Drowning (18 page)

“Ready?” one of the rangers asked.

“Ja,” the other agreed. In a strong Afrikaans accent, he continued, “There’s a police van on the way to meet us on the other side of the floods.”

Accompanied by two of the policemen, the handcuffed rhino poachers were escorted the way they had come, in convoy with the rangers. Nicholas and the third policeman strapped the injured man to a makeshift stretcher and lifted him into the helicopter. And then, just as the lights of Joshua’s vehicle appeared over the hill, Nicholas approached me. He looked exhausted, and his gloves and sleeves were spattered with blood to the elbow. Leaning forward, he kissed me gently.

I felt tears stinging my eyes. Nicholas must never guess the truth of my feelings for him. It was going to be hard enough saying goodbye to this man—but dealing with his compassion would be unbearable.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “Please, Erin…”

He didn’t finish what he was saying. Instead, with a shake of his head, he climbed quickly into the helicopter. A minute later, they were airborne and out of sight.

I got into the driver’s seat of the Land Cruiser. The seat was too far back and I had to adjust it forward to reach the pedals. Then, following Joshua, I drove slowly back down the hill toward the estate, noticing that the first faint light of the rising sun was brightening the horizon.

This would be the first day I would spend without Nicholas at Leopard Rock, and I could not help wondering, with a twinge of anxiety, what it would bring.

Joshua drove the whole
way back behind me and despite my reassurances that I would be fine, he waited at the lodge until Miriam and the other staff arrived. Despite his presence, I was aware of how silent the place was, how loud my footsteps sounded on the shiny tiled floor.

I did not go into Nicholas’s bedroom. I felt strangely reluctant to do so—as if I had no right to walk in there on my own, to see the bed with its sheets still crumpled from the hours we had spent together.

Instead, I went back to my room and turned on my phone. As I waited for it to power up and find a signal, my resolve crystallized.

I was going to accept Vince’s proposal for the trial separation. Given the cracks our relationship had shown over the past few days, I felt my husband had a valid point. We both needed a chance to think things through—although how spending more time apart was going to help our marriage, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps counseling was the answer. We needed to develop better coping structures for communicating, to avoid the inevitable arguments. Getting Vince to agree to counseling might be tricky, though, because I knew he would consider it a sign of failure.

Suddenly and fervently, I wished that the damned bridge had never been washed away. That, instead, I’d ended up at the hotel with Vince that afternoon, where I could have apologized and we would have been able to make up. We would never have gone through the issues, the bitterness, that had been caused by our enforced separation.
I would never have been tempted by Nicholas. I would never have betrayed my husband.

I took a deep breath but my chest suddenly felt tight. My hands were cold. I sank down onto the chair, feeling physically crushed by the weight of my guilt.

This was it—the moment I had been expecting and dreading. With Nicholas gone, I had no defense against the onslaught of emotion that battered me.

Feeling nauseous, I rested my head on my folded arms, tears squeezing their way from out of my tightly shut eyes. I stayed like that for a few minutes, paralyzed by the intensity of my regret.

I’d only just started to struggle for coherence, to try and plan what on earth my next step should be, when my thoughts were interrupted by the loud ringing of my borrowed phone.

A sense of doom settled on me as I saw Vince’s number on the line. I didn’t want to answer, but I forced myself to press the connect button and take the call.

“Hey, hon,” I said, realizing how tired my voice sounded.

“Hey, hon.”

My eyes widened as I heard the gentleness in his words.

“How’re you doing?” he continued.

“I… I’m fine. You’re calling early. Is everything okay?”

“I’m not okay,” he said. “I’m missing you, baby. I just wanted to tell you.”

I let out a long breath. He hadn’t mentioned the trial separation, nor made any accusations. This was the old Vince back again—the man I knew, the man I loved. The sharpness was gone from his voice; the edge of anxiety and distrust was no longer there. This was the man who had put his arms around me the first time he’d invited me back to his apartment, nuzzling my neck as we stared out of the window together at the shimmering Manhattan skyline. This was the man who had patiently spent an entire day shopping with me and who had paid for a new wardrobe at Bergdorf, Goodman, Bendel’s, and Chanel, one that would improve my image and reflect my beauty,
he had said. This was the man who liked to make love in front of a mirror—so he could watch us both from every angle.

This was the man who had enslaved me, captivated me, swept me off my feet. Who had proposed to me. Asked me—invited me—implored me to spend my life with him. My life… not six salacious days of love-shack.

Now the tears were streaming down my cheeks. I needed to get back to Vince, and do so now, while everything was good between us, before it could all go wrong again.

“I’m missing you, too,” I said. “Vince, the bridge has been partway rebuilt. It isn’t totally safe yet, but I can wade the part that’s not sandbagged, I think. I’m going to walk down there now. Please meet me. Can you find your way? You should remember the road, right?”

“Baby, are you sure?” Vince asked. “I don’t want you putting yourself in danger for me.”

“I’m sure. I can’t wait any longer.”

“If you can’t wait, I’ll come and get you. I’ll be there in an hour and a half.”

This was the Vince I wanted back. Upbeat and positive, not stewing in jealousy. He was going to come and get me. In an hour and a half, I could have my life back. I could be taking the first step to be free of this debilitating guilt that was made all the more intense knowing that on this side, my bridges were already burned. Even if Vince had refused to see me ever again, staying with Nicholas would not be an option. Telling Nicholas how I felt about him would never be possible. Falling in love with Nicholas would be a huge, heartbreaking mistake and the thought of it happening was making me feel very afraid. Compared to this, my shaky marriage seemed like a refuge.

“I’ll be there, Vince,” I said.

I dressed quickly in my own clothes, the ones I’d been wearing when I had drowned. I needed shoes, though, so I took the pair of too-big sandals. I left behind me the computer and, after some thought, the cell phone too.

I paused for a long moment deciding what I should say to Nicholas. In the end I wrote a brief note in the book he’d provided for me.

Hi Nicholas. I’m going back over the bridge this morning. Thank you for saving my life, and I will never forget your generous hospitality.

I wanted to add something personal, to tell him what this time had really meant to me, but I did not know what to write. Staring down at the paper, I was swamped with depression, as if by leaving Leopard Rock, I would be leaving an essential part of my life—of myself—behind me. But I wasn’t, of course. I was going back to what was important, and I was leaving behind me nothing more than a short week which Nicholas, and I hoped I, would swiftly forget.

Anyway, better not to dwell on that now. Not when I needed to get going. I didn’t want to go back into Nicholas’s bedroom. I could not.

I left the book on the desk in my bedroom and hurried down the passage and out of the front door before making my way at a slow jog, in the early morning light, down the paved driveway. As I pushed the main gate of the estate closed behind me and set off on the long walk down to the river, I tried to focus on what lay ahead, and did my best to endure the welling pain of knowing I was turning my back on Nicholas forever.

The steel girders that had been laid across the river banks had seemed more solid yesterday than they did now. There were only two of them, each only a few inches wide and placed a foot apart. They looked flimsy against the vast expanse of rapids and they seemed only just to reach the sandbagged portion of the far bank. A few yards below, the river looked shallower now, but was still flowing fiercely. I noted with a twist of my stomach that some of the sandbags below the girders had been washed away. Hopefully, the upper ones would hold.

I took a deep breath. Changing my mind now was impossible. This had to be done. I slipped and slid my way down the sandbags and managed to bash my toe against the edge of the girder. Cursing
softly, I rubbed it before wedging my feet against the slick surface of the bags and staring down at the metal, covered in condensation and, up close, looking even more treacherous. I slipped my sandals off, hoping I would have better grip with bare feet.

Clutching the side of the bank with my mud-streaked hand, I reached tentatively forward with my right foot and placed it on the steel support.

Yup—it was as slippery as I’d feared, and my bare feet offered frighteningly little traction. Even with one foot on each of the girders, I was not able to shuffle my way along. The risk of falling in the river was too great.

Only one thing to do then. I put my sandals down. To get over this river safely, I’d have to leave them behind. Letting go of my handhold, I lowered myself onto my knees and grabbed the metal bars with my outstretched hands. I would crawl across if I had to—if it meant that I would have a chance of reaching the other side.

The girders were surprisingly cold; their surface stained in places by patchy rust whose ragged edges sliced into my palms as I crawled. I put one hand forward, then the other. Then I slid my knees along to follow. I could do it this way as long as I concentrated and kept my focus. As long as I didn’t lose my balance, get vertigo from the constant rush of water below me. Or look round, hoping to see the sight I knew I wouldn’t—Nicholas speeding down the road in his Land Cruiser.

As I headed further and further out over the river and away from the support of the bank, I could feel the girders trembling underneath me. I told myself that they could not break and would surely not slip now, but even so, the sensation was terrifying and I found I was shaking, too. Memories I hadn’t even known about came rushing back. A gray torrent streaming into the car. The pummeling noise on its roof as it was consumed by the river. Opening my mouth to scream and choking instead, with no air left, nothing to breathe, only a darkening flood.

I felt myself sway… I was going to fall. I clutched at the metal, breathing hard, sweat springing out on my skin. It took all my strength of will to find my balance and drag my gaze away from the hypnotic flow beneath.

“Help!” I yelled, but there was no answer, only the noise of the waters. Nobody to see me or save me this time… I was entirely alone. Frozen in place, there was no way I could turn around and go back. My limbs were aching and my hands burning with the effort of clutching the chilly steel. I knew if I stared down again, the raging floods would seem to inhale me, but when I looked ahead, the distance that I still had to cover appeared vast and impassable.

“One small step at a time, Erin,” I whispered, my voice quivering. It took all my courage to let go of the girder with my right hand and grab it again a little further on.

“Now the left,” I told myself, shaking a trickle of sweat out of my eyes. I focused on the couple of feet of steel in front of me and tried to shut everything else out of my world.

Left, right, left, right. Inch by painful inch I worked my way across the unsteady girders.

Finally, I made it, just as my shaking limbs were about to give out on me. I hauled myself into a painful crouch, then grabbed at the bank and scrambled up.

I dropped to my knees, my hands propped on my thighs, my head spinning. I was breathing hard and my hair was wet with sweat. But I had done it. I’d made it across. I was exhausted, filthy, muddied, and tangled, with rust stains on my palms and the knees of my jeans. But I had achieved my goal. I’d cut the ties. Leopard Rock, and its owner, were behind me forever.

A flash of Nicholas—where was he? I imagined him, his job done, his eyes shadowed with tiredness, enduring the long wait until his helicopter was ready and he could fly back to the estate.

I wondered how he’d feel when he found my note. Disappointed that I had left before he got back? Relieved there would be no awkward goodbyes?

I would never know. In any case, what was I doing thinking about Nicholas while I was waiting for my husband? It was time to take a leaf out of Nicholas’s own book; to leave my past behind and think about my future. I stood up on wobbly legs and limped slowly up the steep dirt road.

Vince arrived twenty minutes later, by which time I’d walked some way further and had managed to make myself a little more presentable by brushing some of the mud away and rubbing my hands over the dewy grass to help rinse off the stains.

He got out of the Land Rover and walked over to me. Despite the early morning hour, he was impeccably groomed, his black hair spiky with gel, a trace of carefully outlined designer stubble on his jaw, wearing stylish True Religion jeans and a charcoal-colored Armani T-shirt. He looked as immaculate, as handsome as he’d done on the day I met him at his photographic exhibition.

“Hello, babes.” He kissed me briefly on the lips before stepping back and regarding me with his dark, smoldering gaze.

“Hey Vince.” I smiled at him, but he didn’t return the smile.