The porter pushes my wheelchair and I let my head fall against the fabric. I’m not ill, but the fight’s gone out of me. I let myself be transferred into the back of Dad’s car,
and Mum does up my seatbelt, unzips my coat. A two-year-old does more for herself than I am capable of right now.
‘There we are, sweetheart. We’ll soon get you home,’ she says, patting my hand. I see her doing it, but I don’t feel it. My body’s numb but my brain is swollen with
awful thoughts. Grief dominated my life after Meggie died. I thought there could be nothing worse.
Now I know different. Grief is pure, an emotion so close to love that it’s almost welcome.
This
is worse. Fear of everything and everyone. With my body weakened, all I can do is go over and over what happened, trying to fill in the gaps. The same three questions circulate,
more damaging than smoke.
Why did Sahara try to kill me?
Did the brain scans show the Beach was real?
And why hasn’t Lewis – the person I trusted with my secret – come to tell me what that life-threatening experiment in the lab has revealed about my own sanity?
Mum’s sleeping on the floor in my room tonight.
I told her not to but she insisted, and there
is
something comforting about the sound of her voice whispering through the dark. I try to focus on her words, not on the fears that
threaten to overwhelm me completely.
She’s telling me the stories she told me when I was small: how she met my dad at a gig, their wild hippie wedding and the Indian fortune-teller they met on their honeymoon who predicted
that Mum would have two beautiful daughters who would make her happier than she thought possible . . .
My sister has a leading role in the stories.
‘And she was
so
jealous after we brought you home from hospital. Kept asking when we could take you back or swap you for a puppy. She even had names ready for a dog – Trixie
or Tinseltoes.’
I start to cough. It’s terrifying, not being able to get enough air. Panic makes it worse. Something is clawing at my throat with ragged nails.
Mum’s sitting me up, patting my back quite forcefully. I can see nothing but shapes through my puffed-up eyes. ‘You’re all right, lovely girl. You’re just bringing the
bad stuff up, out of your lungs.’
The bad stuff.
I nearly died. Death itself doesn’t scare me as much as it should, because of the Beach. What scares me is what I’d have left behind. My parents would have been destroyed. And
justice could never be done without me to fight for it.
‘There, there, Alice.’
Even when the coughing finally lessens, my lips burn because they’re so dry and cracked. I think of that last kiss with Danny, and the sudden heat, and how fast the fire took hold.
Mum and Dad are desperate to know what I was doing there, but I’ve said nothing.
I need to make sense of it myself, first. I imagine how Sahara must have tailed us to the lab. Watched us go in. Lit her fire.
Did she wait, to make sure it took hold? I picture her hiding nearby. Was she smiling as the smoke snaked into the building? Does she know I got out alive – and if so, what the hell will
she do next?
The coughing gets more brutal, as though I’m trying to force the fear out of me.
‘That’s it, sweetheart, let it go.’ Mum shifts away from me to go back to the sleeping bag on the floor.
I hold on to her hand. ‘Stay here with me.’
So she squeezes in next to me in the bed, on the edge so that if we move it’ll be her that falls out. Her arm is around me. Right now, I’m safe, aren’t I?
‘Where had I got to with my story?’ she whispers.
‘Meggie was jealous of the baby me.’ I try to lose myself in the story, to forget everything bad.
Mum chuckles. ‘Yes. So she refused point blank to have anything to do with you, till one night when we couldn’t get you off to sleep. You were wailing as though your little heart was
about to break, so your dad suggested Meggie sing to you . . .’
I know the rest of the story word for word, even though I haven’t heard it for years. How my big sister never could resist an invitation to sing, even though her audience that night was a
cuckoo in her lovely cosy nest.
How the first thing she thought of was one of her nursery rhymes.
How I stopped crying within seconds, and my big sister then always ran through her entire repertoire whenever I was inconsolable.
‘
Three blind mice . . .’
My mum is singing softly. This one was my favourite, according to family legend.
‘They all ran after the farmer’s wife, who cut off their tails with a carving knife.’
Despite the sinister words, the melody is comforting.
‘
Did you ever see such a thing in your life
‘As three blind mice?’
Maybe I dream; I don’t remember. Six or seven times I wake up gasping and coughing, convinced I can see a tall woman looming over me, with a pillow about to come down on
my face.
But there’s no one but Mum and me.
When it’s morning, I sense her right next to me. I try to open my eyes as far as they’ll go but the world is still out of focus.
‘You look a little better, sweetheart. Do you feel it?’
I nod. Sitting up makes me dizzy, but perhaps my throat feels a bit less raw, my lungs less full of crap. Then I notice a dark stain on the pillow and bedclothes.
‘Just what you’ve coughed up overnight, Alice. I’ll get that changed. If you can make it downstairs for some breakfast, I thought I’d make eggy bread with
honey.’
Another childhood treat.
Getting downstairs is hard enough, but I can’t imagine ever getting back up. Is this how it feels to be a hundred years old?
As I hobble down, I squint towards the front door, imagining Lewis is on the other side of that glass, coming to tell me what he’s discovered, what it means.
But there’s no one.
Where is he?
I know Mum and Dad might give him a hard time at first, but he’s determined, isn’t he? Unless the scan showed the Beach is all in my
imagination and he’s written me off . . .
While Mum makes breakfast, I collapse onto the sofa to give me time to get my breath back.
So
humiliating. At this rate she’ll have to cut my bread up and feed it to me because
the idea of lifting a fork to my own mouth is too daunting.
Sahara did this to me.
She wanted to do worse.
It must mean I am closer than I’ve ever been to the truth.
At least I don’t need physical strength to go over the night in my head, to seek reasons why Lewis might be staying away. I try to reconstruct the night in order. The dark corridor. The
straps, and sounds of the machinery. The shock when I realised that wasteland was the Beach.
More shocks: Danny’s smashed-up face, his confession about the drug deal, the awful goodbye.
And, even worse, learning that Meggie had gone.
A tightness spreads across my chest. Gone forever?
Am I alone again?
My puffy eyes are closing and the world goes dark. But I won’t feel sorry for myself, or let myself believe I’ve lost her for good. I need to focus on getting well – so I can
finally make sure Sahara gets what she deserves.
Before, it was about revenge and justice. Now she’s tried to kill me, it’s about survival.
‘All right, sweetheart?’
Mum brings a tray in for me. The bread will hurt my throat, but I’m determined to build up my strength. When I lift up the fork, it falls out of my hand, clattering on the plate.
My mother sits down next to me and begins to slice. ‘Haven’t done this in a while, have we?’ she says, and that makes it a little less humiliating.
‘So long as you don’t start doing the thing about the little aeroplane flying into my mouth.’
We laugh. She seems happier, somehow, taking care of me.
But she wouldn’t be so happy if she knew that while I’m being fed like a baby, I’m plotting how to trap my sister’s killer once and for all.
Eggy bread is a miracle worker.
I can feel myself getting stronger, hour by hour. Going upstairs to the loo leaves me totally breathless, but there’s no way I’m letting Mum or Dad take me there. I manage it, step
by step, and coming back down is OK.
Every time I weaken, I imagine Sahara thinking she’s got away with it and it makes me more determined to get well, fast.
My second night at home is better than my first. Mum stays in the room with me at first, though when I wake at eight, she’s gone back to her own bed. My eyes are still swollen but at least
there’s no dirty soot mark on my pillow.
‘Good to see some colour back in your cheeks,’ Dad says as I make my way downstairs. He’s holding his briefcase.
‘What day is it?’ I ask.
‘Tuesday, darling. I thought I ought to show my face in the office, but I’m only ten minutes’ drive away if you or Mum need me.’ He gives me a hug which goes on longer
than I expect, and I feel so guilty because I can tell how worried he’s been.
I stand in the doorway and wave him off, even though the sunlight hurts my eyes. When he’s gone, I pour myself some cereal, and Mum lets me, even though I realise most of it ends up on the
worktop because I still can’t see all that well.
Now what? The day, the week, the holidays stretch out in front of me like a prison sentence. I turn on the TV and . . .
‘Alice!’
I jump. I’m on the sofa, the TV on mute. The clock reads eleven-twenty. I must have been dozing for hours.
‘Alice. You have a visitor. Do you feel well enough?’
A visitor?
Please let it be Lewis.
Except even as I strain to hear his voice in the hallway, I know it can’t be him. He’d have to fight his way past my parents.
I freeze. Please don’t let it be
her.
‘Alice Forster! I know I said you should live more dangerously but I didn’t mean
that
dangerously.’
‘Cara!’
It’s the only person apart from Lewis that I actually want to see. She bursts into the room and holds me so tight that it makes me cough.
She jumps away in shock.
‘When did you start smoking fifty a day?’
‘Reckon I inhaled a year’s worth of Silk Cut on Saturday night,’ I say and she scowls.
‘You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, Alice,’ she snaps, but I can hear the fear underneath her anger.
I sigh. ‘It’s tricky, while Mum’s here.’
‘Can we go to the caff, then? I’ve got some sunglasses to cover up your bloodshot eyes.’
I’m stupidly dizzy just from standing up to greet her. ‘Still under house arrest.’
Mum comes in, jacket half on. ‘Can I trust you two girls not to get up to anything too terrible while I nip to the shops?’
‘Absolutely, Mrs Forster. I’m a fully qualified babysitter. I won’t let her go near any matches.’
‘That’s not funny, Cara. I’m on my mobile. Ring me if her skin turns blue or her lips go red or she’s short of breath. Or anything, really.’
‘Mum. I’m getting better. Honestly.’
When she leaves, Cara squishes next to me on the sofa. ‘What the hell happened, Alice?’
‘It’s . . . a fuss about nothing.’
‘My best mate almost dies in a fire and she tells me it’s
nothing
?’
‘I didn’t almost die.’ If I say it often enough, I might start believing it. ‘What do you know already?’
‘That you were rescued from some weird lab in the middle of nowhere. That the police are investigating. That you ended up in the bloody
hospital.
I mean, what were you
doing?’
‘It was . . .’ I try to think of an explanation she – and the police – might buy. So far, my parents have been too scared of stressing me out to ask many questions, but
that won’t last. And apparently the police want to take a statement. The only comfort is I guess they won’t push too hard. It’s not like
they
think it was arson.
‘If you’re thinking of lying to me, Alice, don’t you dare. You’re rubbish at it. I can always tell.’
I sigh. She’s right and, anyway, I’m fed up with lying to her. ‘It was to do with my brain. With what’s been happening since Meggie died. Bad thoughts. Memories.’
So far, so true. ‘I asked Lewis for help. He found the place. It was all going fine and then . . . Mum said that some rubbish caught fire outside, near the air-con unit. Could have happened
any time.’
‘Hmm.’ Cara doesn’t sound convinced. ‘Bit of a coincidence it happened when you were there. Plus, top-secret brain labs? It’s insane, Alice.’
‘No.
I’m
insane. That’s what Mum and Dad think, what Olav thinks, what you probably think, too. I begged Lewis to help me find out for sure, one way or the other. If I
really am nuts, then I’ll take the horrible counselling, the group therapy.’
She sighs. ‘Oh, honey. I hate that you were feeling so desperate that you resorted to
this
.’
‘I’m
still
desperate,’ I say, because she’s the only one I can confide in. ‘Especially because Lewis hasn’t tried to get in touch. I don’t even
know if I was in the scanner long enough to get any kind of result. It might have been a waste of time.’
Cara stares at me for so long that I begin to feel seriously self-conscious.
‘Either I have eggy bread between my teeth or I’m turning into a werewolf,’ I say at last.
‘It wasn’t a waste of time,’ she says, so quietly I only just hear her.
‘What?’
‘The experiment. Lewis came to see me. He’s got some information but . . .’ she puts her head in her hands. ‘I came here to make up my own mind.’
‘About what, Cara?’
‘About whether you should know the truth.’
‘What has he told you, Cara? What did the experiment show?’
It must have shown that I’m crazy.
Otherwise she’d have told me when she first arrived.