Death Wish (The Ceruleans: Book 1) (14 page)

‘And teaching people to surf.’

‘Teaching
you
to surf.’

‘Just me? But he’s a qualified instructor.’

‘Is that what he told you? Interesting…’

‘Because?’

‘Because it’s a porkie pie. You’re the only one he’s ever
taught.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t be mad at him, Scarlett. Just think: he must have
really liked you from day one to have told that little white lie.’

‘You think he really likes me?’

‘I know he does.’

She grinned at me, and then went back to pinning the hem on
The Dress. I looked at the pictures on the wall again, of a young Luke, a Luke
with all the world at his feet. In one picture he and his mother were in the
kitchen downstairs, be-aproned and hard at work icing a cake.

‘So Luke wants his own restaurant someday,’ I said. ‘I’d eat
there – his food is divine.’

‘He told you that? Funny; I thought he’d given up on that
dream. Once, it was all he ever talked about. He was all set to go to Ashburton
Cookery School – do you know it?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s a famous culinary school down the road from here on
Dartmoor. He’s wanted to be a chef since he was a little boy; he gets it from
Mum – she was an amazing cook. But after they died – he was sixteen then – it
became a struggle living here just on Gramps’ pension. Mum and Dad left some
money, but it soon got swallowed up. No money for Ashburton. So Luke quit
school and went straight out and got the job in the pub. He saved up, and once
he got his driving licence the next year, he bought the van and started
advertising for that too.’

Gone was Cara’s usual chirpy tone, replaced with a gravity
that made my heart ache for her. She paused in her pinning and looked up at me.
‘I’m doing my best to help too. With the eBay clothes. I wish I could do more.
It sucks that he’s stuck here at nineteen, fretting over his little sister,
instead of being out there living his life.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way, Cara,’ I said gently.

‘No, he doesn’t. But he should.’

‘It won’t always be this way, though. Soon enough you’ll be
eighteen, and you’ll go off to fashion school or build your business, and Luke
will be free to make his own choices.’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe. But sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever
be the guy he would’ve been if the accident had never happened.’

‘I get that,’ I said quietly. ‘These things change you.’

There was a moment’s hush, and then Cara gave herself a
shake and continued in a brighter tone: ‘Anyway, enough of the doom and gloom.
You’re all pinned now, so slip it off and I’ll add it to my to-do pile.’

As Cara helped me out of The Dress, she chattered happily.

‘You’ll look amazing. It’s going to be the defining
customisation for me. Oo, it’ll be perfect for the website I want to launch – a
proper brand, you know, to sell independently of eBay. This dress could be the
Custom Cara signature piece. I could take a shot of you wearing it at the All
That Jazz soiree…’

‘Huh?’

‘The black-tie dinner at Si’s. His parents have one every
year to raise money for this local charity. It’s brilliant – dead swanky:
marquee out the back, jazz band, dance floor, waiters with canapés and
champers, sit-down five-course meal.’

It sounded like one of Mother’s fancy parties at
Hollythwaite for Father’s investment-banking clients – stiff and stuffy. I’d
spent the last seventeen years squeezing into uncomfortable formalwear and
being paraded around by my parents, who expected me to charm doddering old
fools and simpering women with more jewellery than sense. No way was I going to
do that here in my summer, on my terms.

‘Last year’s was immense,’ Cara was saying. ‘I went with
Luke.’

‘Oh. But I thought Luke hated the other surfers?’

Cara blinked in confusion. ‘Now where have you got that
idea? No, he’s tight with them – he’s known some of them for years and years.’

Interesting, I thought. But with Cara, there was never time
to process a thought before the conversation was racing on.

‘Anyway, so the party’s on the thirtieth of August. It’s a
Saturday. You’re free then, right?’

The day before my birthday. I nodded reluctantly. ‘But Cara,
I’m not invited…’

‘Well, I am. And so’s Luke. And our invitations are for
plus-ones. Don’t worry.’ She grinned. ‘I’ve seen the look in Luke’s eyes when
you’re near him. You’ve got yourself a date for the night.’

‘Thanks, Cara, but formal events aren’t really my thing…’

‘Don’t be daft. Who doesn’t like a bit of luxury?’

‘But The Dress – I never intended…’

‘To wear it in public? Yes, I know. But since I’ve been
working so terribly hard on it, you’ll just have to, won’t you? You, Scarlett
Blake, will be Luke’s
lady in red
.’ Cara caught my cringe. ‘You may
scoff, but you just wait till you’re out on that dance floor with Luke, and
he’s gazing into your eyes, and you’re melting into his arms, and he’s crooning
to you, “The lady in reddddddddddd…”’

A well-aimed pillow put an end to Cara’s slaughtering of the
eighties’ love song. But even as she moved on to more pressing matters – what
to wear for her date with Kyle – I kept thinking about the picture she’d
conjured of Luke and I dancing together, and I found myself wondering whether
an All That Jazz party might just be tolerable if it involved a cheek-to-cheek
moment with Luke Cavendish.

It was late afternoon by the time I left Luke, preparing for
another evening shift at the pub, and Cara, waiting excitedly at the window for
the first glimpse of Kyle’s car. As I weaved my way back up the lanes to the
cottage, I pulled down the visor to shade my eyes from the lowering sun. The
lanes were deserted, and an afternoon with the Cavendishes had lightened my
heart, so I let go of all inhibition, singing along to the radio and letting
the breeze coming through the open windows carry my voice out to the silent,
towering hedgerows and the patchwork fields beyond.

I was on the final approach to the cottage, halfway through
the chorus of Hozier’s ‘Take Me to Church’, when it happened.

The deer came out of nowhere, bursting through a break in a
hedge and streaking across the road in front of me. Time slowed. I slammed my
foot on the brakes and jerked the wheel but I was too close, too close. With a
sickening thud, car met deer. I stared in horror as the animal was thrown back
onto the road; squeezed down on the brake pedal with all my might; willed the
car to stop, stop,
stop
before running the deer right over.

It slipped out of sight beyond the edge of the bonnet and in
a moment I’d yanked on the handbrake, punched the seatbelt release and thrown
open the door. I made to leap out, but as I did so my foot caught on the lip of
the door and I crashed down. My hands, coming up to break the fall, were too
sluggish, and my head struck the tarmac. I registered the pain for a
split-second, then was scrambling to the front of the car.

The deer was lying with its back to me under the front
bumper, right against the front tyres – a pitiful heap of brown fur. Blackish
blood was pooling rapidly around its head, which looked wrong, misshapen. But
it was alive; I could hear its breaths, shallow and rasping.

Without thinking, I slid a hand under the deer’s torso and
began pulling it back from under the car. It was only a fawn, I thought,
judging by its size, but still it was a dead weight in my arms. I hauled it
clear of the car, laid it gently on its side and knelt beside it. The deer
shifted feebly on the hard surface of the road and then met my gaze. Its eyes
conveyed more than fear – an acceptance of the darkness that was closing in.

‘Oh no,’ I breathed.

It was one thing soothing a dying animal whose injuries were
not my fault; this, this was terrible. I had killed it, the poor thing.

Instinctively, I had begun stroking the deer’s fur, from its
head down its neck and across its side, heedless of the sticky blood. The
animal was shaking badly, and now I flattened my hands on it and willed it to
be calm, to feel no pain.

There was something wrong with my vision. A blurring, a
distortion. I blinked away the tears in my eyes, but still, as I stared down at
my hands on the deer, they seemed out of focus and the light was strange. Like
a sunbeam under water.

I closed my eyes, opened them again.

Hands blurred. A watery blue.

Heartbeat pounding in my ears.

Cold. So cold.

The deer stilled.

The light mellowed.

The deer came back into focus – dead.

Colour caught my eye. I looked down at myself. Red on white.
Blood on shirt. My blood. I was bleeding.

Home, I needed to go home.            

I pushed back onto my heels and tried to stand, but the
world tipped sideways and I was falling and something hard came up to greet me
and then the sky was above me.

Phone. Jeans pocket.

Four touches:
Unlock. Contacts. Luke. Call.

He answered after one ring. ‘Hey. Did you forget something?’

I tried to talk but my tongue was heavy in my mouth.

‘Scarlett?’

The blue above was blackening at the edges.

‘Scarlett?’

The black was sweeping in, like a wave on the beach, but
something was chasing ahead of it, circling, twirling, determined not to be
engulfed.

‘Scarlett, what’s going on? Are you there?’

The something came closer. Flying. A magpie.

‘Scarlett?’

I managed three words before the black claimed me: ‘I killed
it.’

*

‘Scarlett!’

A voice, loud and frantic.

‘Scarlett, open your eyes.’

A touch, soft, brushing across my cheek.

‘Scarlett, please… Can you hear me?’

I forced my eyes open. Blinked. Blue eyes crystallised. Wild
hair. A face lined with tension. Luke.

‘Scarlett? Thank God. How do you feel?’

I took a breath, swallowed.

‘My hands…’

Luke leaned closer. ‘Your hands are fine. Just bloody. You’ve
hurt your head. What happened?’

I stared at him for a moment, until it all flooded back.
‘The deer!’ I struggled to sit, but Luke put a firm hand on my shoulder and
held me down.

‘Easy now. You hit a deer?’

‘I killed it.’

Luke looked up and around. ‘It’s not here,’ he said. ‘It
must have run off.’

‘But I killed it,’ I said. ‘I saw it die.’

‘It was probably just shocked. But how did you hurt your
head? No – don’t touch it.’

I’d got far enough to feel Luke’s hand pressing something –
fabric – to my brow bone.

‘I tripped,’ I said. ‘Getting out of the car.’

‘You hit it on the road? Jesus. Do you think you can sit
up?’

Luke slid an arm under my shoulders and helped me upright,
keeping the compress against my head. The world lurched, and I thought for a
moment I’d be sick. I closed my eyes and leaned back into him.

‘Are you okay? How do you feel?’

‘Bit ropey,’ I admitted.

‘We need to get you to the hospital.’

‘No.’ I opened my eyes and grabbed for his arm, but ended up
with a fistful of t-shirt. ‘No. No hospitals.’

‘Scarlett, your head is bleeding. I’ve just found you in the
road unconscious. You can barely sit. You need to see a doctor
now
.’

I shook my head and then gasped at the pain. ‘No, please. I
hate hospitals.’

‘Don’t we all. Now come on – can you walk, or shall I carry
you?’

*

A crimson-faced, screaming toddler with an egg-shaped lump
on her forehead. An old man staring vacantly into space and muttering about
tapioca and tea bags. A lady bent double and sobbing quietly. A man with his
hand wrapped in a red-soaked tea towel. A gang of blokes, raucous and
inebriated, ribbing their mate whose thumb was stuck in a bowling ball. Welcome
to Saturday teatime at the Accident and Emergency department.

‘When I said did you want to go out sometime,’ Luke murmured
in my ear, ‘I had in mind somewhere with a little more… atmosphere.’

We were sitting on hard plastic chairs lined up against the
wall in the soulless waiting room. Before us were three more rows of seats on
which sat people similarly unhappy to be here, all of us facing the one source
of distraction in the room: a flatscreen television tuned to
You’ve Been
Framed
. The triage nurse who’d assessed me had promised that we’d be seen
‘quickly’ (‘Within three hours,’ she’d added cheerily), but every moment in
this depressing room was a moment too long.

A man sitting in the row in front leaned forward and vomited
violently onto the floor.

‘You see why I hate it here?’ I whispered to Luke.

Luke gave my hand a squeeze. ‘I know. This place freaks me
out too.’

I remembered, too late, that he must be familiar with this
hospital – he’d have been here with Cara and his parents, after the accident.

‘Oh crap. I’m sorry. This place must…’

‘Bring back bad memories? You could say that.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He reached over and brushed my hair back from my face.
‘Don’t be sorry. It’s hardly your fault.’ He looked closely at my eyes. ‘Man,
your pupils are huge. How are you feeling?’

‘Ghastly’ was the truthful answer. My head was pounding, my
stomach was rolling and even with Luke’s jacket wrapped around me I was cold to
the bone. I smiled at him. ‘Better, thank you. In fact, I think we could –’

‘Nice try, Blake. We’re waiting here until a doctor okays
you. Now settle back and watch “amusing” home videos. Look, another elderly
lady trying to mount a hammock. And she’s down. Hilarious…’

*

By some happy circumstance, a bed was found for me half an
hour later. A grey-haired nurse ushered us through to the cubicles area, helped
me up onto the bed, opened a packet of medical wipes and began cleaning blood
off me.

‘You’ll have to bin yer shirt, young lady,’ she told me as
she scrubbed at my skin. ‘No getting the blood outta that. And yer jeans.
Wrecked! And you’ – she nodded at Luke – ‘she’s messed you all up too.’

‘Sorry,’ I said as for the first time I registered the dark
patches on the knees of his jeans, where he’d knelt on the road, and on his
shoulder, where I’d laid my head as he helped me to his van.

‘Don’t be,’ said Luke with a smile. ‘Cara’ll jump at the
chance to take me – us – clothes shopping.’

The nurse tutted. ‘In my day we
valued
clothes.’

‘I don’t give a damn about the clothes,’ Luke told her
sharply. ‘Only that Scarlett’s okay. So is she? Okay?’

‘That’s for Dr Morris to decide,’ was the response.

‘And when will the doctor be –’ began Luke, but the nurse
glared at him and yanked down my vest strap to get to a rivulet of blood that
had oozed down.

‘Young man!’ she said. ‘I think you’d better step outside
while I clean up this mess. Don’t you?’ She gestured to my breast, which she
was dangerously close to flashing at him.

Luke looked about ready to explode with some mixture of
fury, concern and, I guessed, embarrassment, so I said, ‘Luke, could you get me
a drink?’

He turned to me. ‘You sure?’ I read the full question in his
eyes:
You sure you want me to leave you alone with this battleaxe?

I nodded. And winced.

‘Careful,’ said Luke. ‘You just rest, okay? I’ll go get us
some coffees. And chocolate, yes?’

‘Always yes to chocolate,’ I said, and I tried to smile, but
I knew the effort was feeble.

Luke hovered awkwardly for a moment, but the nurse said,
‘Off you go then…’ and, reluctantly, off he went.

I was subjected to another minute or two of scrubbing, and
then the nurse got around to checking my vital signs. Which, apparently, put her
in an even fouler mood.

‘Stay here,’ she barked at me. ‘Do. Not. Move.’ And she
stomped out of the cubicle.

Relieved to be alone for a while, I relaxed onto the pillow
and cast my mind back to the road. There was something in the memory, some
important connection to make, I knew. But thoughts were delicate butterflies,
the red of the deer’s blood and the blue of my hands, circling faster and
faster into a tidal maelstrom that sucked them down, down, down.