The Weekend Escape, page 2
High above them, Amanda, the last one left at the top of the lighthouse, pulled up the loose end of the blue rope. A minute later, she shouted down to say she was ready, and Juliet responded. There was a practised ease in the way they called back and forth. It had a soothing effect on Lyndsey’s nerves, reminding her of better times, when adventures like this were normal. Every weekend – or as often as they could manage – during their Sixth Form years at high school, the group of friends would go out scrambling, or orienteering, or hillwalking … whatever they fancied. A few times they’d gone sea kayaking, although Bobbie had avoided that, because just looking at the ocean made her nauseous.
That was another reason why Lyndsey was surprised Bobbie had agreed to coming on this weekend retreat. They’d travelled to the island from Ravenswater via the smallest, oldest fishing boat Lyndsey had ever seen, with an engine that smoked and sputtered and sounded like it was on the verge of conking out. Bobbie had turned green before they’d even left the harbour on the mainland. The journey was only supposed to take twenty minutes, out of the estuary mouth then down the curve of the coast to Shell Island, but because of the choppy state of the sea, it had taken more than thirty. It was no wonder she was still feeling ill.
Lyndsey’s own stomach wasn’t too settled either. She’d been too nervous to eat breakfast and, even though it was now lunchtime, she wasn’t thinking about food. The two pints of bitter she’d had at the pub, while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive on their various trains, hadn’t helped like she’d hoped they would.
The wind was definitely picking up. Lyndsey shielded her eyes as she watched Amanda step off the ledge. The clouds were a thick, dark grey, threatening rain at any moment. She hoped it would hold off until they reached the bunkhouse, which was apparently half a mile further inland. The group had gone straight to the lighthouse for their first abseil, since it was close to the tiny landing stage at the south of the island where the fishing boat had dropped them off. Lyndsey was sure she wasn’t the only one looking forward to discovering where they’d be spending the night. Out of the group, only Juliet had visited the island before, and that’d been eighteen years ago, when she was eleven, on a family camping trip. The place was bound to have changed since then.
A particularly strong gust of wind hit Amanda full force. She was shoved away from the wall like a spider on a thread. The wind twisted her and, as she swung back, she thumped her shoulder against the concrete.
‘Are you okay?’ Lyndsey called.
Awkwardly, Amanda managed to get her feet back onto the wall. She waited till she was steady before shouting to say she was all right.
‘You’re doing great,’ Juliet said, letting out a little more safety rope. It was doubtful that Amanda had heard her over the wind.
Not that Amanda needed encouragement. As soon as she got her feet in place, she started bounding down the wall in a series of smooth glides. Her experience made it look effortless.
‘Glad those two are having fun,’ Sonia said with a nod towards Juliet and Amanda. ‘Makes you happy you changed your mind, huh?’
‘Changed my mind about what?’ Lyndsey asked.
‘About coming with us.’ Sonia lifted her gaze to watch the scudding clouds. ‘Last we heard, you were dead against the idea.’
Lyndsey gave her an irritated look. ‘I wasn’t dead against anything. I just got put off when Juliet sent through the kit list last month.’
Sonia snorted. ‘Tell me about it. A full page of equipment for three days of climbing? Get in the sea.’
Juliet glanced away from the ropes for long enough to give her a mock-irritated look, which made Sonia laugh.
‘Still, nice to get away,’ Sonia said. ‘Reconnect with old friends and new places.’ She made a gesture towards the rest of the small island. ‘Feels like we’re at the edge of the world here, doesn’t it?’
‘Don’t be dramatic. We can’t be more than fifty miles in a straight line from your house.’
‘Yeah, but there’s a couple of miles of seawater in the way right now. That kinda makes me feel … hemmed in, y’know?’
Lyndsey hadn’t thought about it that way at all. If anything, she felt too exposed on this tiny chunk of rock in the middle of the sea, with nothing but the grey bowl of sky above them. Looking up at the clouds gave her pangs of agoraphobia.
‘Can’t believe Amanda’s here,’ Sonia said then. ‘I thought I’d misheard when Juliet said she was coming. When was the last time any of us—?’
A sudden shout grabbed their attention. Lyndsey spun round in time to see Amanda fall.
She must’ve been at least twenty feet up when the blue rope gave way. The safety line snapped taut under Amanda’s full weight, yanking Juliet off balance. Juliet lost her grip for a vital half-second. That was all the time it took. Amanda landed hard on her back on the grass.
‘Look out!’ Lyndsey yelled.
The blue rope must’ve come untethered at the top, because it was unravelling fast, right behind Amanda. Amanda had the presence of mind to roll sideways. The heavy coils of rope thudded down, right where she’d landed.
Everyone rushed to her. Juliet reached her first.
‘Amanda! Are you okay?’
From the back of the group, Bobbie asked, ‘What happened? Is she all right?’
For a second, Amanda was silent, and Lyndsey’s stomach lurched. Twenty feet was a long way. You could be badly injured from falling even half that height.
Then Amanda sucked in a painful breath. The scrubby grass hadn’t done much to cushion her landing. She gasped for breath like she was badly winded.
‘My leg,’ she moaned. ‘My leg hurts.’
Her left leg was tucked underneath her right one. She must’ve tried to put her feet down at the last instant.
‘Don’t move,’ Val ordered. ‘You’re okay, just don’t try to move. Does anything hurt apart from your leg?’
‘Winded.’ Amanda scrunched up her face in pain. ‘Give me a sec.’
Sonia was waving her phone around, trying to get a signal. ‘I’ve got no reception,’ she said, then looked up at the lighthouse. ‘I’ll see if it works higher up.’
No one stopped her as she raced around the lighthouse to the entrance. Everyone was too concerned about Amanda.
‘Do your hands hurt?’ Val was asking. ‘Any tingling? What about your feet? Can you feel your toes?’
‘What happened?’ Bobbie asked again.
‘The rope.’ Lyndsey picked up the coils of blue climbing rope. ‘It must’ve come untied…’
Even as she said it, she knew that couldn’t be true. Amanda and Juliet were both experienced climbers. There was no way they would’ve cocked up tying the rope at the top. Lyndsey had watched them do it. She’d even checked it herself.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Juliet said. ‘I thought I had a tight hold of the safety line.’ She opened her hands to reveal the scuffed palms of her climbing gloves. When the main rope gave way, all of Amanda’s weight had fallen onto the red safety line. If Juliet hadn’t been wearing gloves, her hands would’ve been torn open. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Gently, Val prodded Amanda’s knee and lower leg. ‘Can you flex your toes?’ she asked.
Amanda nodded. Her face had gone ashen. ‘It’s not so bad. Maybe it’s okay.’
‘Here, I’ll hold this leg while you try and straighten your knee. All right?’
The movement made Amanda suck in her breath, but she was able to slowly straighten her left leg.
‘If you can move it, it’s probably not broken,’ Val said. ‘Don’t try and get up. You might’ve hurt your back.’
Lyndsey followed the blue rope until she found where it came to an end in a mass of frayed, twisted cords.
‘The rope—’ she started to say, then had to swallow, hard. ‘Your rope snapped,’ she finished.
There was a silence, filled only by the noise of the wind. ‘No.’ said Juliet. A simple denial. ‘There’s no way. It’s a new rope. I’ve only used it a few times.’
‘See for yourself.’
Juliet snatched the frayed end of the rope and held it close to her face, as if that might disprove anything.
Lyndsey looked up at the balcony they’d abseiled from. She tried to spot the dangling end of the rope but couldn’t see it. It must’ve broken very high up.
‘We need to get the coastguard,’ Val said.
Amanda immediately objected. ‘No, we don’t. I’m fine. Just winded.’
‘You might’ve seriously damaged yourself. We should get you taken to a hospital.’
‘Are you kidding? You want to call the coastguard for this?’
‘You fell off a lighthouse.’
‘I did not. I fell like ten feet. And I’m fine.’
‘Please quit trying to sit up. Don’t make me forcibly restrain you.’
If Amanda could argue, Lyndsey reasoned, she couldn’t be too badly hurt. But still, the very fact the accident had happened made Lyndsey’s hands shake. Thank God the rope hadn’t snapped when Amanda had been higher up. Or when any of the others were descending.
The thought made Lyndsey’s stomach clench. It could’ve happened to any of them. She hated herself for the sudden relief she felt. It could’ve been me.
She left Val and Juliet in charge of Amanda and went into the lighthouse. They’d entered through the heavy wooden door at the bottom, where a padlock hung from a bolt. Juliet had been entrusted by National Heritage with the only key, but she’d left the padlock open while they were abseiling.
There was very little light inside. Lyndsey switched on the headtorch attached to her climbing helmet. The yellowy beam fell on the mess of brick dust and bird droppings that covered the floor. She tilted her head towards the stone stairs, which snaked up in a lazy spiral around the inside of the lighthouse, leaving the centre empty. She lifted her light up … and up … and up…
Right at the very top, a square of daylight was visible. It was so far away, Lyndsey got a twinge of vertigo.
‘Sonia?’ she called. Her voice echoed. ‘Are you up there?’
Sonia must’ve gone all the way to the gallery deck to try and get a signal. Lyndsey had no idea if that would work. Did phone signal really get stronger the higher up you were, or was that a myth? On this isolated island, miles from home, she doubted any amount of altitude would help.
Lyndsey set off up the stairs for the second time that day. The first section wasn’t too bad, but as she climbed higher, she became increasingly aware of the sheer drop on her right-hand side. All that protected her was a narrow metal handrail, sticking up on rusted spindles. Time and neglect had corroded away whole sections. When she leaned her hand on it, it wobbled. Flecks of rust fluttered off towards the distant floor.
She had to pause to steady her nerves. Normally, Lyndsey didn’t have a problem with heights. She was used to going up and down cliffs – or at least she had been, as a teenager. But something about this place gave her the jitters. Perhaps it was the shape of the lighthouse interior, which narrowed as it got higher, so she felt like the walls were pushing her towards the drop with each step.
Or perhaps it was the thought of Amanda falling from this height.
‘Sonia?’ she called again.
As she approached the top, Lyndsey heard the wind howling. It sounded strong enough to make the whole building tremble. One hand clutched onto the rail with a death-grip, the other pressed flat against the wall, and she swore she could feel the stone shuddering with each gust.
By that point, she was out of breath and winded. Her first climb up the steps had brought home how much her fitness had slipped over the past couple of years. When was the last time she’d done any serious cardio? That was one of the main reasons why she’d agreed to this trip – she’d hoped it would rekindle her urge to exercise.
At the top of the stairs, a doorway led into the rotunda which had once housed the mechanical heart of the lighthouse. The machinery had been stripped out years ago, and the bits and pieces that remained – a few metal brackets and screws on the concrete floor – were surrounded by discoloured halos of rust. Wind shrieked through the cracked panes of glass on all sides. Several of the windows had been broken over the years, and the floor was littered with shards of glass, some of them as big as her hand.
A second open doorway led outside to the wide balcony. Beyond it, the sea stretched away, furrowed into wind-tossed waves. It seemed like an age ago that Lyndsey had stepped backwards off that ledge to abseil down. Another thin railing protected against the drop on the other side. The scariest part of the descent had been climbing over that railing in order to begin the abseil.
She expected Sonia to be outside on the balcony, seeking phone reception, but instead the woman was inside the rotunda, crouched to look at something on the floor.
‘Sonia? What’s wrong?’ Lyndsey’s voice was hoarse and breathless. Her heart pounded from exertion.
‘Come and look at this,’ Sonia said. She was near the steel bracket that protruded from the middle of the concrete floor. It’d been put there a decade earlier, Juliet said, by that other bunch of climbers, so everyone could use it as a safe belay point. Solid steel bolts secured it to the floor.
‘What’re you doing? Did you call the coastguard?’
Sonia shook her head. ‘No reception. Look.’
She was holding the tattered end of the rope. It had snapped no more than two feet from the anchor point. That surprised Lyndsey. If it was going to break anywhere, she would’ve expected it to be at the lip of the balcony, where the rope would’ve rubbed against the rough concrete edge.
She got another surprise when she looked closer. The top edge of the cut was clean and sharp as if someone had cut halfway through the rope before it snapped under Amanda’s weight.
Chapter Two
FRIDAY
11:35am
Sonia led the way down the spiralling stairs. She moved fast, apparently uncaring of the drop to their left, which to Lyndsey looked a lot worse now she was going downstairs.
‘Sonia, slow down. You’ll fall.’
It was maybe the wrong choice of words. Sonia paused long enough to glare up at her. Her face was tight and angry in the light from Lyndsey’s headtorch. But she slowed her pace a little, and kept a reassuring hand on the railing. Lyndsey followed her as fast as she dared.
When they at last reached the bottom, they found Amanda was upright, leaning heavily against Juliet. She’d taken off her climbing helmet, and strands of her flyaway blonde hair had come loose from her ponytail. Her face was pinched and pale, which made her eyes look particularly large and vulnerable. Lyndsey was again struck by how frail she looked, even though Amanda was probably the most physically fit of them all.
‘She wouldn’t listen to me,’ Val complained as soon as she caught sight of Sonia and Lyndsey. ‘I told her to stay lying down. Please tell me the coastguard are on their way.’
Sonia shook her head tersely. ‘Couldn’t get through. And we’ve got bigger problems.’
She flung the short length of rope onto the ground. She’d insisted on untying it and bringing it down so everyone could see.
‘The rope didn’t snap,’ Sonia said. ‘Someone cut through it.’
‘What?’
Juliet stared at the piece of rope like it was a snake. Val nudged it with her foot. They could all clearly see the clean, sharp edge of the cut next to the frayed strands that’d twisted and snapped.
The main coil of the blue rope was lying on the ground nearby. Sonia snatched it up and held out the broken end. Now Lyndsey knew what she was looking for, it was obvious, although the cut there was less clearly defined.
‘That – that can’t be right,’ Juliet said. She looked like she wanted to take the rope from Sonia, but her arms were occupied keeping Amanda upright. ‘It was fine when I tied it. You were all there. Amanda, you checked it yourself. Didn’t you?’
Amanda couldn’t stop staring at the cut rope. Her complexion had paled further. ‘I didn’t check,’ she said. ‘I mean, I saw you tying the belay, but … you knew what you were doing so I didn’t…’ She trailed off, shaking her head.
Juliet looked at the others in distress. ‘It wasn’t like that when I tied it,’ she insisted. ‘We would’ve noticed.’
Lyndsey nodded, because she wanted to agree, but inside she was wondering if maybe they had all overlooked it. A neat little cut in the rope … it wouldn’t necessarily have been visible unless they’d really examined it. And none of them had, not closely enough.
‘You’re sure it wasn’t like that before?’ Sonia asked, looking at Juliet.
‘What’re you saying? Yes, I’m sure. You think I’d miss something like that?’
‘Okay.’ Sonia narrowed her eyes. ‘In that case, someone must’ve done it while we were descending.’
There was silence, apart from the whistle of the wind.
It was Bobbie who spoke first. She was standing some distance away, hands wrapped around the purple water bottle she always carried. ‘No one would’ve done that,’ she said. Her voice was faint. ‘It was an accident.’
‘She’s right,’ Amanda said. ‘There must’ve been a – a scratch or a fault in the rope. Something we just – we just didn’t notice. It happens. Right?’
Lyndsey found herself nodding. It had to be an accident. Because the alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
‘We need to contact the coastguard,’ Juliet said. She raised her chin. ‘That’s what we should be worried about. Amanda needs medical attention.’
This time, Amanda didn’t argue. Her thin face was pale and drawn, and she was worrying her lower lip between her teeth.
‘How’re we going to contact anyone?’ Val asked. ‘Our phones aren’t working.’
‘There’s a radio at the bunkhouse. The warden can help us.’ Juliet straightened up with her arm still tucked around Amanda to help keep her upright. ‘All right. Sonia, can you run on ahead and raise the alarm? We’ll get Amanda to the bunkhouse.’
