Dead Jealous (18 page)

CHAPTER FORTY

Her breath was too loud.
Too loud!
She tried to hold it, but she couldn’t. Her lungs kept on noisily sucking in air like it was some sort of bloody necessity. All around her birds were singing – tweeting their little heads of like today was just another day.

Somewhere, just beyond the broad trunk of the tree she’d flattened herself against, a twig snapped.

Close. So close. He was circling her like he knew she was there. Playing with her like a cat pawing a sparrow before it rips its tiny head off.

Sunlight shimmered through the tree canopy, tiny spotlights appearing and disappearing like the dance of the water sprites on the lake. Probably some of their distant cousins, come to finish her off.

‘
Please, someone? Help me!
’ she whispered under her breath. But why? No one was listening. Not now that Pete had the phone. Had it been Mum on the line? Or Michael? Maybe whoever it was had realised that she was in trouble and had sent help. Knowing her luck it was a sodding cold caller from the phone company.

For the first time in a long time, she squeezed her eyes shut and prayed. She wasn’t sure to whom or to what, but faced with the prospect of dying again she was willing to give anything a go.

Help me!

A bird screeched an alarm call, shattering the serenity of the woods. It was a blackbird, Druid Dhubh...the Druid of the forest. She saw the image on the card she had left on the bluff. For a second she, and the whole woods, held their breath.

Something flashed between the trees. Her eyes tried to find the movement. There.

A shadow passed between the trees disturbing three woodpigeons. They were flushed into the air with a clatter of wings and snapping twigs.

Heavy footsteps pounded away from her. She dared a glance and saw Pete running between rustling banks of saplings. He’d seen the shadow too. He must have thought it was her.

She pushed away from the tree trunk and headed down the steep bank towards the lake. If she could make it to the lake she could probably shout for help. Maybe even swim to safety. Surely someone would see her?

The breeze switched directions, blowing her hair into her face. Somewhere in the distance she heard voices. Shouting. Those voices, they sounded familiar...like...oh God,
Michael!

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Sally screamed. She held her stomach and panted like she was going to drop the sprog any minute.

Michael threw up his hands and tried to keep his voice calm. ‘I just wanna know where Poppy is!’ He glanced at Tariq, but Dealer Boy looked just as much at a loss.

Work boots clunked against the cobbles behind them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pete marching towards them holding a shotgun.

Not good. And shit, where was Poppy? If he’d touched her...

The farmer glanced at his wife and then flew at them. Before he could do anything to defend himself, a heavy fist struck the side of Michael’s head. Sickening pain turned the world to darkness. He didn’t even know he’d fallen until his knees crunched onto the rough stone cobbles.

‘What are you doing to my wife?’ Pete shouted.

‘Nothing! Nothing at all!’ Tariq said. ‘We were looking for Poppy, that’s all.’

Their voices were distorted. There was a ringing noise in Michael’s ears, like feedback from a bad speaker. A hand grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet, but his vision was messed up like he’d just got off a spinning fairground ride. Pain throbbed through his skull, but he had to get it together – the bastard had Poppy.

‘Where’s Poppy?’ he spat, trying to focus on Pete.

The farmer shook his head. ‘Don’t know. Not seen her.’

‘You’re lying!’ This time, it was his turn to throw a punch. His fist connected with the side of Pete’s face. Pain ricocheted all the way up Michael’s arm. That didn’t stop him from doing it again. ‘
Where. Is. She?
’ The shotgun clattered to the cobbles. He saw Tariq make a dart for it, but too late. Tariq slid to a stop as Sally raised the gun to her shoulder.

‘Get away from him!’ Sally stared through the shotgun’s sight, one eye squinted. ‘Get away from him!’ she screamed.

Michael stumbled back.

‘What do we do?’ she asked her husband. ‘They know, Pete. What are we going to do?’

Michael wiped away the blood that was muddying his sight and glanced around. Where the hell were the police?

At the corner of the farmhouse, a flash of auburn hair caught his eye. Then Poppy’s head popped around the grey stone wall. His knees buckled with relief. He glanced to the side, but Psychopathic Pete seemed too preoccupied with his equally psychopathic wife to notice. Tariq had seen her though; his eyes were wide with panic.

Michael caught Poppy’s eye and shook his head.
Stay there! For God’s sake stay there! Better still – run. Get help.
But that wasn’t Poppy’s style and he knew it.

‘You! Get over there,’ Sally shouted.

The crazy woman was talking to him. Slowly, he edged further away from Pete. The barrel of the gun followed his movement.

‘Turn around,’ she said, squinting through the sight.

‘No! Sally, don’t!’ Pete gasped.

‘I can’t go to prison! The baby...they’ll take the baby away from me!’

Michael stopped breathing. His heart pounded in his throat. If he turned around that was it. She would kill him. His gaze connected hopelessly with Poppy’s.

‘No!’ she mouthed.

‘I said, turn around!’ Sally shouted.

‘You think you can get away with this?’ Tariq yelled. ‘I called the cops. They’re on their way. Can’t you hear that, bitch? That’s a siren, yeah? They’re gonna lock you up and throw away the key!’

‘
Turn around!
’

‘
Nooooo!
’ Poppy burst around the side of the farmhouse, running at Sally and screaming like a banshee. Tariq raced to head her off. Sally swung around ready to fire. And for a second, Michael thought Poppy was dead. His heart froze. He ran at Sally. But as he grabbed her shoulder a shot rang out.

He screamed, but it was too late. Poppy and Tariq fell to the ground like leaves blown from a tree. He got his arms around Sally’s shoulders and tried to grab the barrel of the gun.

‘Police! Stop! Put the gun down!’ a voice called over a loudhailer.

Suddenly, Pete was moving. Michael made another grab for the gun. He and Sally stumbled backwards. Another shot cracked the air and Pete fell.

The farmer lay face down on the ground. Blood ran down the cement between the cobbles until trickling red lines formed a grid. It was like a perverse computer screensaver. For a second there was nothing but the sound of gurgled breathing. Then silence.

Sally stopped struggling. She let go of the gun, dropped to her knees and wailing like an injured animal, she crawled the short distance to where Pete lay.

Poppy!
Michael spun around. He realised he was holding the gun and froze, afraid to drop it, afraid that if he moved a finger another shot would be fired and another life gone.

Out of nowhere, what felt like hundreds of shadows appeared from behind outbuildings and walls. The gun was snatched from his hands. Michael’s face hit the cobbles as he was shoved to the ground. His arms were yanked behind his back and metal clasped around his wrists. His heart hammered in his throat.

‘Poppy!
Poppy!
’ he shouted.

He was dragged to his feet and through the mayhem, his eyes sought her out.

She was kneeling, squeezing Tariq’s arm. Blood was pouring from beneath her fingers. Tariq was nodding and talking to a police officer. The officer relieved Poppy from blood-stemming duties and she scrambled to her feet.

‘This way, son,’ a big guy said, yanking Michael towards a police car.

‘Wait, I just need to...’

Poppy darted over to him and threw her arms around his neck. He wanted to hold her, but all he could do was press his head into her hair. It was OK. She was shaking and scared, but she was safe. ‘It’ll be OK,’ he whispered, before the police pulled them apart.

EPILOGUE

The light from the streetlamps was just enough to see by to get the key into the lock. This wasn’t going to be the problem. Getting the door open without waking the whole street was going to be the problem. He pushed it an inch – so far, so good – and tried another. That’s when the door’s hinges began to screech.

Thunder on the stairs, and a low growl, forced him in through the door before Dawkins could give the game away.

‘It’s me!’ he whispered to the ghostly white dog, whose tail was wagging so fast that it seemed to blur in the middle. Dawkins jumped up. Paws landed squarely on Michael’s chest, forcing him back against the door. It slammed into the frame.

He winced and pushed the dog down. At the top of the stairs, Meg appeared, rubbing her eyes.

‘Really smooth, Michael!’ she stage whispered, making a face at him.

He shrugged hopelessly.

Meg smiled. ‘Have fun tonight,’ she said, before heading back to bed. ‘Or this morning...or whatever time it is.’

He waited a second and then climbed the stairs with Dawkins stuck to his side like a guard dog. His legs complained at being made to work when they should be in bed. It had been a gruelling afternoon, talking to Julia. Apologising for what had happened. Apologising for not loving her. But he felt better now that they’d talked and officially broken it off. At least it was one thing off his conscience.

He crept through the grey and black shadows, along the landing to Poppy’s room. These days, she slept with the bedside light on, but Meg had compromised by throwing a sparkly blue scarf over the lampshade that made the room look like it was cast in moonlight. From the door, he could see her, wound up in the bedclothes like she’d tossed and turned for hours. One bare leg was hooked around the quilt, long and pale. And her face was half turned into the pillow with her hair spread out about her like rusty sunbeams. He crossed over to her and kneeled beside the bed. It seemed a shame to wake her. There were no lines across her forehead; no fear lurked in the creases around her eyes.

He was about to shake her when he noticed that clutched in her hand was what looked like nothing more than a shiny black pebble. He slid it out of her fingers and held it up to the bedside lamp.

He didn’t get it. He wasn’t into the whole Pagan thing. To him, it was just a stone. But to her, this thing was keeping her safe and that was good enough for him.

‘Poppy, wake up.’

‘What?’

She forced open her eyes. The blue light from the bedside light illuminated Michael’s face, making him look drowned and dead. She bolted upright.

‘What’s wrong?’ she gasped.

‘Nothing.’

Dawkins jumped on the bed and panted in her face. She pushed him aside. ‘What is it? Why are you here?’

‘Come on, we’re going out.’

‘What do you mean? What time is it?’

‘It’s three a.m. and if you don’t move we’ll be late.’

Before she could object, Michael grabbed the quilt and dragged it off her.

‘Hey!’ she shouted, while simultaneously yanking her nightie down over her bum. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

She caught his gaze drifting up her legs. He grinned and her heart stuttered like it had forgotten how to beat.

‘It’s a surprise. Get dressed.’ He walked out of the room, taking her duvet with him.

Feeling like she was stuck in a dream, Poppy forced herself out of bed, found her jeans where she’d deposited them on the floor and grabbed a clean sweatshirt out of a drawer. She threw on the clothes and some trainers, and stumbled downstairs.

Michael was standing by the front door.

‘I should tell Mum.’

‘No need, she knows.’

‘What? Don’t tell me you sneaked into her bedroom too? And how the hell did you get in?’

Michael dangled a key in front of her face.

This was seriously weird. She made Dawkins sit on the sofa in the pitch-black lounge, and then followed Michael out onto the street. ‘Where are we going?’

‘You’ll see,’ Michael replied, getting into the driver’s seat of his mum’s car. She sighed and went to the other side. As she opened the door, she saw the curtains of Mum’s and Jonathan’s bedroom window twitching. Whatever was coming, they were in on it – buggers! She stuck out her tongue before ducking into the car.

Michael drove through deserted streets, down into Bowness and then onto the road that followed the shape of Lake Windermere. He didn’t look at her, not even when he had to look past her before making a left turn. He was trying desperately not to smile, but she could tell he wanted to.

‘You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going?’

‘I’m
really not going to tell you
, so you might as well shut up about it.’

‘We’re going to sit in silence for...how long? An hour? Two?’

‘Nice try.’

‘Are we going to a strip club?’

‘
What?
’

‘Or a casino? No, I know: the twenty-four-hour Tesco? I’m trying to think of places that are open.’

‘I didn’t say that we were going somewhere that was open. I’ve got a sledgehammer in the boot.’

‘Great! A night of crime – just what every girl dreams of.’

She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Over the last few weeks, the two of them had spent hours in separate police interview rooms, answering questions about everything that had happened that weekend – Michael more than her. Although the police had been more than a bit suspicious when she’d told them where they could find Maya’s body – on the bluff, under that patch of bright green grass. Apparently a couple of dreams and a Tarot card didn’t make for good court evidence.

Tariq caught a bit of flak too. The police eventually figured out his role at the festival and he was hauled in again. But he’d sent Michael a text the other day, saying that the police didn’t have enough to charge him and had sent him home with a slapped wrist.

‘Would some music help you not talk?’ Michael asked, with a smile.

She laughed. ‘You’re a real charmer, you know that?’

He leaned down and switched on the stereo. A line of violins filled the car. The Verve album he’d made her download. The drums kicked in, reverberating through the seats.

‘You never said whether you liked this,’ he said over the music.

‘It’s OK,’ she said, suppressing a smile.

The road swung around millionaires’ row, as the locals liked to call it: all 1980s ten-bedroom palaces with no character and nothing to boast except a lakeside view. Then on to Newby Bridge, across the deserted train line, and up the other side of the lake. Well, that ruled out a whole lot of nowhere.

She glanced over at Michael, who thankfully had his eyes on the road – he wasn’t the best driver in the world, even if he liked to think he was a test driver for Top Gear. He’d been great though – since the festival. Spent all day every day with her, when they weren’t at the police station or talking to solicitors. They’d watched every crap DVD the library had, and when they’d run out of films, they’d moved on to audio books, tucked up in a quilt on the sofa. He’d been careful to choose nothing with bloodshed – nothing that could remind them of that day.

He’d even agreed to a bit of romance, which she knew really
wasn’t
his thing. They’d sat cuddled before the fire, Poppy sitting between his legs and his face buried in her hair while Darcy pissed off Elizabeth and some Latino guy pulled a cheerleader, all without complaint. He held her hand, hugged her – he was never far from her. It was almost as if he was scared that something bad would happen if they weren’t touching. But none of it had moved him to kiss her.

Michael leaned down again and flicked forward to the second track. The guitar picked up the first notes of
Sonnet
, the melancholic love song she’d listened to over and over again, and she couldn’t help wondering whether they’d ever get past this strange limbo they found themselves in.

Lights twinkled on the opposite shore of the lake. Bowness came into view, blocked only by the trees on the intervening Belle Island, a place that strangely held no fear for her any more, even though it had been close to there that she’d nearly drowned.

Eventually, Michael pulled the car off the road, onto the grass, and stopped.

‘This is where we’re going?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows.

He cut the engine. ‘Yeah. This is it. Are you getting out, or what?’

Poppy opened the door and got out. The drop in temperature after the artificial heat of the car made her shiver. Michael had already popped the boot and was getting stuff out. He handed her a coat.
Her
coat, in fact. And a thermos flask.

‘This has been planned,’ she said.

He just returned her smile, slid on his own fleece, the one normally reserved for hiking up mountains, grabbed a picnic blanket and nodded towards the lake.

‘What is this?’ she asked, following him. ‘You fancied a three a.m. picnic?’

He glanced at his watch, then up at the sky and began unfolding the blanket.

‘Y’know how everyone thinks
I’ve
lost it? It’s drawn attention away from you! They haven’t noticed that you’ve cracked. You definitely need more counselling.’

He ignored her, but the smile had turned to a grin. He sat down on the blanket and rubbed his hands together. ‘You going to keep that hot chocolate all to yourself?’

She collapsed down beside him and handed him the flask.

‘You really don’t know why we’re here, do you?’ he asked.

Oh no! Was this something she was supposed to remember? Some weird anniversary of theirs? ‘Of course I do. I’m just faking surprise so as not to upset you.’

Michael did a double take then laughed. ‘Nahh. You haven’t got a clue.’ He poured out a steaming cup of hot chocolate, handed it to her, and started pouring out his own. At the same time, he glanced up at the sky and nearly poured it all down himself.

She giggled. ‘What are we doing here?’

He licked the spilt chocolate from his hand and took a sip. Again, his eyes flashed up to the sky.

‘You are soooo annoy—’ Just then, she saw something. A faint flash of light. She dumped the cup of cocoa on the grass and pushed herself to her feet.

Above them the skies were dark. The moon had nearly set but there were stars and planets and...
meteors!
There was another – just a faint whisper across the sky. And then another, clear and bright and beautiful. She gasped.

Arms wrapped around her waist and he rested his chin on her head. ‘I didn’t want you to miss it,’ he whispered, as if making too much noise might frighten them away. ‘It seemed important to Beth that you saw it.’

With everything that had happened, she’d forgotten about the Perseid meteor shower and the dream she’d had about her and Beth watching for meteors from the bluff. But Michael had remembered.

She got hold of his arm and squeezed tightly. She felt breathless with panic. She didn’t want to lose him, and yet at all around her lives were being extinguished – quicker than the light from a falling star.

Beth.

Maya.

Kane.

And Pete.

All gone.

‘In preparation, I’ve been reading about meteors,’ Michael said. ‘So I could astound you with my brilliance.’

She sniffed back a tear. ‘Oh yeah?’

‘Did you know that meteorites consist primarily of iron and that when one of them hits the earth’s atmosphere they reach temperatures of almost one thousand six hundred and fifty degrees Celsius?’

‘You sound like a Wikipedia entry.’

‘That’s probably because that’s where I got most of this from. I bet you didn’t know that in some parts of Europe, it was said that everyone had their own star, and when a person died, their star would fall to the earth.’

‘There’s a bit of a rush on tonight. What do you think? Coach crash? War, maybe?’

Michael turned her to face him. His wide eyes were sad, and just for a moment she saw the young boy she’d grown up with. The one who cried when his favourite Action Man lost a leg or they came across a dead rabbit on the side of the road.

He swallowed and his bottom lip trembled. ‘I keep wondering if there was something – if I’d done things differently—’

‘Don’t! You didn’t kill him. The police have said so. And you wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me. I’m so sorry, Michael.’

Hot tears spilled over her cheeks. He shook his head and brushed them away but there were tears in his eyes too. Then, as the sky exploded with flashes of light so bright that it looked like the entire heavens were crashing down around them, Michael leaned down and kissed her.

She’d waited so long for this kiss that tasted of tears that she had no intention of letting it slip away. She locked her hands around Michael’s neck, and just for a second, as her heart sang like it was free for the very first time, she saw Beth smiling, the silver of falling stars reflected in her eyes
.