A Twist of the Knife (17 page)

It was there, after a particularly fine dinner, that Nigel had proposed to her. It had taken him two years to get round to it, although, he had confessed to her shyly, he knew he wanted to marry her the moment he had first set eyes on her.

Nigel was an analyst for a stockbroking firm in the City, and was incapable of acting spontaneously. Analyst stood for
anal
, she sometimes chided him. He scrutinized everything, always thought through every single detail with the greatest care. Sometimes that drove her to distraction. He could spend hours online, poring over restaurant menus and wine lists, before deciding on where they would go to eat. He had already planned every minute of their holiday. And probably every second.

Their recent purchase of a new car had been a nightmare odyssey through websites and dealerships, weighing up the safety features for their precious children, all elaborately detailed by Nigel on a spreadsheet. They’d settled on a big Volvo off-roader, which ticked the most boxes, but then they had argued about the colour. Nigel wanted white, and Annie was dismayed. She told him that according to an article in a woman’s magazine, white was the colour people chose when they couldn’t decide on a colour! She wanted black or silver, or even navy blue.

‘But, darling,’ he had insisted, showing her a computer printout. ‘Read this. Yellow and white are the safest colours statistically. You are least likely to be involved in “a passive accident” in a yellow or white car. But I don’t think we want
yellow
, do we?’

Nigel tended to get his way because he always had statistics on his side. Besides, she knew, bless him, that he meant well, he had the best interests of his family at heart. So white it was. But one detail Nigel had overlooked, and which she teased him about mercilessly in the first weeks after they had got the new car, was that it would not fit in the garage of their house, near Hove Park, in the city of Brighton and Hove.

Well, that wasn’t strictly accurate. It did fit in the garage, but if you drove it in, it was impossible to open the doors, so the only way out would be through the sunroof – one of the options she had insisted on.

So the car became something she ribbed Nigel about, mercilessly. The big white elephant stuck on the driveway. But, she had to admit, it was comfortable, and inside you felt indestructible, like being in a tank.

It was Sunday night. The following Sunday, she thought, as she lay back against the headboard, flicking through the
Style
section of the
Sunday Times
, they would be luxuriating in that huge bed, beneath the soft, plump duvet, in Switzerland. Heaven! She could not wait, and her mind was too preoccupied with trying to remember all the things they must not forget to pack to concentrate on reading anything.

She kissed Nigel goodnight, switched off the light and snuggled down against the pillow, thinking,
hiking boots, shorts, suntan lotion, nose block, sunhats . . .

The only downside to the holiday was the journey. She had never been happy about flying, even though Nigel had given her all the statistics, demonstrating to her that being in a commercial airliner was actually the safest place in the world – safer even than your own bed. But he could not convince her.

. . .
books, Kindle, swimsuits, insect repellant cream, first-aid kit . . .

There was a familiar rustling sound beside her. Nigel would never go to sleep on a Sunday night without having read the news and financial pages of every single one of the broadsheets. Every Sunday evening of their marriage she had fallen asleep to that sound.

Scrunch
, she heard.
Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch.
Then the thud of a discarded supplement landing on the floor on his side of the bed.

Scrunch, rustle, rustle, rustle, rustle.

Then a different sound.

A strange, deep, pulsing
thump, thump, thump
in the distance. Getting closer and louder.

Suddenly she was engulfed in a vortex of swirling air. She saw a propeller spinning in front of her eyes.

She screamed. Her eyes snapped open. She snapped on the light, gulping down air.

Nigel, fast asleep, stirred and murmured, ‘Wasser? Wassermarrer?’

The bedside clock said 3.15 a.m.

‘It’s OK,’ she said, upset at having woken him: he had an early start every workday and needed his sleep, especially on a Sunday night so that he was fresh for the week ahead – and the week before going on holiday was always a stressful one for him. ‘I’m sorry – just had a nightmare.’

She kept the light on for some minutes, lying there. It was a still, early June night. There was a faint scratching sound outside – a cat or an urban fox rummaging in a rubbish bag. Slowly, her breathing calmed. She turned out the light, and fell asleep again a short while later.

*

The next night, Monday, Annie had the dream again. It was exactly the same, only this time the propeller was even larger, and came even closer. Again her screaming woke Nigel, and it set Zak off screaming too; but she managed to calm her son down by recovering his ‘night’ teddy, which had fallen on his bedroom floor, and he went back to sleep with one of its paws in his mouth.

*

On Tuesday night she had the dream again. This time the propeller came even closer still. And this time she snapped on her bedside light and she told Nigel. ‘This is the third night running. I think this dream is telling me something.’

‘What do you mean? Telling you what?’ he asked, more than a little grumpily. Then he looked at the clock. ‘Shit, 4 a.m.’

‘I think it’s a premonition,’ she said. ‘It’s telling us we shouldn’t fly.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Annie, it’s you being afraid of flying! You have a bad dream every time before we fly.’

‘Not like this one.’

‘Can I go back to sleep?’

‘Go back to sleep.’

*

On Wednesday night, although she had been frightened to turn the light out for a long while, Annie slept a deep, dreamless sleep and woke refreshed, feeling positive and optimistic. Even Zak, for a change, was in a happy mood, gleefully pushing his big yellow digger truck around the floor, and making the accompanying sound effects.

After she had dropped the two children off at their nurseries, she returned for the first client of the day, Samantha Hardy, the wife of a work colleague of Nigel, who also lived locally, and chatted to her excitedly about their holiday. Samantha told her about a wonderful restaurant near Geneva she and her husband had eaten in, and promised to text her the name that evening when he got home.

*

On Thursday night Annie dreamed she was in a cloud. Cold, grey tendrils brushed her face, icy air thrashed her blonde hair around her face, making it feel as hard as whipcords, and chilling her body to the core. She was shivering with cold and fear. In the distance a thump, thump, thump became increasingly louder. Louder. Louder. THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP. The roar of an engine rising to a crescendo. She was rocking from side to side and screaming, trying to keep her balance. Then the propeller was right in front of her face, thrashing, thrashing, coming at her, thrashing; suddenly the air gripped her in a vortex, spun her, hurtled her straight into the propeller.

‘Darling! Darling! Annie! Annie! Darling! Annie! Annie!’

Nigel’s voice, panicky, distant.

Darkness.

Then a light came on.

A warm, bright glow. She blinked.

She was in bed, Nigel staring at her in alarm. ‘Darling. Annie, darling, it’s OK. Calm down. You were having a nightmare, it’s OK.’

Zak was screaming across the landing.

She was shaking, her heart thudding; she could hear the roaring of her blood in her ears. She was soaking wet, she realized. Drenched. Rivulets of perspiration streamed down her face, mingling with her tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she spoke in gulping sobs. ‘I’m sorry, Nigel, I can’t get on that plane on Saturday. Even if we get there safely, I’ll spend the whole week worrying about the flight home. I just can’t do it. I had the dream again. It’s telling me something.’

Her husband slipped out of bed, stomped out of the room and, uncharacteristically losing his temper, bellowed at Zak to shut up. It only made Zak’s screaming worse. Annie followed him in, found Zak’s night teddy on the floor again and gave it to him. Moments later he was calm once more. Then she stood for a while and stared at the little boy, thinking how deeply she loved him and Chloe. The thought of something happening to her – to her and Nigel – of never seeing them again. Of orphaning them. It was unbearable.

‘Planes don’t have propellers these days, Annie,’ he said. ‘Not large commercial planes. They haven’t for years – they’re all jets.’

‘I know about dreams,’ she replied. ‘I’ve read a lot. You dream in symbols. The propeller is the symbol. And anyhow, what about bird strikes? You read about those sometimes. There was a plane that had to land on the Hudson River in New York after a multiple bird strike. Do you remember, a few years ago?’

‘Yes, vaguely.’

‘The birds got sucked into the turbines and mangled up the fan blades – something like that. So jet engines do have propellers – sort of.’

Back in their bedroom she said, ‘I’m sorry, we’ll have to cancel the trip – or you go without me.’

‘That’s ridiculous, Annie! I’m not going without you!’ He sat down on the edge of the bed and thought for a moment. ‘Have you had any dreams about trains crashing? Cars crashing?’

She shook her head, then stepped out of her sodden nightdress. ‘Why don’t we drive? Take the White Elephant? It would be nice, give us a chance to use the sunroof.’

‘We only have a week,’ he said. Driving would take a whole day each way.’

‘If we left early on Saturday morning, on the Eurotunnel, we could get there by the evening. It’s about seven, eight hours’ drive, I seem to remember.’

‘We’d probably miss dinner on Saturday, and we’d have to leave a day early to come back – so we’d miss it the following Friday too.’

‘What about getting up really early?’

‘I thought we were going on holiday, not boot camp.’

She shrugged herself into a fresh nightdress. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘What about trains?’

‘I already looked into those before booking the flights.’

Of course you would have done
, she thought.

‘The timings don’t work.’

‘Right.’

‘You’re sure you’ve had no premonitions about car accidents?’

‘No.’

*

They left the house at 3 a.m., caught a 5.15 a.m. Eurotunnel crossing, and, allowing for the one-hour time difference, were on the road heading out of Calais towards the autoroute by 7 a.m. French time. The satnav which Nigel, being Nigel, had already programmed the night before, told them their ETA in Montreux was 3.55 p.m.

Due to a couple of stops to take turns behind the wheel and for coffee, snacks and loo breaks, they arrived at the hotel shortly after 5 p.m., on a glorious, balmy afternoon. For the last half hour, travelling around the shore of the lake, they’d had the sunroof open, and despite feeling a little tired, Annie felt happy – and relieved that they’d made the right decision. And, hey, they still had time to unpack, have a rest and make it for cocktails on the terrace.

She had already decided what she would wear that night. A pair of cobalt-blue suede Manolo Blahniks, and a totally stunning handbag to match, with a Stella McCartney A-line cocktail dress that stopped a couple of inches too high above her knees. Naughty, she knew, but it showed off her legs, by far her best asset – although for knocking on thirty and having had two sprogs, she didn’t reckon the rest of her was too bad either. Tits still firm, stomach reasonably flat. So far, so good . . .

Out of curiosity, Nigel went online and checked the easyJet flight they would have been on. It had landed ten minutes early, shortly after midday. He told Annie.

‘But the thing is, darling, as I said to you. Even if we’d got here safely, I would have spent the entire holiday fretting about the flight home. I didn’t have the dream last night. We did the right thing.’

Nigel told her that if she felt they had done the right thing, then they had.

*

The first two days of their stay were blissful. Tired from the journey, they spent much of Sunday chilling, relaxing on loungers beside the hotel’s infinity pool and reading. On Monday they went hiking up in the mountains and, later, Annie had a massage. On their third day, Tuesday, in the personal organizer section of Nigel’s phone was,
Picnic lunch on boat. Dep. 11 a.m., return 4 p.m.

‘Couldn’t be more perfect weather for a day on the water, could it?’ Nigel said, pulling on his Dyke Golf Club baseball cap to cover his balding dome. He cast off the mooring rope of the brown-varnished, clinker-built dinghy they had rented. There was an outboard, if they wanted to use it, but Nigel was keen to row. He patted his stomach, which Annie had noticed was definitely in an expansionist mode these past few years, although he was a long way from what one could call
fat.
‘Promised myself I’d lose this by the end of the week,’ he said.

‘Let me know when you get tired and I’ll have a go on the oars too,’ she said.

‘You can take over when we get to France, and row back!’ he said with a grin, and pointed at the craggy peaks of the Alps on the far shore. Deeper into the mountain range, some of the peaks were still snow-capped, but the visibility was not good enough to see them today.

‘How far is it across?’ she asked.

‘About fourteen kilometers – nine miles,’ he said.

‘Quite a row!’

‘Could do it in a couple of hours – shall we try? We can use the outboard to motor back.’

‘Do we have to pay extra if we get back after 4 p.m.?’

‘There’s an hourly charge, but it’s not exorbitant.’

‘Let’s go for it. Splice the main brace, Sir Francis!’

It was a baking hot morning, with a faint breeze, the blue sky smudged with just a few wispy cirrus clouds high above them. Annie sat back, watching Nigel in his pink shorts, white polo shirt and trainers steadily rowing, keeping up a good speed. She breathed in the smells of boat varnish and rope and the fresh, faintly reedy tang of the water, and listened to the steady splash of the oars. In the distance, she saw a ferry crossing, and a large pleasure boat heading along the lake in front of them.