Authors: Sam Baker
He thinks she’s trapped by the curve of Scar that folds around her.
The rock face is behind and to both sides. Art believes there’s nowhere for her to run. For years she’s believed the same. Now that he thinks he has her trapped the malice returns to his face. His words when he gets his breath back are cold and low and meant to crush her.
‘Enough stupidity. Come down here now.’
I could do that, Helen thinks. I could keep my silence and hope to live through what will come. But I’m not that stupid or scared or small, not any more.
There are no doors here to walk into, no stairs to trip down, so it would have to be a proper fall. They could get a helicopter out to collect her if there was anything left to collect. Turning, she looks up at the rock and sees a handhold that wouldn’t have been visible without moonlight. She looks around for somewhere to put her foot and finds that too. Rock digs painfully into the soft underside of her lacerated foot and she forces herself to ignore the pain, reaching for the handhold and instantly spotting another above. Her other foot scrabbles for traction and Art hurls himself up the slope, shouting.
Art never shouts. He’s never needed to.
She reaches for the higher hold and Art grabs her ankle before she can clamber further. For a moment she feels the full force of his muscles, and then stamps down with her other foot, heel slamming into his face. When he doesn’t let go she does it again so hard she feels something should break. He shouts with pain and she scrambles higher the moment he lets go, her feet finding places to put themselves, handholds seeming to appear where she needs them.
At twice her height, she stops and risks looking down. Art stands with his hand to his nose, which streams blood. One of his eyes looks puffy.
‘I’m going to kill you,’ he says.
‘Third time lucky?’
‘You’re deranged. You’ve always been deranged.’
‘Two fires in Paris, now this. I’m not the one who’s deranged. You drugged me.’ She knew the truth now. ‘
Let’s have a drink, Helen. No hard feelings, Helen.
You drugged us, killed Carl and left me to die. You couldn’t even get that right.’
‘Helen—’
‘There’s nothing you’re really good at, is there? Lots of things you’d like to do well and nothing you can quite manage. Is that what this is about? The fact I can actually do something. And you can’t?’
‘You can’t prove anything.’ He spits his words, blood flecks accompanying them. ‘You’re nothing. Without me you’re nobody.’
Helen smiles and sees how he hates her for it. He won’t stop now. He will come after her but the Scar won’t welcome him. He will have to fight for handholds, scrabble harder than he’s ever had to scrabble for anything to find a place to put his feet.
If she dies here, then so does he.
She can accept that price, but she doesn’t want to pay it unless she has to. For the first time, she knows what Art doesn’t. If she has to, she can kill.
Her hand reaches for a grip and slides into a horizontal crack, grit sticking to her fingers. She lifts a foot and her toes scrabble and then there’s a narrow ledge that she can use if she turns sideways before reaching for the next handhold.
She is utterly calm. Maybe this is what you find on the other side of fear.
An emptiness so vast winds could blow through her. The fear has turned to fury and the fury to an icy certainty. It ends here. Him or me … There should never have been an
us
.
Reach and drag, scrabble and step.
Helen climbs and Art begins to climb after her. He’s not good with heights; not as fit as he was. Uncertainty is eating into his anger. He makes the mistake of looking down and she sees him hesitate. Her hand reaches for its next grip and the rock it finds is loose. For a moment she panics. Then, as her fingers close around it, she wonders if it’s meant to be loose.
It comes away with a rattle of falling gravel that makes Art look up.
She waits for his gaze to find her. Then raises the fist-sized chunk of rock, waits for his eyes to focus on it and hurls it as hard as she can. It only just misses and he looks so shocked she laughs.
‘Go back,’ she shouts.
Art hangs there looking up.
She tugs at another rock that protrudes; it shifts but won’t come free, so she climbs some more, fingers tugging at chunks that look likely. Suddenly the fear is back. Her chest tightens and her foot slips as she reaches for a rock, and she has to scrabble to keep her grip.
The third time a rock fails to come free, Art begins climbing again.
As her fear grows, so his anxiety lessens. His movements become more confident. Her failure to find something to throw is making him stronger. That’s how it works, she realises. That’s how it’s always worked. To be strong Art needs her weak. Everything he’s taken from her he’s added to himself. For her to be strong she must take it back. She stops scrabbling and breathes, as she hangs there daring him to come closer. Her heart settles slightly. The fear leaves her throat. Below, Art hesitates and comes to a halt.
When he restarts it’s with less confidence.
She knows what she must do. If he tries to grab her she’ll kick him first. If he does grab her then she’ll let go and they’ll go down together. It’s not what she wants but it’s a price she’ll pay. If she goes, then he does too. The next chunk of rock she reaches for sheers from the Scar with a clean break. Had she put her weight on it she’d be dead. Instead she has her next weapon.
This time, her aim is careful.
No anger, no fear, simply intent.
She throws as hard as she can and gravity helps. Art flinches at the throw and shifts just enough to avoid taking the rock in his face. It clips the back of his shoulder and she sees a glint of blood in the moonlight. The Dales, vast around them, hold their breath. In the silence, Art’s swearing seems blasphemously loud.
‘Next one kills you,’ she warns him, her quiet voice carrying into the night.
‘Helen …’
‘What?’
‘We should talk about this.’
‘Like we talked about things before? You tell me what I’m doing wrong, I listen?’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘It was always like that.’
The moonlight shifts and a shadow falls across them.
Fixing her grip, Helen risks taking her eyes off Art and looks up. A small figure stands on the edge above them. Backlit by the slivered moon, a single star bright beyond. Her heart stops in her ribs. It’s him. He’s always been there, she just didn’t know that until now. He looks so solid he could be rock. Is he still clutching his Power Ranger? She’d like to know, but she can’t see through her tears.
All that happened in Iraq and beyond comes back in a wave that rolls tsunami-like across the Dales and breaks around her against the massive heart of the Scar. ‘Of all the things …’ she says, her voice crashing on the cliff face. ‘Syria was the worst.’
It wasn’t the first time, it wasn’t the most painful. It was simply the worst.
Art looks up at her, his eyes unfocusing to fix on the Scar above her. He doesn’t see what she sees, but he knows she sees something. Art doesn’t say anything, he simply shuffles backwards slightly, looking for a crevice, a protruding rock, anything to grip while he finds a new foothold. Helen knows she wouldn’t trust the one he chooses, but he grabs it anyway, feet scrabbling for purchase. It’s that that decides her. Swiping at each eye in turn, she releases her hand, swipes her eyes again, returns her hand, then starts towards him.
It’s not as easy climbing down, she discovers. You can’t see the handholds in advance. It’s not like climbing up. You can’t remember places to put your feet for the move after next or the one after that. You have to find them blind. She watches him do it and almost feels his body tense with each risk he takes. He glances up, suddenly alert, when she moves and seems more put out that she’s starting to climb down than if she’d been about to hurl another rock.
The rock he would understand.
How high is a four-storey house? That’s how high they are.
Well, she’s four storeys and he’s little more than three. He finds a handhold and somewhere to put one foot, a lower handhold and somewhere to put his other foot. Helen does the same. He takes it as mockery, a physical reflection of his habit of repeating her words back at her. That’s what she reads from the tightening of his face. Not that far above, she sees the small silent boy still watching and waves to him shakily.
A long second later, he waves back.
Art looks at her, looks above them and looks at her again. She knows he sees nothing. He never did. When he stops, she stops and watches him speak. What he says she doesn’t know, because she’s ignoring it. She didn’t know that was possible. When he stops speaking she hears things again.
A bird calling in the distance. Wind rises suddenly and stills as fast. A little pitter of falling stones tells her Art’s foot is slipping slightly. He seems to be waiting for a response. She stops listening when he repeats whatever he said the first time, and when she starts again she can hear the same bird and, in the distance, the sound of someone calling her name.
Art seems to have heard it too. He doesn’t like it. They’re collecting witnesses, complications. He was always very careful to make sure there were no witnesses, and complications were always somehow Helen’s fault, so she avoided them.
There’s a shout from above.
Two shouts that echo over the Dales and shock the wind and the bird into silence. Gil’s Yorkshire accent. Tom’s voice, southern, metropolitan, and very, very dear. Sudden movement takes her by surprise and she realises Art is scrambling towards her. She grabs a rock that looks ready to come free but it stays where it is. She tries another and that won’t come free either. In despair she begins to climb.
Too late. Art’s fingers tighten on her ankle, locking her in place. His other hand digs into the back of her knee as he clambers up, using her leg as his climbing frame. He’s below her now, hissing to himself, his fingers vicious as they dig into her flesh. He can’t resist folding his hand into a fist and punching unseen between her denim-covered thighs.
Vomit rises and she swallows hard.
‘Stupid little whore. You think I don’t know you’ve been fucking someone else? You think I wouldn’t find out?’ He’s right behind her now, pressed tight. A hand grips the rock beside her face, the other grips her neck as waves of darkness sweep through her. Through the darkness she hears shouts.
‘You really think they can save you?’
His hand tightens when she doesn’t answer. He edges his leg hard between hers. His face is next to her, his whisper in her ear, his hot breath brushing her face. When he releases her neck and brings his hand up to stroke her hair the tears come. She’s been here before. She knows what comes next. This time, she won’t let it.
‘Well?’ he says.
He’s insane. That’s her last thought before she lets go of the rock face with both hands and suddenly Art’s single hand is the only thing holding them in place.
‘Helen …!’
Art grabs with his other hand for a better grip, any grip, but she’s leaning back, and as his fingers tear frantically at rock, she pushes off. The last thing she sees is the boy standing on the top of the Scar looking down. He grows distant, and then there’s a blast of bright, bright light.
‘Helen …’
Someone loomed over her made blurry by tears and pain. There was a prick at her arm and the pain lessened almost immediately. The tears kept coming. A hand came up to brush them away and she flinched.
‘It’s all right,’ Tom said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’
‘Where’s …?’
Fingers tightened gently on her wrist.
‘Gil? He’s over there. They wouldn’t let him through. They only let me through because I’m a doctor. You could have been killed, you know. Out here alone like that. What if Gil hadn’t worked out where you’d gone …?’
He looked behind him, muttered to whoever was there. Police or ambulance, Helen’s eyes wouldn’t focus enough for her to find out. The man said something and Tom nodded. ‘They’re going to airlift you to hospital now. I’m going to come with you. If that’s all right? Help look after you on the way.’
‘It’s bad?’
‘A few bits broken.’
‘They always were.’
Tom shook his head sadly.
‘He was here. You know.’
‘Helen …’
‘I saw him.’
‘You should save your strength.’
‘At the top of the Scar.’
‘At the …?’
‘He was there. I saw him.’
The man behind Tom said something and Tom shook his head. He knelt beside her stretcher, which was on the ground at the bottom of the Scar. ‘Who did you see?’ he asked gently.
‘The Iraqi boy with the Power Ranger. He was standing there. Right at the top.’
‘Helen, that’s impossible. He’s dead. He’s been dead for years.’
‘But I saw him. He waved to me.’
‘What did you do?’
Helen smiled. ‘I waved back.’
Tom bent and kissed her forehead, very gently, and then he stood up. The helicopter crew lifted her aboard and they took off carefully. When she started crying, really crying, someone who wasn’t Tom crouched beside her, there was another pin-prick on her arm and she slept.
She remembered nothing of the two or three days that came after that. Shortly after she woke on the fourth day, Gil arrived with grapes and a card and roses. He wasn’t to know Art always gave her roses.
He had a striped jacket over a black T-shirt and was wearing jeans for the first time she could remember. He put the card on her bedside cabinet, placed the roses in a jug he seemed to have acquired on his way through the hospital, and began eating his way through her grapes.
‘Date,’ he said, seeing Helen eye his outfit. ‘Thought I’d see if I could persuade Liza to give me another go. For some mad reason she said yes. Lyn said I ought to prove I was serious by making an effort.’ He made a face. ‘She took me shopping.’
Helen grinned. Winced at the movement. ‘It shows.’
‘How do you feel?’ he asked, sitting on the bed beside her.