She stamped reflexively on the brakes, I scrambled into the passenger side. As I slammed the door, she glanced at me and James, both without seatbelts, and then, without trying to explain, gunned the engine and stamped on the accelerator.
For a second I didn’t understand. She was steering towards the tree that loomed out of the darkness.
And then I realised.
I grabbed for the steering wheel, my nails in her skin, wrestling for control of the car – and there it goes blank.
Oh God, I have to get to the road before she does. If she parks across the foot of the track and cuts me off, I’m lost.
Everything hurts. Jesus – everything hurts so much. But the pills that Clare gave me have one silver lining: they’ve taken the edge off enough to allow me to keep going, combined with my own fear and adrenaline.
I want to live. I never knew how much until now.
Oh Christ, I want to live.
And then suddenly, almost without realising it, I’m at the road. The forest path spews me out onto the tarmac, so fast that I stumble, trying to slow down enough to stop myself shooting into the path of a car. I stand there, hands on my knees, gasping and panting, and trying to work out which way to go.
Where is Clare?
I can hear a noise, I realise, the growl of an engine as it shoots over potholes and around bends. It’s not far off. She’s almost at the foot of the drive. And I can’t do it – I can’t run any more. I’ve pushed my body beyond what it can do.
I have to run, or I will die.
And I can’t. I can’t. I can barely stand – let alone put one foot in front of another.
Run, I scream inside my own head. Run, you fucking waste of space. Do you want to die?
Clare’s car is at the road. I see the blaze of her headlights just round the bend, lighting up the night.
And then there’s a horrendous, screaming squeal of tyres, and a bang like nothing I’ve ever heard. There’s shrieking rubber, and the screech of metal, car on car; a sound that seems to echo for ever in the forest tunnel, shrill in my ears. I stand, my eyes wide with horror, staring towards the sound of the collision.
And then silence – just the hiss of a radiator venting into the night air.
I cannot run any more. But I manage to walk, my legs shaking. I have lost my flip-flops and the tarmac must be cold as ice – but I can’t feel anything.
In the stillness I hear the sound of sobbing gasps, and the crackle of a radio. Then, with a suddenness that makes me jump and almost stumble, the trees are illuminated by a ghostly blue, flickering like flames.
One more step. One more. I force myself on, round the bend – towards whatever has happened.
But before I get there I hear a voice, a shaking female voice. She’s speaking into something – a phone? But as I get closer I see it’s a police radio.
It’s Lamarr. She is standing by the open door of her police car. There is blood running down her face, black in the flashing blue lights of the emergency siren. She’s speaking into the radio.
‘Ground control, urgent message.’ Her voice is shaking, there’s a sob in it. ‘Request immediate assistance and an ambulance, to the B4146 just outside Stanebridge, over.’ She’s standing there listening to the crackling reply. ‘Roger,’ she says at last, and then ‘No, I’m not hurt. But the other driver – look, just send the ambulance. And a fire crew, with … with cutting equipment, over.’
She sets the radio carefully down and then goes back to the other car.
‘Lamarr,’ I say, croakily, but she doesn’t hear. My limbs are so heavy I don’t think I can go another step. I hold myself up on a tree by the side of the road. ‘Lamarr …’ I manage, one more time, my voice a shaking thread against the hissing of the engine and the crackle of the radio. ‘Lamarr!’
She turns and looks, and then at last I let my knees give way, and I kneel on the cold, snow-wet tarmac, and I don’t have to run any more.
‘Nora!’ I hear through the fog. ‘Nora! Christ, are you hurt? Are you hurt, Nora?’
But I can’t find the words to reply. Lamarr is running towards me, and I feel her strong hands beneath my armpits as I collapse onto the road, holding me, lowering me slowly to the ground.
It’s over. It’s all over.
34
‘NORA.’ THE VOICE is gentle but insistent, tangling in my confused, restless sleep like a hook, dragging me back to reality. I know the voice. Who is it? Not Nina. It’s too low for Nina. ‘Nora,’ the voice says again.
I open my eyes.
It’s Lamarr. She is sitting on the chair at the edge of my bed, her dark eyes wide and bright, her shiny hair smoothed back from her sculpted forehead.
‘How are you feeling?’
I struggle up against the covers, and notice that she’s wearing a neck brace – incongruous against her silk tunic.
‘I came past yesterday,’ she says, ‘but they shooed me away.’
‘Are you in the hospital too?’ I croak. She passes me water, and I gulp it gratefully. She shakes her head, her heavy gold earrings swaying gently.