hide?
I start to panic when I can’t find the images. There are photos of Reuben wearing a snorkel mask for the first time, giving a big thumbs up. Pictures of Saskia pirouetting in her Trolls swimsuit, her face all lit up when she spotted the dolphins. I try to flick past them as fast as I can but something in my chest gives and I have to look away so as not to start sobbing.
Finally, I pull up an image of one of the letters and zoom in on the cream page.
Sir,
We write again on behalf of our clients regarding the death of Luke Aucoin.
Our records show that you signed for our previous letter. We request that you contact us immediately to avoid further consequences.
Sincerely,
K. Haden
A wave of anger rolls over me as I read the words ‘further consequences’.
‘Where to, man?’ the taxi driver asks.
‘The airport,’ I tell him. ‘Make it quick.’
12
Michael
16th June 1995
It’s decided: we’ll spend the next three nights in Chamonix learning stuff like what to do in an avalanche (‘Duck?’ Theo offers), crevasse rescue (‘It’s called chucking a rope down there, mate,’ Luke says), and belay techniques, or in other words, we’ll be drinking our body weights in vodka and singing German folk songs, with some token ice pick swinging in between.
This morning we’re joining a crowd of fifteen other climbers led by a mountain guide named Sebastian who is taking us up the Aiguilles Rouges for some mixed climbing techniques. This part of the Alps reminds me of Ben Nevis in Scotland, or the Lake District – a palette of earthy brown and velvety green, with gentle rises and pockets of snow in the nooks of distant peaks. Mountains stretch as far as the eye can see, no sign of human life anywhere. Just our little group swallowed up in the mountains.
It’s a warm sunny day without much of a breeze, but Sebastian has us all geared up as if we’re approaching the summit – helmets, crampons, ice picks, the lot. Still, I get to watch the sun rise over the mountains, a rich, yolky light breaking over the crystalline towers, bright rays the length of motorways pouring across the valley. It’s pretty awesome. Enough to make me feel more at ease around Helen.
‘Where did you meet Luke and Theo?’ she asks me amiably, once we’ve settled into our stride. ‘I mean, I know you all go to Oxford but did you know each other before?’
‘Nah. We’re all on the University rowing team,’ I tell her. ‘Ugly here got us all into climbing. Didn’t you, Luke? We did Ben Nevis last year.’
He grins. ‘Dragged you and Theo kicking and screaming up Ben Nevis, more like.’
‘We’re doing Kilimanjaro next. Then Everest,’ I tell her, and she looks impressed.
‘Wow, Everest,’ she says, glancing at Luke, who clearly hasn’t mentioned any of this to her. ‘I don’t think I’ll be going on that trip!’
Oh, are you sure? I want to say in a voice dripping with sarcasm. What a pity.
‘Come on, you lot!’ a voice shouts. The guide, Sebastian. He’s made the group stop on a massive rock ledge overlooking a sapphire lake. We take off our helmets and rucksacks and start to set up the stove, but Sebastian shouts at us again.
‘This is not the lunch stop,’ he says. ‘First, we learn how not to die. Second, we eat. OK?’
Sounds fair.
Helen stands close to the front of the group, watching Sebastian as he demonstrates how to make a top managed belay site.
‘If you need to lower into a gorge, you need to set up an anchor,’ he says, looping a figure eight of rope around a tree by the edge. ‘You clove hitch yourself into the shelf which enables protection at the edge. My belay device clips into the masterpoint. I need two lockers on the masterpoint – use a small carabiner for this to redirect the brake strand, OK?’ He holds up a carabiner and links it to the shelf. I take a peek over the edge. Quite a distance to the bottom.
‘Now, for a demonstration. Who will be my volunteer?’
A nervous laugh ripples among the crowd.
‘You,’ Sebastian says, gesturing for me to step forward.
‘What, me?’ I say, glancing around.
‘We’re going to cover what happens in the event of an arête shearing your rope, OK?’
Luke laughs and shoves me forward. One of the more outspoken blokes in the crowd – the South African fella with purple dreads – raises a hand. ‘An arête? What is this?’
‘An arête is a knife-edged ridge,’ Seb says. ‘If your rope is rubbing back and forth on this, what do you think will happen?’
‘It’ll break,’ everyone murmurs.
He holds up a worn piece of rope and demonstrates. ‘Snap!’ He turns to me and gestures at me to lower down off the side of the cliff. I’m not feeling overly confident about this right now. Still, I hook myself to the rope and try not to look too terrified as I lower down, eyeing the rope fearfully as it tightens around the tree. He lowers me down about twenty feet – which feels like a hundred feet – when suddenly I feel the rope go slack. My feet slip against the smooth rock and I scramble wildly to find something to hold on to. There’s a chink in the rock face and I dig my fingers into it, my heart thumping like there’s a box of frogs in my chest.
A few moments later, Sebastian shouts at me to climb back up. The rope tightens and I scramble back up there like Spiderman.
Everyone applauds and I try not to faint.
‘So, you see,’ Sebastian informs the group. ‘It’s important you know how to make a secure anchor when descending, but even more important is making sure your rope doesn’t run over any sharp edges. If you find yourself in a no-fall zone, the number one rule is …?’
‘Don’t fall!’ everyone shouts.
Back in Chamonix, Luke announces at the bar that he’s paid for us all to sleep in one of the dorms – we’d been camping outside but he says it’s a better idea to stay indoors. ‘Call it insurance,’ he says. ‘We don’t want somebody forgetting to stub out their cigarette because they’re too drunk to think straight. We might all end up without any gear.’ We both turn to Theo, who says, ‘What?’
‘Don’t play innocent,’ Luke says, shuffling a deck of cards. ‘You know you almost set the house on fire last weekend. Every time you get drunk you set your cigarette on the edge of the sofa or on the frigging mattress.’
‘Don’t remember,’ Theo says with a shrug.
‘Don’t remember?’ Luke laughs. ‘The corner of the sofa was on fire, mate. It was starting to climb up your trouser leg. I grabbed a glass of water that turned out to be vodka, almost chucked it over you. You can imagine how that would have gone.’
‘You going to deal or what?’ Theo says, a fag bobbing between his lips, nodding at the pack of cards in Luke’s hands. He begins to deal.
‘What are we playing?’ I ask.
‘What are we drinking?’
‘Gin.’
‘Gin rummy, then.’
‘Why not poker?’ Theo asks.
‘Fine, poker.’
‘Where’s Helen?’ I say. ‘Isn’t she joining us?’
Luke deals. ‘She’s reading. Doesn’t want to impose.’
The gin has warmed me up, broken down my hostilities. ‘Mate, I don’t mind if she wants to come.’
Luke gives me a dark stare. ‘I don’t know what drug you’re taking but it’s making lies fall out of your mouth.’
‘I’m serious. Where is she? Invite her down here.’
Luke shakes his head. ‘She won’t come. She’s got an early start with one of the trainers on the slopes.’
‘She’s training?’ Theo says.
‘Yeah. She doesn’t want to rely on me when we’re doing the tough parts. She’s independent, mate.’
I sit with that for a moment. A sense of guilt has crept in, my words about her being a leech and a millstone starting to nip at my conscience. I figured that she was Luke’s trophy girlfriend, but with every hour that I spend in her company I find all my assumptions being scratched away. She seems hard-working, independent, and pleasant to be around. Even better is that so far Luke has been on top form, joking around and insisting on paying for everything. I’m putting it all down to Helen being here.
I stare at my cards. Not a great hand. My high card’s the queen of hearts.
‘You seem really into this chick,’ I tell Luke, only realising once I’ve said it how childish it sounds.
‘Thanks, mate. She’s my girlfriend so it’s probably a good thing that I’m into her. If you know what I mean.’
‘How long you been … you know …?’
‘Seven months.’
‘A long time to keep her away from your best mate,’ I say. I think about mildly accusing him of either lying or being possessive but think better about it.
He shrugs. ‘She lives in London. And when she’s in Oxford we don’t exactly want any extra company, if you know what I mean.’
Theo and I share a look. ‘So, we probably shouldn’t bring up any of the one-night stands you’ve had in that time?’ Theo adds.
‘Not unless you want me to mention the essay I helped you write for Comparative Literature last term. The Dean might not like that so much.’
I play my queen of hearts. Luke sets down a queen of spades and an ace.
He wins.
The next day the three of us are badly hungover. Luke and Theo say they’ll give the training a miss, but I spot Helen, all geared up in a fluorescent pink shell suit heading off to the practice slopes with the rest of the climbers.
‘Hey! Helen! Good morning!’ I say, waving like an idiot.
She turns to the sound of her name. Sees me, waves. ‘Hi, Michael. Have a good night?’
I nod and slap my forehead. ‘Paying for it now, though.’
Another smile.
I am restless all day. Even when I join another climbing group with some French dudes who are eager to practise rope skills I feel distracted, my thoughts spiralling off in all directions.
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