Not Alone, page 10
I twist my mouth, that warmth still swirling in my stomach. Maybe if it was possible to consider something as huge as ending our lives, doing something as huge as taking Harry out there is also possible, no matter what, to get him to Jack.
I breathe out the words, barely conscious of saying them aloud. ‘Maybe we can be brave, Harry, and try to find Jack.’
11
Seven Months Before the Storm
I follow Jack up the trail, blood pumping deliciously hard as I stride up the glacial till, all the soreness in my back and arms from the days of tree planting starting to loosen. The Canadian Rockies – pink and limestone grey – peek out above deepest-green forest on the opposite slopes. Despite the heat in the air, there’s a blizzard of gently falling snow around us, blowing in from the north to meet the warm front from the south, giving the surreal sensation of summer snow. It barely peppers the rich green scrub – cold-stunted aspens, pines, spruces and firs – either side of us on the narrow trail, melting almost as soon as it touches down. I feel sticky and warm in short sleeves, arms swinging to match Jack’s rhythm.
He grins back at me. ‘We’re doing it!’
‘We are!’ I chime, feeling that same giddiness. We’re actually here. Now it’s the last day, I feel like I’m looking at the green spread of wilderness afresh, sad to leave it on that unnervingly quiet hybrid plane tomorrow. I’ve felt strange all this trip: happy, excited to be here, yet worried and wanting to be back home to prep for the job now waiting for me, and also unable to let go of thoughts of Dad at the hospital and hoping he’ll look more comfortable when we get back.
Jack walks backwards up the trail, dissecting the look on my face.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘For agreeing to all this, coming here instead.’
We postponed our plans for a year out because of me. But this short trip, instead, the first of several to make up for it, I have loved. To get to be in the conservation zone – in the forests of the Rockies – we had to book onto a volunteer rewilding trip. Understanding the species we’re planting, so the forest as a whole can cope with whatever strangeness climate change brings, and perhaps, still, slow down those changes, has made me all the more excited for the position with Green Earth when we get back. Lobbying for rewilding projects back home.
‘Norway’s still waiting for us,’ Jack says. ‘We made the right choice, with that job and your dad’s health.’
‘Promise you’re not too disappointed?’ I can’t help feeling guilty. Jack’s mum’s death had galvanized his desire for a big adventure and a break from his job at the hospital. Making those year out plans had helped bring him out of the downward spiral he’d fallen into.
‘Only a little.’
And what if we never find a good time to go again? ‘It’s only a temporary position . . .’
‘That could lead to something permanent, you never know.’
I grin. I did bounce up and down like a kid after I got the call. ‘I had to take it.’
Jack laughs. ‘Yeah, you did!’ He throws his arms up and around at the view then. ‘And are you kidding? Look at this!’
There’s lots to sort out when we get back: signing on for another year at the flat, unpacking everything we’d started to box to put into storage for a year abroad. Part of me is glad we don’t have to say goodbye to our flat yet, our first home together.
Jack sounded upbeat about getting home when he was on the phone last night with his sponsor, Liam. Wary, though, that he needed to get straight into good habits – exercise and making time with me – so that the job he thought he was having a long break from doesn’t take too much out of him. I understand now that helping people – however much he wants to do it – takes energy, and discipline too, so he doesn’t overbalance.
Gale. The kid that died in his arms on that last army tour. If one good thing came out of Jack’s relapse it was all these stories he’d never told me – I have more pieces of him than I did before.
‘You must have felt trapped and hopeless,’ I’d whispered as he’d finally told me what had led to that first spiral into depression and addiction.
He’d nodded. ‘I waited all night next to Gale’s body, a gun to my own head, waiting for militants to find me before my own soldiers—’
‘What would they—’
‘Shoot me dead at best . . .’
He’d told me how he’d willed that trigger to make the black hole of fear and the pain in his shot knee go away. When he was flown home, the painkillers for his knee kept numbing the growing darkness too. Never act out of fear and pain, he’d laughed dryly, you’ll start to believe all the negative things you tell yourself.
‘Hey,’ he’d said last night, after the phone call. ‘It’s just a check-in, Katie – I’m alright.’
I’d nodded, giving him a squeeze. But it was scary, back in April, seeing him grieving, feeling worthless, and seeing him drunk for the first time as he tried to numb dark thoughts. It became a daily thing as he took compassionate leave from his job. He wasn’t my Jack – out of it, tired, depressed and irritable. Liam told me his mum’s birthday and Christmas might bring up those feelings for him again. I plan to be at his side for all of it, no matter what.
He pauses on the trail to drink water and let me catch up, his T-shirt patchy with sweat. ‘We’re fucking doing it!’ He high-fives me as I reach him. ‘You’re doing great, Katie, keep hydrated.’
He looks so healthy now, his skin fresh and clear, blue eyes bright and lively in the sunlight. I want to comment on it, say how wonderful he looks – my Jack again – but it feels like it might come out loaded if I do.
His phone beeps as we round the next bend, as it has nearly every time we’ve reached high and open ground – and phone reception – all morning.
I frown. ‘Who is that?’
‘Just Adders.’
‘You’ve been texting lots. Sure everything’s alright?’
‘Yeah – he’s just catching me up on my god-daughter. He got her in the gym doing dead lifts this morning.’
‘At eight years old?’
‘Just a two-k training bar – she’s so proud.’
Jack has that smirk on his face, which he tries to conceal by looking ahead, so I don’t ask. He’s been playful all this trip. It reminds me of when we first met – those days and weekends spent walking in parks and through the countryside, pub lunches, dinners out, on our best behaviour. I remember how we would sit close and keep staring at each other, how his blue eyes had seemed to sparkle.
He’s got something of that spark in them now.
We set off again. We’re in bear country and I find myself scanning the trees for movement. Jack has the bear spray tucked in his back pocket. All this fortnight I’ve been determined not to do something stupid and be the ones on the news: ‘Foolish British couple attacked by bear’. And get the priceless bear, whose habitat I’ve helped plant, shot. The Canadians seem blasé about it, as if only foreigners do daft things.
My knee clicks as the trail descends through a dry rocky gorge, before easing as we wind steeply upwards again into the forest. It’s going to hurt on the way back down, I think, just like it has begun to at the end of my long training runs. Yet at the top of the mountainside, the map shows a turquoise glacial lake; I know neither of us will be satisfied until we’ve reached it.
I’m soon hot and there’s just the sound of us breathing hard. I begin to slow, and soon feel Jack’s hand at the small of my back, just beneath my daypack, propelling me forwards. Up and round and up, until the trail flattens out again and we get another view across the rich-green forested valley, the muffled white sky from the north meeting the searing blue of the south above us.
‘Look!’ I pull him to a stop, glad for an excuse to rest.
Weaving through the forested valley below is a torrent of bright turquoise, as cold as water can get without freezing, and full of suspended ‘rock flour’ that the glacier has ground and carried with it over millennia.
There are tracks on the trail ahead, large ones, like elk or moose.
I grin at Jack. ‘I can’t believe the English countryside felt wild when I was a kid.’
Jack nods. ‘I know, right?’
‘This is part of the problem, isn’t it – so many places being so tamed, farmed, unnatural . . .’
He puts an arm around me. ‘I can imagine us, Kate, doing this stuff one day as a family.’
‘Jack—’
‘What?’
I laugh. ‘I don’t know—’
‘I know, sorry, you’re only twenty-two . . .’
I shrug. ‘I haven’t given it much thought yet.’ I’m not even sure I see myself as a mother. ‘Can be tricky nowadays.’ They were discussing the female health crisis in Parliament before we left, including declining male and female fertility too.
He squeezes my shoulders. ‘Yeah, but that might not be us? I like the idea of teaching them this stuff, showing them how to be kind, having adventures together—’
I laugh. ‘What’s up with you today?’
He shrugs, happy, and I try to imagine what it could be like. Jack with a child-carrier strapped to his front, a little white-blonde-haired child with the same cheeky grin as him inside it.
Jack reaches for my hand, warm fingers interlacing my cold ones.
‘Just a second,’ I say, my heart still pounding from the climb.
‘You’ve done well, all this planting and hiking – all that running has got you fit.’
I smile. ‘I was going to ask – do you think Adders could help me with my half-marathon training? I wondered if some strength work could stop my knee creaking—’
‘Yeah!’ He’s already reaching for his phone. ‘He does work with some runners too, not just weightlifters and boxers. He’d love to—’
‘I want to pay though – he has a business, Jack, I can’t get freebies off him!’
‘But he’s my bro—’
‘Jack,’ I groan, ‘to you, yes. Please let me ask, I don’t want him to feel awkward.’
‘Alright.’ His phone beeps again in his pocket as he sets off ahead of me, still with that sparkle in his eyes. The snowflakes are glancing off my cheeks, the air warm and sweet, as I follow.
12
By late afternoon, a wind has got up, gritty against the windows. Harry and I are standing in the hallway, contemplating our front door, an afternoon behind us of packing what we need and watching the windows. Now there’s nothing for it but to go down there to see if I can get the car ready and working.
I turn to the hallway cupboard and open Jack’s toolbox tucked just inside on the floor. There, the crowbar. Not used since the first year. I lift it reluctantly, the cold metal reminding me of fighting my way into buildings that weren’t mine and jittery rummages through strangers’ cupboards, my nose pegged – ineffectively – under my mask. But now the cool metal feels special, like the key, which Harry is clutching reverently like treasure, the spare still tucked in my pocket.
My pack sits ready near the door. Inside it – amongst blankets, spare clothes, toiletries, flask, lighters, a resin candle, lightweight camping kettle and pan, some cutlery, snacks, foraging books and maps – my diary from the year Jack and I first met, that photo of Jack that stood on the dresser stuffed inside it. Things I cannot leave behind.
I’d almost forgotten that my own younger, innocent face smiled out beside Jack in that photo, sun-drenched – the image folded widthways to hide her these last years – I could not keep looking at her, grieving her too. But maybe Harry will want a photo of me one day, and she is the closest thing to that, perhaps.
My waterproof parka and a camping groundsheet are lashed to the outside of the pack. I found the groundsheet in the hallway cupboard – overlooked when I packed the tent for that failed trip in the first year. Harry swishes his fingernails along the shiny waterproofed nylon fabric, making me grimace.
The rest of our stuff – holdalls and sacks full of smoked rabbit jerky, bulrush roots, turnips, onions, apples and more (the musty chestnuts I reluctantly chose to leave behind), and the water-filtering barrel, a few containers of water, sterile cloths, and clothes and bedding – all litters the hallway. All unnervingly ready to retrieve later, if I can get the car going, or to choose which bags to haul with us if I can’t.
Harry stands straighter as I reach for the key in his hand. It feels safer with both in my possession.
‘This is the last time I’m going anywhere without you,’ I say, to him as well as to myself, as I stall. ‘Stay away from the windows and the front door.’
Harry squirms at my low serious tone.
‘This is important. Promise?’
He plasters both hands over his heart and nods. ‘Wholeheart promise,’ he whispers.
I do it back and reach for the door, the possibility of Jack alive and within reach allowing me to grip the handle with trembling fingers and step out onto the landing, despite Sim and those others being out there somewhere.
Harry, earnest with his promise, is already hurrying down the hallway as I shut the door and pull on my outdoor things.
I stand still a while, listening to the creaks of the roof and the soft clatter of wind against the windows. Vigilant for human sounds.
When I finally step forwards my knees judder, making me hobble across the landing to the lift doors. Cool musty air seeps out as I wedge the crowbar in. And with it, that odour of fuel. I lever the doors until there’s room for my fingers, and pull, the crack opening up to blackness below. Horror snatches my breath and I stumble backwards. For a second, it’s one of Harry’s imagined big black holes that might swallow me up, shadows and Balrogs reaching to pull me down and down into nothing.
The lift isn’t on this floor. Jack’s instructions said he’d stored fuel in the lift, and with the scent of fuel I noticed this morning I thought he might have left it at our level, but of course the electrics would have been out. No knowing where the lift actually is in the shaft . . .
I creep down the stairs, scanning the road out the front every time I pass a window. At the bottom landing, the soft rattle of wind against glass is louder, the front door to the building gaping inwards, forced open, the twine lying slack on the floor. I pull my mask up over my nose and mouth and push the door back inside its frame, rebinding it, but it wobbles alarmingly, like all it would take to get inside again is one hard shove. Opening it yesterday must have exposed the already weakened hinges – iron-red flakes peel off as I watch. Leaves and moths have already blown inside, the breeze whipping up dust particles to swirl upwards in the stairwell. I think of Harry, safe – for now – behind the solid door of our flat, and nearly head back up, abandoning the whole thing.
I force myself around into the dark corner where the ground-level lift entrance is. I feel better here: hidden. But I’m also trapped, should anyone get into the stairwell through that broken front door.
Hurrying, trying not to imagine footsteps or hands grasping at me from behind, I wedge the crowbar into the crack as I did upstairs and eventually the lift doors are groaning open. I shudder as I cram myself through the tight gap – disturbing years-old dust – into the dark, secure, cool spot Jack picked for the fuel, protected from the thick, dangerous air of those first months.
Or so I thought. But the uneven concrete inside is oily and wet underfoot, and it’s not pitch-black – chinks of light show above around what must be the bulk of the lift. The fumes are thick and pungent down here, the stale layers of my mask not good enough, no matter how frequently they’ve been cleaned out. In the gloom, fear prickles, my head quickly woozy. I feel stupid again; Sim might be right: living here with it all this time could have gone very wrong . . .
With gloved fingers I feel around warped and holed plastic containers, the fumes of the leaked fuel stronger as I lean down. There are two containers – metal and in more solid condition – still heavy, fuel sloshing about inside. The lids are tight and intact. I feel a great wave of relief that there is still something here to be found – I blink back tears – this was left by Jack, close at hand and ready for me.
I shake the emotion off, double-checking my mask: the containers are covered with that thick grey coating we cannot take risks with and do not want to disturb.
But I heave both out, dragging them across the ground-floor landing to the door to the communal garage, where I pause to peer through the glass. It’s not until I unlock the door and push out into the welcome cooler air that my head clears and the danger of the fumes passes.
I tread through the garage slowly, alert, taking the full weight of the two containers now to stop making so much noise, my arms burning, and I have to keep resting the fuel down. When I reach the corner and Jack’s spot, the Cruiser is also coated in grey dust – thickest where the wind and rain don’t reach it, along the bumpers and wheel arches. The slightly raised ‘UN’ lettering is still visible across its side, but the car has been sprayed black – rough splodges of it overlap the windows. A white UN car would have drawn too much attention, Jack said.
The driver’s door unlocks as if by magic with one of my precious keys, finer dust dislodging from the seal.
The inside smells of worn leather and metal, reminding me of Jack and his old much-repaired Subaru. I remove a glove to reach inside, bare fingers tingling as I brush them across the wheel – Jack’s hands have touched this very same wheel. How many times did we sit in that Subaru in Jack’s parking spot right here, without thinking of how precious our time was together, without worrying about a workday or a weekend spent apart.
I’ve barely stood still a minute before the relief and excitement has faded: the time away from Harry in the flat and that broken door downstairs and the possibility of Sim coming back gnawing at me. I try a key in the ignition, just once, out of desperate curiosity, and it fits . . . but of course there’s nothing, no hiss or whir, just a painful click. Anything else would have been surprising. Jack’s letter makes it clear anyway that even sat for a few months in that awful dust of the first year might have clogged the car, so even if it could start straight away, it wouldn’t have gone far without maintenance. Burning now to get back up to Harry, I glance through the letter and start rushing through the tasks.
