Kindred Intentions (4 page)

Then a hand touched her.

She shouted and backed off, hitting her head
against the foot of the sofa.

“Ssshhh.”

The hand lifted the hood a bit. She expected it
to be taken off or that a finger would touch her skin any moment. But all that
she felt was a pinch on her neck. No, a sting. And then nothing.

As she opened her eyes again, she realised it
wasn’t dark anymore, and that was already good news. Still, the world was askew
and nothing made sense. There was silence around her, or at least it seemed so,
not least because she had the impression that there was a sort of delay between
the moment the perceptions were detected by her hearing and when her brain finally
interpreted them.

She tried to move her arms and to her surprise
they responded, putting themselves in front of her. Her wrists weren’t tied.
She pressed with her palms against the soft surface on which she was lying and
she managed to get herself up in a sitting position. The world became straight
again. It consisted of a kind of small cottage. Beside the sofa where she sat
was an empty fireplace, but its blackened walls suggested that it was often
used in the winter season.

Despite her constant vertigo, together with a
slight nausea, Amelia tried to interpret the environment surrounding her. The
walls were bare. The paint was partly stripped off. Dark stains of mould were
in the corners of the ceiling. Beyond the sofa, in the middle of the room, was
a rectangular table with four chairs, arranged in an orderly manner. A plastic
bottle and a glass were on it. On the other side of the room she could see a
door and a window with worn-out, white curtains. On the floor a neglected—to
say the least—parquet was covered by a large, dark carpet. It wasn’t clear
whether it was normally this way or had become so because of the dirt.

She placed her hands on her head and massaged
her temples. What the hell had happened?

She remembered the interrogation, the
gunshots, and the shouts. And that presence. Just thinking of it gave her the
creeps. She turned, to make sure there was nobody around. As she did so, she
saw a door behind her, which presumably led to another room.

She wasn’t sure she was in the same place as
before. She couldn’t see any trace of what she had heard. She had been drugged,
so it was possible someone had taken her away from there, who knew where? But
the sofa under her seemed to have the same texture. Had she imagined
everything? Or maybe that stuff they had given her had altered her memories and
she hadn’t really heard any gunshot. Maybe it had been the TV. Only she
couldn’t see any TV set now.

She exhaled a snort. She’d had no idea where
she was even before, so there was no reason to worry about it. If nothing else,
she wasn’t tied and blindfolded anymore. And nobody was threatening her.

Her gaze reached the door on the opposite
wall, the one heading outside. Could she leave?

She made to stand up, but her world started
whirling round and round and she found herself on the sofa again. Fuck, they
had given her some pretty hard stuff. She had to do it slowly.

She moved her mouth. Only then did she regain
the sensation of having one. It was dry. Her eyes returned to the bottle on the
table. It looked like water. If only she could reach it without ending up lying
on the floor. A gurgling in her belly reminded her she also owned a stomach,
which she hadn’t filled for an incalculable time. While they were there, they
could have left her a sandwich, too.

Okay, another attempt. Leaning a hand on the
armrest, she tried to rise, slowly. At each slight fit of dizziness she stopped
to stabilise her position, until after a long manoeuvre she was up on her legs.
Now she just had to move them to reach the table. A few steps. How difficult
could it possibly be? Nothing, a breeze. Indeed.

She ventured with a step forward and strangely
her world kept staying straight and stable. She repeated the motion with the
other foot, and then again the previous one. At last she reached the bottle and
started unscrewing the cap, but her fingers slipped. What the heck! Her hands
were trembling. She focused on that stupid gesture. The cap gave way and popped
off the neck, making a part of the contents squirt onto the table. Amelia drank
avidly.

Then she stopped. What if there were more
drugs in the water? Oh, what the heck, who cared? She was thirsty. She resumed
gulping down and finished up half of it in a few seconds. A large part had
ended up on her clothes. As she looked at them, it occurred to her that they
seemed perfectly matched to the filth of the place. Her beautiful grey suit.
Who knew whether they would refund it? After all she was using it during a
police action.

She muttered under her breath as a reply to
that question, while her brain was focusing on that sense of annoyance she’d
had since her awakening. Her feet. Of course she was still barefoot. They were
dirty and she felt a diffused burning sensation. But she hadn’t the courage to
check them.

She raised her eyes. The door. Yes.

The water had put her straight. She was still
in the cottage, alone. And that thing over there was an exit. She didn’t
certainly delude herself it was open, but perhaps she could peep from the
window and see what was outside. Or who was there.

She set the bottle down. She was feeling more
confident on her legs now. She crossed the rest of the room with ease. She
reached out to the handle, hesitant. It had to be a trap. As soon as she had
touched it, she would catch a shock, or get burnt. But no, it wasn’t a film.
She grabbed and turned it. The door opened.

Oh!

Careful not to cause the slightest noise, she
pulled it as much as she needed so she could look outside. The sun’s rays ran
over her, but her eyes, already accustomed to the light, didn’t betray her.

An open space covered with white gravel spread
before her, and beyond it were some bushes.

She ventured out on the doorstep. She looked
at one side and then the other of the cottage. No car, no other building
nearby. Not another living soul.

She descended a step and placed a foot on the
small concrete passage. She remembered the sensation she had felt when she’d
entered. It had to be the same place. She turned to the house, then forward
again.

Had they let her go?

She was convulsing with laughter. She was
free. They hadn’t killed her. Hurray!

She ran to the open space and, oblivious of
her sore feet, started hopping. Then she stopped, breathless. Her jubilation
vanished in a moment. Her eyes were still not betraying her. All around her was
an uncultivated field, and a little further away to the right were some hills,
while on the other side there were more plots of land. A grove opened behind
the cottage.

Except for a beaten path extending from the
open space, there wasn’t the slightest sign of civilisation. A distant road, at
least? She started listening. Maybe there was one, only it was hidden by the
plants. She would hear the sound of the engines. But no. Only twittering birds.

Her chest deflated and she felt herself almost
collapsing, while her enthusiasm slipped away. She remembered well the time
spent in the boot, as it travelled on a country road. Never-ending minutes. On
foot, moreover without shoes, they would turn into hours.

Disconsolate, she looked in the direction of
the pathway. Its track got lost as the terrain twisted.

“Bugger,” she murmured.

She had the feeling that she had been walking
for days, but considering that the length of her shadow looked just the same,
not even half an hour must have passed. The sun was quite high and she was checking
her shadow to understand whether it was shortening or lengthening, in other
words whether it was morning or afternoon. But until now, it had been a useless
exercise.

She drank the last sip of water from the small
bottle. She had returned to the cottage to take it before venturing along the
pathway. She was still thirsty, though.

She threw it away. Yes, she knew, as a
policewoman she certainly wasn’t setting a good example. But there was nobody
able to see her in the middle of nowhere.

She shook her head in the attempt to restart
her thoughts. Under the scorching sun of that unusually hot summer, the gears
of her brain had resumed turning slowly. And so they forced her to linger on
old memories.

The last time such a hot July had been
recorded was some years earlier. She, Gavin, and Joseph had gone for a trip by
the sea. Joseph’s skin was so delicate, like his father’s. She’d had to rub
into him half a bottle of sun cream, fearing that he would get sunburn. The
memory of the cream’s smell was so vivid in her mind. It was like she could
smell it even now. She would’ve never thought it had been last summer of her
son, and of her marriage. On the other hand, Gavin always ended up with some
bad burns, because he refused to use anything. He used to say that for one day
by the sea he didn’t really need any. The problem was that the sun was
everywhere, not only by the sea. He got burnt even just walking on the street.

Amelia laughed at the thought of her ex. They
had first met at university, and had been going steady ever since. Getting
married and having children had seemed to them like the logical consequence of
their relationship. Sometimes she missed him a bit; not that she was really
missing him, but rather the idea she had in her mind of their family. It was so
reassuring. When he had left her, at first she had wondered how he could have
done that, after all the years spent together. How could he have abandoned the
woman he loved, his wife, in such a terrible moment?
For better or for worse
,
that was the wedding vow. Only later on she had understood; she had realised
that the feeling that had united them had been less deep than what they had
both let on. It had been consumed with the passing of time. All that had kept
them bonded had been Joseph. With his death, nothing had remained. Staying
together would’ve been a lie.

However, she was angry with him. He had
disappeared overnight. What she missed was the friend, more than the husband.
She’d never had a friend like him since. She hadn’t been able to have a profound
relationship with anyone else. She could not trust. She didn’t
want
to
trust.

As she returned to reality, she realised that
the pathway had widened, transforming into a proper dirt road. Its surface was
dusty and, luckily, sprinkled with just a few stones. Her feet were thankful.
She was climbing a slope, when she caught sight from afar of a coloured object
in motion. And it was moving pretty fast.

She quickened her stride. Beyond the top, the
road became paved, although it still looked abandoned. That object, however,
was halfway on the following hill. It disappeared behind a group of trees in no
time. But there again, another one popped out from the same point, this time a
white one, proceeding briskly in the opposite direction.

They were cars and there, perhaps a mile away,
was a real road.

She reached the tarmac and immediately she
regretted it. It was burning! She leaped to the side, returning amongst
creeping plants. The road was surrounded by flowering bushes, which were very
overgrown, invading it. The country landscape wasn’t actually bad. Only now
that she could see her salvation close at hand, Amelia started to appreciate
it. The fact that the road over there seemed quite busy with traffic cheered
her up. Now she just had to get there.

She proceeded with calmness, complaining as
she saw every car pass, each a potential means to return to the city,
disappearing behind a bend. Cursing, she finally came closer to her
destination. But it wasn’t really so. It was there, two steps away, but at
least four or five metres above her. She literally had to climb to reach the
roadside.

She saw a motorbike passing close to the
guardrail. “Hey, help! This way!” she shouted, waving her arms about.

The biker kept going.

No way. She had to go up there so that someone
would see her. The incline wasn’t excessive, but she had to walk on all fours,
to avoid falling backwards.

Once there, she was breathless. She sat on the
tarmac. It didn’t feel too hot through her skirt. There was no one in sight.
Turning her back to the carriageway, she leant her shoulders against the
guardrail, and only then it occurred to her that she was dripping with sweat.
Why hadn’t she taken off her jacket? Feeling stiff, she slipped out of it
slowly, also because it now felt glued to the blouse she was wearing under it.
The latter was white, but being wet, had become transparent, revealing a
matching white bra. Well, it would turn out useful to snag a lift.

With her luck, she would get into the car of a
maniac, who would rape, kill, and throw her in a ditch. She laughed.

A distant noise pulled her out of her black
humour and made her turn to the left. A car was coming.

With an agility she didn’t remember she owned,
she snapped up on her feet, climbed over the guardrail, and leapt to the middle
of the carriageway, waving her arms. The tarmac was burning, if possible, even
more than before, but she had learnt how to ignore the pain at her feet. She
had a future as a guru walking on red-hot coals.