On the Edge E-Book

Jane Jesmond

• Herausgeber: Verve Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: A Jen Shaw Mystery
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 469

Beschreibung

A FAST-PACED, TWISTY THRILLER WITH ECHOES OF DAPHNE DU MAURIER

Jen Shaw has climbed all her life: daring ascents of sheer rock faces, crumbling buildings, cranes - the riskier the better. Both her work and personal life revolved around climbing, and the adrenaline high it gave her. Until she went too far and hurt the people she cares about. So she's given it all up now. Honestly, she has. And she's checked herself into a rehab centre to prove it.

Yet, when Jen awakens to find herself drugged and dangling off the local lighthouse during a wild storm less than twenty-four hours after a 'family emergency' takes her home to Cornwall, she needs all her skill to battle her way to safety.

Has Jen fallen back into her old risky ways, or is there a more sinister explanation hidden in her hometown? Only when she has navigated her fragmented memories and faced her troubled past will she be able to piece together what happened - and trust herself to fix it.

PRAISE FOR ON THE EDGE

’Gritty, gripping, knotty, intense – this is going to be HUGE' – Fiona Erskine, author of The Chemical Detective and The Chemical Reaction

’Evocative, compelling and pulse-pounding, with cliff-edge suspense, riveting action and a plot as tricksy as a dare-devil free-climb' – Philippa East, author of CWA Dagger-shortlisted Little White Lies

‘Thoroughly original - hooks you in from the start and keeps you guessing’ – Frances Quinn, bestselling author of The Smallest Man

'In Jane Jesmond, the thriller world has gained a compelling and seriously talented voice. On the Edge is a truly surprising, original, and twisted story that will not only take your breath away but which also does exactly what it announces loud and proud: keep you on the edge of your seat. I couldn’t — and didn’t want to — put it down' – Hannah Mary McKinnon, internationally bestselling author of Sister Dear and You Will Remember Me

'It literally had me on the edge from the word go. Tense, taut and thrilling' – Lisa Hall, bestselling author of Between You and Me and The Party

‘A proper nerve-shredder of a tale. Literary Cornwall has rarely been so magnificently menacing. Hold on tight. You won't be able to let go until the very last page!’ – Helen Fields, internationally bestselling author of the DI Callanach series

‘Complex characters and a setting so vivid I could almost smell the sea air – an astonishing debut’ – Marion Todd, author of the DI Clare Mackay series

‘A beautifully atmospheric story that grips you from the start! Jesmond cleverly weaves a tale of intrigue and suspense – a talented new crime fiction writer. One to watch!’ – Louise Mumford, bestselling author of Sleepless

‘On The Edge is an exceptional debut. Skilfully written, tightly plotted and compulsive reading. Highly recommended' – Maddie Please, author of The Summer of Second Chances and The Year of New Adventures

Perfect for fans of Jane Harper and Sharon Bolton

Leseprobe

For my darling dad, Alastair Shufflebotham

Prologue

Along the road from my family home in Cornwall, the lighthouse at St Matthew’s Point dominates the landscape. As a child I used to lie in bed and watch its great beam sweep the night in unending, unhurried circles and feel safe. During the day, it seems asleep. In winter, it is a solitary brooding tower; even in summer, its peace appears untouched by the tourists who cluster round its windswept base or pay a pound to climb the 163 steps to the viewing platform and stare out over the sea. Most of the time, I remember it as the visitors see it, stately and still, gleaming white against blue skies and the grey-green of the wind-whipped grass.

Yet sometimes, even now, dreams of the lighthouse as it was on that Friday night, my first night back in Cornwall for months, disturb my sleep. The dream is always the same. A storm of wind and rain batters the coast. The tapering white form of the lighthouse appears in the distance, stark and motionless against the turbulent backdrop of dark clouds and darker seas tearing shreds out of each other. Its shaft of light shoots out into the night and circles, steady and constant, despite the blasts of the gale.

In my dream the lighthouse comes closer and closer as though a wave of rushing wind carries me towards it. A blotch appears, dark against the white walls. At first it’s a shadow that dances from side to side as the beam passes overhead; then it becomes a figure. A person, dangling off the viewing platform that encircles the top of the lighthouse beneath the lantern. Clad in dark clothes that gleam with wetness, a thin rope looped in a figure of eight under its arms and over one of the stone blocks that give the lighthouse the look of a medieval castle. The wind dashes the figure against the wall and shakes the stream of water that falls like a cord from its bare feet.

Closer still and a face with tight-shut eyes appears. A young woman. The skin of her eyelids and around her mouth twitches and trembles. She is lost in some fantasy sparked to life by the drugs crackling through her veins while all the time the rope thins and frays. And even in my dream, I know I must wake her before it’s too late, before the rope breaks and she falls to the ground.

Except I can’t. Because this is a dream and the young woman is Jenifry Shaw. She’s me. The figure hanging from the lighthouse is me.

One

Another night in rehab. A Thursday night and my eight week anniversary. It was much like all the other nights – sleepless and long. I’d done fifty-six days of rehab. Fifty-six days of talking, talking, talking. Of sitting in meetings: group therapy, yoga classes, ‘Preparing to Change’ sessions, counselling. Meetings meant people, and I’d never liked being around too many of them. At least not without drugs making everything blur. Eight weeks of breathing stale air passed through the lungs of too many people. It was long enough. Surely it was. I wanted to get out.

I was free to leave at any moment. All voluntary patients were. And I’d gone into this willingly, scared witless by what I’d become and trying to recompense by shelling out vast sums of money for help.

I paced around my room, my hands tying knots in a length of string I’d found in the bottom of one of the drawers: bowline, double figure 8, clove hitch and so on, over and over again. I couldn’t sleep. The room was too small. Too hot. It smelt of disinfectant overlaying vomit and the window lock prevented it from opening more than a couple of inches. Someone cried out. Not for the first time. The night was often punctuated by people howling for the things they desired. Hidden longings set free by the dark. I made a snap decision. It was time to go. I packed my bag and went downstairs, told the duty staff I was leaving. Told them I was fine. Told them I’d recovered.

They wanted a chance to discuss it with me first and wore me down with smooth torrents of words asking me to wait for the morning until I gave in and trailed back to my room, painted yellow to look cheerful and with random framed prints of birds pinned to the walls. It still felt like a cell.

Which was what I deserved, after all.

I rested my head on the windowsill and stared up at the night sky, feeling the narrow shaft of air cool my skin. And I thought. I thought about the drugs. I thought I was over them. I was sure I was over them. Somewhere in among the endless talk about addictive behaviour and triggers, I’d grasped enough to understand they were only a substitute for something I couldn’t have.

And that was climbing.

Free climbing. The clue’s in the name. Free climbers rope up to save ourselves if we fall. We don’t use the rope to climb. We use nothing but our bodies to get up the face. Nothing but us and the rock. Sometimes working in harmony. Sometimes fighting each other.

That was all over, though. I’d never climb again. I’d promised my brother Kit and I kept the promise. But I hadn’t promised to stop thinking about it.

I shut my eyes and remembered the smell of the rock in the Verdon Gorge. It changed during the day. In the morning it was sour and damp but by midday the sun had warmed it to a harsh grittiness overlaid with sharp spikes of lavender and thyme. The climb was called Luna Bong. We got there early, before the sun dried the rock. Fingers slip on damp edges so we waited for the heat and while we waited I stared up, scouring the rock for holds and feeling the movements in my body. Grid, my ex-boyfriend, loved that climb and we must have done it twenty times, so it’s imprinted on me. Muscle memory.

In the cell-like room, I shut out everything else and turned my attention to the cliff. Let myself feel the heat bouncing off the rock and hear the cicadas rattling in the scrub. It soothed me. And as my body remembered itself moving up the rock face, I finally fell asleep.

In the morning, still desperate to escape, I thought of grabbing my bags and running. I knew I was fine. But the staff would never believe me. The words to bridge the gulf between us didn’t exist. Feeling restless and tense, I waited to see my counsellor, watching a line of other patients shuffle into a morning meditation class, and checked my phone. And saw the mail from Kit. It wasn’t recent. They take your phone away in rehab. It’s voluntary, of course, but everybody hands it over. And, actually they’re right. It is a distraction. They give it back to you from time to time to check for anything urgent, though. I went to delete the mail like I’d deleted all Kit’s texts recently, but a stray memory from our childhood caught my thoughts and stopped me. It had been a meditation class, too. Something Ma thought would be good for us to do, like collecting herbs by moonlight or dying T-shirts with crushed flowers.

We’d spent the first session sitting cross-legged in the crowded front room of a friend’s cottage. Thin carpets covered the stone flags but their chill rose through and numbed my bottom as we concentrated on the breath slipping in and out through our nostrils. It wasn’t difficult, if a little dull. We then moved on to observing the sensations in different parts of our body. Observing only.

I observed my toes, cramped at the end of trainers that were too small. The whisper of cold air passing over a graze on my wrist. And the muscles in my legs, twitching up and down the length of them, unable to be still for so long.

I couldn’t help it, I had to obey my legs. So I leapt up and ran out of the room, out of the back door, past a woman stirring something that smelled fragrant and strange, into the garden and over the stone wall at the end, barking my knee on the top. Not that I cared. It was a small price to pay for the bouncy grass of the moor and the prickle of heather against my shins and the feeling of air in my face.

Kit ran after me and we lay on the ground and laughed together. And I knew he understood.

Ma didn’t take us again.

I opened Kit’s mail.

Dear Jen, it started. Nothing peculiar in that, except I didn’t think Kit had ever been so formal. When we worked together, the mails had been cursory. Plan attached, please review. That kind of thing. Otherwise it was always, Hi. So the Dear Jen worried me. The rest of the message showed how right my feeling was.

Dear Jen

I’ve tried to call but I never get you. You don’t answer your mobile and the office say you’re not there. I hope you’re not avoiding me.

Sofija says you haven’t been in touch with her either.

Will you come down and see us? Please, Jen. Something’s come up. We need your help. We really need your help. We’d like to see you anyway. It’ll be easier to explain face to face, so don’t ring up and demand to know what’s going on. Text me when you’re coming.

Kit

No mention of the row we’d had seven months ago. No mention of the promise he bludgeoned out of me. Although ‘promise’ is a weak word for what Kit forced me to give, out of my mind with guilt after Grid’s accident and battered by all Kit’s fury and accusations that had the nasty sting of truth. I’d sworn I’d never climb again, then screamed at him to fuck right out of my life. And I hadn’t seen or spoken to him since. Or Sofija. Or Ma.

No contact until now. But he was my brother and he needed me. He had a problem and he thought I could solve it. It was the perfect excuse to leave. And anyway, after weeks of gritting my teeth and gratefully nodding at the carefully chosen words of the counsellors helping me, it felt wonderful to be the rescuer. Plus, Kit was in Cornwall and Cornwall was full of air, great gusts of it blown in from the sea, scouring the land and imbuing it with a salty tang.

I left rehab, feeling like an escaped prisoner. Family crisis, I told them. Got to go, I said firmly. And, with less conviction in my voice, I’ll come back and finish. They weren’t keen for me to leave. They didn’t think I was ready. They thought I was still ‘in denial’. I was sure they were wrong.

It felt good to be out. It felt good to be driving. To be on the move. To be doing something again. And to be alone. My car, my lovely red Aston, ate up the miles even though I stuck to the speed limit. Most of the time anyway – there were moments when the motorway was clear and a song I loved came on the radio and then I sped up and sang along.

My mood wasn’t quite so upbeat after Exeter as the signs for Cornwall started flashing by. I wondered what Kit’s problem might be and the thought of what could be waiting for me was as depressing as the deepening grey of the clouds brooding overhead. As I crossed the Tamar, the heavy sky lowered and squeezed the colour out of the rolling hills and farmland that lined the road and instead of lifting my heart, Cornwall, moody creature that she was, showed me her sullen and bitter face. My doubts grew. My driving slowed. Was this yet another of the impulsive escapades that littered my past? The closer I got to Craighston village and Tregonna, my old family home, the twitchier I became.

I pulled off at a service station in the end and called Kit. No answer. No answer from Sofija, his wife, either. I thought of calling the Tregonna landline but Ma might answer. I was sure Kit’s problem was to do with her so probably best to avoid speaking to her for the moment. She had an uncanny way of getting me to commit to things I didn’t want to.

Staying at the hotel was a spur of the moment idea. I got to Craighston and hesitated. Tregonna was only a mile or two away, up the steep road that led out of the other side of the village and past the lighthouse at the top, but I couldn’t face my family yet. Couldn’t face the explanations of why I’d been away so long. Couldn’t deal with the aftermath of Kit’s fury in the carpark. Besides, none of them knew I was on my way so they weren’t expecting me. I made a quick decision and pulled into the car park round the back of The Seagull, as it was now called. In my day it had been The Smuggler’s Arms, then The Craighston Inn and, for a few short seasons, The Piskie’s Revenge. It was Craighston’s only hotel, slap bang in the middle of the village, owned by a series of incomers who arrived full of dreams and left worn out a few seasons later.

Reception, drab in the damp weather and needing the chatter of families on holiday to bring it to life, was empty. Voices came from a room behind the desk and when I pinged the bell, a sour-faced woman with iron-grey curls stuck her head round the door and looked at me accusingly.

‘Are you open?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Could I have a room? Just for the night.’

She sighed but she came out. ‘Of course.’ She was about as welcoming as the weather.

‘Your name?’

‘Jen Shaw.’

She didn’t react. My name meant nothing to her. She tapped it into the computer, asked me for my card and gave me a key – the old-fashioned kind attached to a brass rectangle with the number punched into it. Heavy enough to stop guests taking it with them by mistake. She pointed down a corridor whose uncarpeted floor showed a few splotches of fresh paint then thought better of it.

‘I’ll take you to your room. They’ve finished decorating but I’m not sure if they’ve put the room numbers back on the doors.’

I trailed after her, wondering why anyone would have chosen to use that particular shade of yellowish beige paint and hoping its smell hadn’t penetrated my room. When she pushed the door open and I walked in, I realised it hadn’t. Or maybe it was smothered by the overwhelmingly musty odour. I pulled back the curtains, flung the window open and found myself staring out into the car park. Fab. The rooms on the second floor had a view over the rooftops of the squat buildings around the hotel, all huddled together against the winds that regularly tore in from the sea despite Craighston nestling in a little creek. From up there you could see the sea and the cliff path rising through the village and, if you stuck your head out, the tall white figure of the lighthouse on the point, an exclamation mark against the wild skies. I thought of asking if I could change rooms but this one looked clean, if a little too full of Cornish knick-knacks for my taste – china piskies and fishing boats and the obligatory framed picture of smugglers hauling barrels off a boat in a small cove. Besides, it was only for one night.

‘No kettle?’ I asked.

‘The electrics can’t cope if everyone turns them on at once,’ she said shortly.

I thought about asking how many people were currently staying here but decided it wasn’t worth it. She must have seen the irritation pass across my face.

‘I’ve got a spare one in the flat. I’ll bring it down later,’ she said. ‘Sorry, we’re a bit at sixes and sevens with the redecoration. I’m Vivian Waring. Reception isn’t manned off-season but you can call me on my mobile if you need anything.’

‘I might go out for a bit of fresh air,’ I said. Anything to escape the damp smell and unlock the knots of tension in my neck.

‘Well, be careful. There’s a storm on the way and it will be dark in an hour or so.’ She handed me a card. ‘Key code,’ she said. ‘For the front door.’ And with that she turned and left me. I glanced at it. 2468. Very original.

Craighston out of season. About as cheerful as my mood. I chucked my bag on the bed and sat down. For the first time in a long while I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to see, no meetings to sit through. It should have been a moment of peace. Instead all the old longings crawled into the emptiness and scratched their way into my blood.

And then… my memory dissolved into shreds and tatters: the tufts of the bedcover under my fingers… my hand closing a drawer… the raucous screams of seagulls wheeling overhead… then rain… nothing but rain.

Then… nothing. The stream of my consciousness stopped. Dead. As if a surgeon had sliced the memories out of my mind leaving nothing but a few flickering images and echoes behind.

Two

And then… something.

I woke.

Through the spiralling confusion in my brain, I knew I was awake. Everything was sharp and clear and real.

Not a dream.

But unbelievable. An undecipherable maelstrom of sound and motion and sensation. Brightness above me jerked my head back and turned the water falling over my eyes into glittering beads.

Rain.

I was outside.

And noise.

A confusion of wind, crashing waves and rain drumming a hard surface.

A storm.

Then pain, as a blast of wind hurled me against a white wall. The shock knocked the breath out of me and blew the mists of unconsciousness away.

Where am I?

A wall in front of me; white and smooth. But not in a climbing gym. There were no grips and no route markers.

The wind battered me again. Spun me round. Giddying my brain.

I need to get out of here.

I forced my thoughts to grip onto the here and now, and looked up. The wall ended against the dark sky. Then the blinding beam of light stabbed through the dark again and passed over my head. And disappeared.

I know what this is.

And I knew where I was. On the lighthouse along the coast from Tregonna. St Matthew’s lighthouse. Hanging from the viewing platform that jutted out below the lantern room, my knees against its bottom edge and my feet threshing the wild but empty air.

How…?

My brain screamed.

No time to panic.

I looked down. Through my feet, the concrete circle at the base of the lighthouse lay on the wind-lashed grass of the headland. I’d seen it so many times before from the safety of the viewing platform, leaning over its wall and staring down at the same grey circle, resting like a raft on waves of grass. A tiny raft far below, waiting to smash my body when I fell.

Not falling. You’re not falling.

Something held me up. Something under my arms dug pain into my flesh. I lifted my hand to touch it. A rope.

The beam circled overhead again and a glimmer echoed off the clouds onto the white wall. The rope was sash cord. Very old sash cord, hairy with loose strands that had broken or worn through.

The rope gave. A matter of millimetres. Even less. But I felt the drop in my bones.

My eyes scanned the wall above. The top of the parapet gleamed briefly as the beam passed overhead again. Not far to climb. But the surface was smooth. Super-smooth. No holds. No edges. No cracks. Nothing. I’ve climbed cliffs you’d think were impossible. Flat sheets of granite, smooth to the eye as butter sliced by a hot knife. Nature loves imperfection, though and there’s always a ridge or an edge in the rock your fingers and feet can use to swarm up the face. Even if you can’t see it, you can feel it. But the lighthouse was man-made, its surface grainy, gravelly, slippery in the wet.

The rope dropped again. A micro millimetre. A whisper of a movement but enough to tingle the sweat pores in my palms and sharpen my breathing, as if a hundred blades cut through my body and sliced through the confusion. Sliced through it and let it fall away. I felt alive, like I only ever do when I’m climbing. Even coke can’t compare to it. I laughed. Fuck the rain. Fuck the cold. It was just me and the wall.

I ran my hands over the surface: up, down, side to side, seeking a fault or a crack I could widen.

Slow. Too slow.

As if my hands and brain were disconnected. I forced them to keep moving. All I needed was a hole big enough to jam a fingertip in. Inch by inch, my fingers searched, over and over again, but there was nothing.

Except the rope.

Use the rope.

It slipped again.

The moment when the rope would snap hurtled towards me and fear fired my sluggish neurones. I grabbed the rope and pulled myself up the lighthouse. Hand over hand, inch by inch, until my feet hit the bottom of the viewing platform and I flattened them against its side and pushed. Thrust out and up, forcing the grit into the flesh of my soles and toes. Dragged my body up the parapet, hauling on the rope’s fraying strands. Suddenly the rope came alive, twitching as its strands snapped and unravelled.

Shit.

I hurled an arm over the top of the parapet, gave a last kick, heaved myself up and over and tumbled onto the rough, wooden floor of the viewing balcony.

Adrenalin shook my limbs as I rolled onto my back. The sky was stormy black. There should be stars, I thought. There should be fireworks. There should be great, roaring bursts of rockets to celebrate this moment. Only the lighthouse beam travelled across the sky in its majestic orbit. I counted the length of its circuits as my breathing calmed. And then there was nothing but a slow fall into blackness as my consciousness drained away once more.

I woke again to cold and pain. My head and nose hurt along with the flesh under my arms and round my back where the cord had bitten. I made myself move to the doorway round the far side of the viewing platform, where the tower gave me some protection from the wind coming off the sea, wrapped myself in a tarpaulin that was lying there and tried to think as rivulets of rain gathered in its cracks and creases and ran in streams onto the wooden floor.

I huddled in the doorway for a while waiting for something to make sense. It could have been a few minutes. It could have been a lot longer. Time became elastic so some minutes stuck to me and held on for an age and when they let go the minutes waiting behind them shot past in a blur. And when I finally thought to try the door handle, it opened and I tumbled inside.

The quiet of the musty interior, out of reach of the storm, calmed my shaky brain. I brushed the worst of the water off my face, noticing my hand did what I wanted without hesitating. The strange disconnect between body and brain was passing.

Shit. Drugs. It must be. What have I taken? How the fuck did I get here?

The last thing I remembered clearly was the hotel room. How had I ended up two miles along the coast, hanging off the lighthouse? God knows I’d come to in some strange places before. Crept out of strangers’ houses as the first lightening of dawn dimmed the street lamps; been woken by cleaning ladies hammering on the door of the toilet cubicle in whichever bar we’d ended up in the night before. Come to, leaning against the closed grille of the tube station and, once, propped in someone’s doorway with a faint memory of an angry taxi driver. The memories were always vague. And lost in the glittering blur of bars and drinks and mirrors dusted with the last few grains no one had yet taken. Saving them for a last gum smear before heading out into the night. But I always had some memory of how I’d ended up where I was. Nothing like this utter blankness.

Pain in my hands dragged me back to the here and now, where I crouched in the dim and quiet of the lighthouse stairs. I’d dug my fingers into the crumbling wooden floor and driven splinters into the grazed and battered flesh. Cold seeped into my bones. I’d think about all this later. Now I needed to get back to the hotel.

I felt for my phone with some idea of calling a friend or a cab but I didn’t have it with me. Had I left it in the hotel, charging up on the bedside table? Not that it mattered. I was in Cornwall, not London. And in an area that was quieter than quiet. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes before one o’clock. No chance. If you wanted a taxi here, you booked it the day before. As for friends, they’d all left Cornwall. At least the ones you could call at one in the morning when you needed help. Which left my family: Kit, Sofija and, I supposed, Ma – and even if I’d had a phone I wouldn’t call them. Two years ago, I’d have called Kit straightaway. A few months ago, I might still have called him. But not now. No way.

Tregonna was closer than the hotel but I couldn’t let Kit see me wrecked like this. He’d be furious and I couldn’t bear that. I just couldn’t bear any more of that. I’d get back to the hotel by myself. I stood up and started down the steps. The door at the bottom of the lighthouse was open, swinging and banging in the storm. I went out and onto the coast road.

Three

It’s a a mile or so from the lighthouse back to Craighston village. Fifteen or twenty minutes tops. Unless you have bare, sore feet and torrents of rain drumming on your head. I almost gave up on the tarpaulin, not sure if the barricade it gave me against the rain was worth the struggle to hold it tight against the wind. It might be easier to dump it and walk free. But then the rain would beat against my head again. Its noise was already starting to eat away at my brain and cut my thoughts into pieces.

Keep walking. Get to the hotel. Keep walking.

Ahead, the road ran past one of the great lumps of granite that litter this part of the coast. The lighthouse beam lit up the clouds behind it and, for a moment, the rock’s outline was sharp and harsh.

The beam circled away and the rock became less distinct. More of a dark hole looming over the road than a thing of any substance. Its shape shifted slowly. A trick of the night, I thought. But the closer I got, the more the granite became a living thing, a great bear maybe, moving its weight from leg to leg as it readied to rear up and snatch me with a great clawed paw. My feet slowed and my heart thumped. I forced myself on. It was only a rock. There were no bears in Cornwall.

Keep walking. One foot in front of the other.

It was a drug dream. A phantasm called into life by the cells in my brain flailing in paranoia as the chemicals ebbed to nothing. But knowing that didn’t help. The bear waited for me. Any minute now, it would lean forward and amble towards me. I’d smell its damp fur and the faint rust of blood and my skin would feel the heat of its body before it lashed and raked me with its claws.

A light came from behind me and lengthened my shadow out onto the road. It lit the cracked and folded surface of the rock and chased the vision of the bear away. A wave of spray washed over my legs and feet as a car sped by. The shock of it made me stumble and fall onto the scrubby grass at the side of the road. I’d heard nothing. The rain on the tarpaulin and the battering of the wind blocked out everything else. When I struggled back up, the car had stopped a few yards ahead. Its driver must have seen me. It reversed and something about its slow creep unnerved me. Fear, hot and raw, poured acid through my veins, blanking out everything but the glistening car rolling noiselessly back towards me.

My hands met a thick branch in the short grass, enmeshed in strands of bramble. I ripped the spiky tendrils away, not caring that the thorns tore my fingers. I gripped the stick and waited.

The car stopped on the opposite side of the road from where I stood. It was a bit battered. Lines of rust curled along its dents. A river of shiny tarmac separated us. Rain ran down the windows and obscured the figure inside. A dark grey blob of a face turned to stare at me and the window rolled down. The stick dug into my palm. A man. I waited for him to put his head out of the window. The stick waited. He said something but it was lost in the storm.

A little rational thought sneaked into my brain. A Good Samaritan, it said. He wants to help. The man leaned back into the driver’s seat and the dashboard light of the car caught his face. It was not the face of a Good Samaritan. His eyebrows hooded his eyes, making black holes. His face was a mask. I willed him to leave but he leaned out of the window.

‘Go away,’ I screamed. ‘Leave me alone.’

His voice carried through the storm. ‘You need a lift.’

It was not a question but I shook my head.

‘You need a lift,’ he said again and opened the door. ‘Where are you going to? There’s not much nearby.’ Fear pressed my hands tighter round the stick and lifted it a couple of inches. ‘Let me give you a lift. You’re wet through. You can’t stay out in this storm.’

I stepped back and pushed one hand towards him with the palm flat, like a policeman directing traffic. He hesitated and I grabbed at the last shreds of control, holding the fear tight inside me as I turned and staggered away onto the path.

The car started up. I heard it through the drum of the rain because every cell in my ears was straining backwards. The urge to whirl round and smash the car whipped my blood to a froth but I held on to myself. Drugs, it was the drugs doing this to me. I was sure. And I stumbled towards the great rock, reached it then ran behind a low boulder split off from the main bulk.

I looked back. The car hadn’t moved. I lifted my hands to shade my eyes against the glare of the headlights; he turned them off. I could see him now, leaning forward and staring at me through the back and forth of the wipers. We stayed like that for an age. Gazing at each other, until the lighthouse beam went overhead once more and dragged my eyes upwards. When I looked back he was getting out of the car. Its inside light shone briefly and my eyes took a snapshot. He was the wrong shape for a climber. Too square. But powerful in a contained sort of way. A good man to have at the belaying end of the rope.

He unfurled an umbrella. Gaudy, striped, promoting some sporting event, it looked all wrong in the battering wind and rain of the storm but its incongruity calmed me. The noise of the blood whacking against my ears lessened.

‘I can’t leave you here like this,’ he shouted. The rain was slowing and lightening. It would stop soon and all of a sudden, like a baby’s tears. He took a step towards me and I slipped sideways and further round the rock. ‘I won’t hurt you.’ He sounded pissed off. Monumentally pissed off. He muttered something I didn’t catch. ‘I’m Nick,’ he called. ‘Nick Crawford. I live up beyond the fields.’ He jerked the umbrella inland to where a smaller road ran high up but parallel to the coast road, linking a straggle of cottages and small farms.

‘Go away.’ I tried to shout but my words had no force and I wondered if he’d even heard them.

He did nothing for a moment and then went to the boot of the car. I thought about disappearing into the night but the path to the village was right by the road at this point and the cliffs fell sharply away on the other side. No hope of escaping once I left the rock. He came back round and I saw he’d put on a creased yellow oilskin.

‘Can you drive?’

The words took a while to make sense. I nodded.

‘Take the car then. I can walk from here.’

He gestured to the door and half-bowed like the doorman of a fancy hotel showing me the way. The rain stopped. He put out a hand from under the umbrella and laughed.

‘It’ll be a lovely night now, you’ll see. It’s always like this. One minute rain, the next clear, the next… well, you never know. Look, the car’s running. Get in it and go…’ He closed the umbrella and shook it. ‘Where are you going to?’

I found my voice. ‘The hotel in Craighston. The Seagull.’

‘OK I’ll call round tomorrow morning and pick it up. You can leave the keys at reception if you don’t want to see me.’ He laughed and I found myself wanting to laugh with him. He was as crazy as I was.

He started to walk away, then turned. ‘What’s your name? It would help to know.’

‘Jen Shaw.’

‘Jen Shaw. Short and sweet. Goodnight, Jen Shaw. Safe journey home.’

He walked away and I fixed my eyes on his back, watching in case he made a sudden turn and raced back, but, as the distance between us grew, he became less and less distinct until all I could make out were the luminous strips on his jacket bobbing up and down like two demented caterpillars dancing against the black.

Nick Crawford. Not a name I knew. Not a local name. And he didn’t look or sound local. He must be an incomer. A recent one. I would have remembered if I’d met him before.

The sky was clearing. Only a few wisps of cloud remained and they were scudding inland, fleeing the wind coming off the sea. The dampness on my face was drying and I tasted the salt of the wind on my lips. It was chilly. The great beam of light passed overhead once again and ignited cold sparks in the sky. I shivered. No sign of Nick Crawford. He must have turned off the road to climb up to his house.

With the passing of the rain a kind of peace settled in my brain.

I peered into the car. The seats were battered and the interior grey with age but it was clean. And probably warm. The thought of heat drove everything else out of my mind and I opened the door and got in.

I turned the heating to full and locked all the doors. The glorious warmth drove the chill from my body in violent shakes. I didn’t care. They would pass. My feet hurt as the feeling came back but not enough to stop waves of drowsiness engulfing me. It was awesome. Like swimming in hot soup. My thoughts left my body and went wherever they go when I sleep, and I passed out.

I don’t know how long I was out for. Long enough for the steering wheel to make a dent in my face and the dribble from my mouth to crust in a vampire drool. The car stuttered and rumbled again. I opened my eyes and saw a face looking in at me through the windscreen. Shock tingled through my veins and I screamed. The face vanished. I flicked the headlights on full and they caught a figure disappearing round the back of the rock. I thought they had a torch but it was difficult to tell in my half-asleep state. The car was locked. But there could be another key. Probably in Nick Crawford’s house. Hanging on a hook by the back door or in a bowl on a shelf in the hall. That was where it would be. Nothing to stop him picking it up and coming back down to the car. Or giving it to the grey figure I’d just seen.

I forced myself to be reasonable. It was probably an insomniac like Ma taking advantage of the break in the weather to get some fresh air. Or someone from the fishing boats heading home and curious as to why a car was parked and running on the headland road. So I focussed on the controls of the car, released the handbrake and, careful of my bruised and grazed feet, drove off. I made it back to the hotel safely, although tremors and stray thoughts snatched at my concentration.

The clock in reception showed half past five and there was no one around. I panicked for a moment in front of the door to my room. I had nothing with me. No coat. No bag. Nothing but the tarp. So no key. The brass door handle slipped and rattled in my shaky hands – then opened. I fumbled the clothes off my body and turned the shower on full, letting the hot water sluice the mud and dried blood off my skin. My head hurt and when I put my hand up to check it, I found a large bump covered by a tangle of blood-matted hair. Another injury to add to the tally of cuts and grazes. I let the water run gently over my head. It flowed pink through my hands, with a few flecks of solid blue. I wondered what they were. Bits of tarpaulin maybe? The wobbles were severe now, as well as the tiredness. I patted myself dry and, for the first time, thought back to the evening before. Or tried to. Tried very hard. But nothing came. And I don’t mean the kind of jumble of images those druggy nights often left behind. The grating edges of words and laughter you chase but can’t quite grasp. No, this was a total blank. Rien. Nada. Nothing. As if my memory had stepped off a cliff.

One minute I’d been sitting on the bed, the next, the wind and rain were battering me against the lighthouse wall. Panic started to flood my head. The air in my room thinned and my lungs snatched at what was left. An anxiety attack, I told myself. Common when coming down. Breathe slowly. Distract yourself. Watch TV. Make a hot drink. Whatever works for you. None of it worked for me.

So I thought again of the climb up Luna Bong. I’d leave everything else till tomorrow. Maybe then my scrambled brain would have found the missing hours. With the memory of the rock beneath my fingers soothing me, I went to bed and fell asleep as the last few metres of the climb dissolved into the blue sky.

Four

I woke up, lying flat on my back, with my hands clawing the sheets for holds on the slippery walls of the lighthouse. Grey light peered round the edges of the thick curtains. I knew where I was. The hotel. Safe. In bed.

For a moment I thought the lighthouse had been a dream.

I dreamed a lot in rehab. Everybody does. It’s a way of escaping. Some dreamed of their childhoods, most dreamed of their drugs, but I dreamed of climbing. So I thought it was another of those dreams until I got out of bed and winced as my grazed and bruised feet hit the floor. Until I went into the bathroom and saw the clothes and the tarpaulin lying in muddy dampness on the floor. Questions raged through my brain. What had I done? Why had I been at the lighthouse?

A knock on the door interrupted my whirling thoughts. Shit. I shut the bathroom door on the filthy clothes and tarpaulin. The knock again.

It was the woman who’d checked me in last night.

‘Ms Shaw?’

Her name came back to me – Vivian – and with it, a tremble of relief. My brain was working better.

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a man in reception, asking for you. A Mr Crawford. Says you’ve got his car keys?’ She raised an enquiring eyebrow.

The second part of the night came back to me. The road. The car. The man. The umbrella. Him leaving me his car. Somehow that seemed even more unreal than the rest of it. He was here for his keys though, so it had happened.

I couldn’t find them. They weren’t on the bedside table. They weren’t among my wet clothes. I hunted among the ornaments cluttering the surfaces. All the time, Vivien stood at the entrance and watched me. With her tightly curled hair, tweed skirt and look of irritated patience, she reminded me of my friends’ mothers and it was doubly hard to think while she was there. A glint caught my eye and I saw the keys poking out from the empty teacup and saucer on the little table by the door. When I handed them to her she waited for a moment as though expecting something more.

‘Tell him thanks, will you? And…’ And what? Dribs and drabs of how I’d behaved to him last night floated into my mind. Shit, I’d been off my head. There was nothing, absolutely nothing I could ask her to say to him that would explain or excuse. ‘Just thanks.’ I shut the door and sat on the bed.

Time to think about last night. Drugs? It had to be. Nothing else explained it. But how? And why? I needed to think. That’s what they’d told me to do. In case of a relapse. They don’t like to talk about it. Not when you’re a new and shiny recovered addict. But it doesn’t take much to work out it happens. I only had to look at the people in rehab with me. Not many first-timers there.

Process the relapse, they’d told me. Work through it. Identify the motivating factors. And, above all, don’t be overcome by guilt and shame. Guilt and shame – ha!

I was pissed off. Deeply pissed off. With myself? Yes, I guess. Analyse the feeling, Jen. Stay with it. It’s a guide. Pissed off. Angry, if you like. Super-bloody-angry. Because I thought I had it nailed. Yup. In my heart of hearts all that time at the centre, I had thought I wasn’t a proper addict. I thought I could have stopped by myself, without the therapy and the strategies. They were just an insurance policy.

So I was wrong. The creature in my head had only been asleep, waiting for something to poke it awake so it could snake its fine tentacles through me again and grip me tight. One day out of rehab, one bloody day, and I’d relapsed. Because whatever had happened last night, one thing was certain: drugs had been involved.

One big problem, though. I had no idea what had woken the beast. I still couldn’t remember a thing between getting to the hotel and waking up on the lighthouse. The big rift in my memories was still there. And without a few hints I couldn’t see how to stop it happening again. For the first time I wondered if I might have gone too far and done my brain in for good. My palms sweated and I clenched my fingers into fists. No good for climbing, but good for fighting. And fighting was what I needed to do because the old longings were reaching out to me.

I needed tea. A hot cup of tea that I could wrap my fingers round and sip, feeling it chase the fluttering panic out of my stomach. I forced myself to focus on the tea. It would have to be very hot. That went without saying. And in a big mug. One made of thin china that clinked with a musical note when my teeth hit it. Fragrant Darjeeling or maybe an infusion. Camomile, with its grassy smell. Or mint – that made me remember camping in the hills outside Marrakech and sipping the tea the guides made at the end of the day, its faint scent of sweetness and mint cutting through the harsh grit of sand and wind. I concentrated on the memory and the feeling of softness that had swept through my body as the day’s heat subsided into dusk.

I mustn’t think of the things I wanted even more. Things I knew I couldn’t have. Like a quick hit of weed to soothe the sourness in my head. Or some Valium to calm the itch beneath my skin. Or even a swift breath of coke to make the inside of my head sparkle. Every time my mind started to consider them, I turned it back to the tea.

A shadowy image came into my brain. Me sitting on the bed last night, not long after I arrived, feeling the tufty counterpane rub against the tips of my fingers. I’d wanted something then. Something to soften the spikes in my mind. The longing for it had etched a trail in the debris of my memories. Had I given in to the urge? Gone out into the night? I forced my brain to relive the last clear moments but nothing of what I’d done afterwards came back to me.

I went down to breakfast in the hotel bar. Drank tea and ignored Vivian’s curious glances, which was difficult as I was the only person there.

The bar looked familiar in the way all bars do. Had I been here last night? I liked bars. I liked the warm sparkle of lights reflected in bottles and the clinking noise of glasses and money. Maybe I’d come here. Maybe I’d met someone. An old friend from way back. Maybe the evening had developed into something else.

‘Some hot water?’ Vivian’s voice broke into my thoughts.

‘Thanks.’

I wanted to ask her about last night but it was hard to find a question that didn’t sound stupid. Quite tricky to ask someone ‘Do you know what I did last night?’

‘Did you get badly caught in the storm?’ she asked. I stared at her stupidly. ‘Lucky for you Mr Crawford was passing. I did try and warn you there was bad weather on its way when you said you were going out.’

‘Going out?’ I said, pouncing on her words. ‘Yesterday evening?’

‘Yes. But you went anyway. I guess you got caught in it.’

I nodded. A vague memory of wanting fresh air came back.

‘I thought you might miss the worst but obviously not.’

‘Do you know what time I went out? I didn’t have my watch and I wondered… um.’ What the fuck could I be wondering? Nothing came to mind. It didn’t seem to bother her, though.

‘Oh, I couldn’t say. You arrived around four-thirty. So sometime after that. Maybe five-ish.’

I had no memory of it but I was sure she was right. It was another strategy they’d suggested in rehab. If you’re desperate for a hit, go for a walk. A brisk walk. Exercise wakens your endorphins, the hormones that make you feel happy naturally – the ones that cocaine shuts down.

No point sitting here any longer hoping for memories to return. Forget the convenient scenario of friends turning up in the hotel bar. It was off season. The bar wouldn’t have been open. I’d gone for a walk. I didn’t have a clue what had happened next but, fuck it, I was going to find out.

Kit came back into my thoughts. Shit. I should go to Tregonna. Find out what lay behind his plea for help. I’d put it off long enough. But I hesitated. My head wasn’t right. My brain still stuttered and trains of thought evaporated before I’d reached the end of them. I’d go back to the lighthouse, I thought. That was the thing to do. Maybe something there would pierce the mist and help me remember. Besides, it was on the way to Tregonna. I could go there afterwards.

It was dark grey outside. A dour sort of day. The kind that glares at you over its cup of coffee in the morning, willing you to leave it alone. A hangover from last night’s storm, which instead of clearing the air had left it full of weariness. And my feet hurt. Shit, my feet hurt. I’d lost my old suede boots last night, with the soft lining that bagged and stretched in every direction. Instead I was wearing trainers, which were new and stiff and rubbed my cut and grazed skin.

I slipped out the back way to the hotel car park, praying my car would be there. Worried I’d driven it last night and left it somewhere unremembered. Thankfully it was still in the corner by the gate, red and shiny and parked slightly askew. My lovely car. Again it hit me how kind Nick Crawford had been. I’d never let anyone drive my car and certainly not a half-crazed waif in a storm. He was awesomely nice. Or just mad.

I drove slowly down the main street – if you could call it that. Two pubs. The hotel. Three shops selling tourist tat and a small convenience-store-cum-post-office. Not even a takeaway any more. It had been driven out of business when the takeaways in the nearest town started delivering. Whatever I’d taken last night, I must have got it here. It didn’t seem very likely. Only the pubs would have been open. And probably only one of them – the older one that catered for the sullen men who stomped in for a drink and a grunt at each other most nights. The other one shut early once the holiday season was over. A half pint of cider, a packet of crisps and a grumble about the Parish Council was the most you’d get on an average winter night in Craighston.

The lighthouse reared up at me as I drove round the last corner. A huge chess piece on a grey slope and in the dark light it looked as flat and fantastical as an illustration in a child’s storybook. I shivered.

I stopped in the little car park along the cliff from the lighthouse and pressed my knuckles into my temples as though they might stick my broken memories back together. Nothing came. Even when I walked over to the lighthouse, last night remained as blank as its hard white walls. A few paces away, something brown and soft caught my eye. A small rabbit, huddling in a scrape? No, my boot. One of them. Sodden now from all the rain.

I stared up at the ramparts circling the top of the viewing platform. The boot must have come off as I hung above. I hunted all around the base but the other was nowhere to be seen.

Someone had shut the lighthouse door. Or what remained of it. It was little more than a few planks hanging at an angle off the top hinge. There was a hole where the lock had been, its edges showing splinters of fresh wood under the peeling blue paint. Someone had broken in. It wouldn’t have been hard. The wood was rotten. It had needed renewing for ages, except why bother when it only led to the inside of an empty lighthouse? The door that accessed the lantern room and the lamp mechanism was steel and triple-locked.

I stared at the door for a while. The ‘someone’ who had broken it down might well be me. Shit. Would I have done that? I realised I might have. It grated over the doorstep as I dragged it towards me, then shot open, hit my toes and startled a couple of gulls that were stabbing the grass for worms. They flew off with angry shrieks and the man mopping the red quarry tiles inside looked over his shoulder.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’re back home, are you?’

He went back to his cleaning, moving the mop across the floor with the care of a painter stroking his brush over a blank canvas. I bent over and massaged my toes.

‘Gregory,’ I said.

He turned around to face me, leaning on the mop and I was shocked at the change. He’d always seemed old but the years since I’d last seen him had collapsed his body into a hunch so his head was like a tortoise’s poking out from his curved shoulders.

‘I’ve got that one’s pair,’ he said, nodding at the boot in my hands.

Even his voice was a croak of what it had once been.

I looked for the Jack Russell that was always at his feet. An annoying little dog that wouldn’t play with us when Pa visited Gregory in his bare stone cottage. It was cramped and dark so Kit and I stayed outside but Gregory liked it. He’d been lighthouse keeper for years until automation made him redundant and Pa said it made him prefer small spaces.

‘Where’s Pip?’ I asked.

Gregory ignored me and shuffled the bucket onto a patch of damp floor. The stairs, as far up as I could see, bore traces of water.

‘You’ve not mopped all the way up?’

‘Ay. All the way down, you might say. What’d be the point of mopping all the way up? You’d have to wait on top ’till it dried. Could be a long time in this weather.’

He painstakingly cleaned the last few square feet and poured the water down a grating outside the door. It splashed onto his boots, leaving dark marks where the sole was peeling away from the leather.

‘Dirty today,’ he said and I looked at the sky. ‘Not the weather, the floor.’ He pointed down the drain. ‘Some buggers broke in last night. Left mud everywhere. Police are on their way.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh.’ He echoed my careful tone. ‘Oh, indeed. Would be just like you and that brother of yours.’

‘I’m grown up now, Gregory. And Kit… wouldn’t.’ The last of the water slid down the drain with a faint gurgle and I remembered why I’d come. ‘Can I go up? Is it open?’ He looked at my trainers. ‘They’re clean. I won’t dirty your floors.’

I didn’t run up like I remembered doing as a child. Racing Kit to see who could get to the top first. My muscles wouldn’t move fast enough and I had to stop for breath on the second landing. I brushed the damp fringe from out of my eyes and wondered at how unfit I was. Seven months without climbing, eight weeks sitting in rehab and last night’s efforts had turned my legs to jelly.