Soul Storm (15 page)

He stares at me, as though he can’t believe what I just said. I shuffle along the rock towards him and reach out, putting my arms around his shoulders and pulling him into me.

Burnt earth fills my vision. And guilt – Danny’s guilt – fills my brain. What did the pilot think as they went down?

Danny’s crying but trying not to let me see. Even now, he wants to protect me.

‘It must have been torture keeping this a secret,’ I whisper.

I feel him nodding against my chest. ‘I couldn’t tell you because I was so afraid you’d leave me and you’ve been the only thing . . . the
only
thing . . . that
stopped me going crazy. See? I’m selfish too.’

I realise something important. ‘That’s why you stayed behind to wait for me?’

He lifts his head to look at me. ‘A devastated beach with you here is still better than paradise without you. But it can’t go on.’

The storm rages on. Were we always heading for this moment? Maybe my fate is as entwined with Danny’s as my sister’s is with Tim’s. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I can deal with my punishment, Alice. Hanging out here alone. I guess it’s what I deserve.’

‘No. It’s too cruel. Forever is too long to be alone with so much guilt. There must be some way I can make this right – as I have for the others. You deserve peace.’

Even though if he finds peace, it must mean I will lose him too.

‘I don’t deserve peace and, anyhow, what can you do, Alice? There’s no way to make up for the death of the pilot, or change things for his widow and daughters.’

‘I don’t believe that. There
must
be a way to resolve it, otherwise, why would you be on the Beach, Danny? I promise I’ll work it out, right? Whatever it
takes.’

‘Not everything has a solution.’ He sighs. ‘There is something more important I want from you.’

‘Anything.’

He pulls away from me properly now. ‘Actually, it’s two things. First, you
must
leave here, and for good this time. It’s not a place for the living, not
now.’

‘But I don’t want to leave you. Or cut myself off from the chance to see my sister again—’

‘Alice, stop kidding yourself. Nothing here happens by chance. You must accept she might be gone for good.’

I’ll never leave the Beach until I’ve seen her. The idea makes me feel hot and faint. The sky is lightening and, as the wind drops, heat breaks through: intense heat, like the sun is
burning a hole through the cloud. ‘Is the second thing any easier?’

‘I need you to try to forgive me.’

‘That
is
easy. I already have.’

‘What the hell did I do to deserve you?’ Danny smiles at me but I can still see tears magnifying the little flecks of gold in his eyes. ‘I can’t let this carry on. I must
do the one good thing in my control, Alice, and say goodbye to you now, for the last time.’

‘I won’t let you do that.’

‘It’s my decision, Alice. You said it yourself, I need peace. How am I gonna get that if I spend every hour of every day knowing that not only did I deprive the pilot of life,
I’m depriving you too. Because this, here, is not enough for you.’

The heat is building, but it’s not the brilliant sunshine that used to light up languid afternoons on Soul Beach. It’s harsh and relentless, like midday in the desert.

Could he be right? Should I be putting my energies into solving Meggie’s murder and trying to help the pilot’s family, instead of hanging out here, reminding Danny of all the things
he can never have again?

Here, now, I’m facing the question I’ve been avoiding since the night I first realised I was in love with Danny.

What does the future hold for us?

And as the sun beats down on my head, I finally let myself answer it honestly.

Nothing.

‘You know it’s the right thing, don’t you, Alice?’ Danny whispers. ‘You know that if you keep coming, it’ll only get harder when the inevitable happens. For
both of us. That the only good choice now is for you to walk away. And stay away.’

I don’t speak. I won’t admit it to him. He lifts my chin with his hand and begins to kiss me and, with my lips, I try to tell him all the things that words can’t say: how happy
he’s made me, how I will never forget him, how I couldn’t have asked for a better person to be my first love.

I don’t want the kiss to end.

‘Not yet,’ I whisper.

It’s him that breaks away. ‘Alice?’

I hold on tight, trying to focus on his beautiful face, but my eyes are hurting, and my throat stings too.

‘Something’s wrong,’ I tell him.

He’s staring at me. Behind him I notice something changing in the sea. A backwards tide, like the water draining out of a bath. It reveals the sand below, dark and greasy-looking from oil
deposits.

I try to warn Danny but I can’t speak. It feels as though I’m hurtling away from the Beach now, being pulled out by a force much greater than either of us. Something eternal.

God-like?

Now I hear the noise of the scanner machinery again and remember where I
really
am. The din is as intense as it was, but beyond that there’s something else.

Screeching?

The screen goes black.

‘Danny?’

‘Alice, stay where you are, we’re investigating, but everything’s fine, don’t move.’

I don’t recognise the voice at first, but then I remember – it’s Ian.

‘What’s that noise?’ My throat stings. ‘What’s going on?’

It’s not just the screen that’s black. The room is completely dark. Not even the green glow of the emergency lighting is penetrating this oppressive gloom. I try to pull myself free
from the straps but the more I move, the tighter they seem to become.

Is that what this is? Some kind of
trap
?

Someone is pulling me, grabbing hold of my arms and fumbling with the buckles. The headphones slip off my ears and now the noise of the scanner is painfully intrusive.

Beyond it, there’s another sound. A wail or a screech.

Sirens.

Finally, my body comes free of the straps and someone is helping me up, but I can’t tell who it is or where we’re going and I can’t breathe properly.

Sahara?

The darkness I feel when I’m with her is exactly like this.

Suffocating.

Paralysing.

The noise is fading as I’m lifted up into someone’s arms. I try to fight whoever’s carrying me but I have no strength left. Only fear.

‘Stay still, Alice, for God’s sake!’

‘Lewis?’

‘Save your breath!’

The voice is sharp. I can’t reply. I don’t have enough air in my lungs.

Faster, faster. There is light now, low light. I think we’re in the corridors. The maze.

Then he’s ramming into the wall – no, the door – with his shoulder. Each thump I feel in my own body.

Twice. A third time.

It’s not going to give.

And then it does, and we’re falling – hard against the tarmac. Too hard against my head.

Like Zoe when she fell.

Before the world goes dark, I see his face.

Lewis – my friend, my confidant.

Except he no longer looks like either, his expression twisted almost beyond recognition.

Is that blind fury – or pure hatred?

Charcoal

Alice? Alice, love, can you hear me? Everything’s all right, sweetheart. You’re in the ambulance, on the way to hospital. Don’t fight the mask.
We’re just giving you a little help with your breathing. Absolutely everything’s going to be fine . . .

My hearing returns first.

A sucking, whooshing noise.

Now
I can feel. Feel how much everything
hurts.
As though my skin and throat have been grated. When I try to breathe, air comes painfully and not nearly fast enough.

I’m struggling. To wake up, to stay awake.

Am I dead?

No, death shouldn’t hurt. That much I
do
know.

So what . . .

‘Sweetheart, you’re all right. There’s no hurry. Wake up when you need to. We’ll be here.’

Mum?

When I try to open my eyes they resist. Unless they’re already open and I can’t see any more?

NO!

Blood red.

Soot black.

Nothingness.

Suddenly, I know
exactly
where I am.

‘Hospital,’ I croak. Each syllable takes as much effort as a marathon.

A soft touch on my hand. The peachy smell of Mum’s perfume, the one she wore when I was little. It’s all wrong here in this antiseptic world. Too cloying.

‘Yes, sweetheart. That’s right. But not for long, not now you’re back with us.’

‘Feel . . . foggy.’

‘Foggy? They gave you something to settle you down. You were thrashing about a bit, especially when they put the tubes in to help you breathe.’

Now I wonder how I didn’t notice them before: tubes in my nostrils that feel wider than car exhaust pipes. When I close my mouth, the struggle lessens. My heartbeat slows and my chest
rises and falls less furiously.

Until I try to open my eyes. I half remember fighting to do this before. ‘Mum?’ Nothing’s happening. ‘MUM! I can’t see!’

I lift my hands to my face and feel gauze, rough under my fingers, but then my mother’s warm hands grip mine, stop them tearing at whatever’s covering my eyes.

‘Don’t struggle, Alice, it’s just a bandage to help you recover. But the doctors say you’ll be fine, soon. You’ve had a very lucky escape.’ Her voice
falters.

Escape.

I remember Lewis’s eyes boring into me. The lab. The darkness. The smell.

‘What . . . happened?’

I hear Mum sigh but she says nothing for a long time. ‘We’re hoping you can tell us that, but not now, eh? Nothing should stress you out right now.’

‘But my eyes?’

‘It’s not your eyes, it’s just the lids. They’re swollen from the smoke.’

Smoke?

‘The doctors say it’s normal. Everything will settle back down and then we’ll take you home.’

More fragments of memory are flooding my brain. Danny kissing me as a storm raged around us on the Beach. And then his words . . .

The only good choice now is for you to walk away.

Forgive me.

Goodbye.

Did he find some way to banish me, forever?

‘No! He can’t have—’

‘Alice, please, settle down. I’m sure he didn’t mean for this to happen.’

‘He said it was over . . .’ but I stop myself.
Mum doesn’t even know Danny. How
could
she know him?
He’s nothing but a dead stranger, like all the other
Guests on Soul Beach. Except Meggie, of course.

‘We feel responsible, darling; we should have realised that he wasn’t a good influence.’

‘What happened to him – it wasn’t an accident.’

‘Oh, sweetheart, don’t say that. Lewis wouldn’t have put you in danger on purpose, even though we have no idea what he thought he was playing at, taking you there. But
don’t worry, you won’t ever have to see him again.’

She’s talking about Lewis, not Danny.

‘Lewis? What did he do? Where did he take me?’

‘Let’s leave that till later—’

I grasp for memories, reasons, clarity. There was something we were trying to do. Me and Lewis. What was it?

‘Not later, Mum. Now!’

She grips my hand so hard it’s almost painful. ‘There was a fire, Alice. In some rubbish bins at the back of a lab-laboratory.’ I hear her voice tremble over the word.
‘It was an accident. But what we don’t understand – what your so-called friend refuses to tell us – is what you were doing there in the first place.’

A laboratory? The harder Mum holds my hand, the faster my brain seems to lose its grip. I’m closing down, even as I try to cling on to now, to make sense of this.

Lewis? What did he do?

But it’s Danny whose face I see as the dark overwhelms me again.

When I come round properly, it all floods back. An experiment. A confession from Danny. Being dragged from a building.

Mum’s told me more about what the police say happened. A ‘rubbish fire’ in bins at the back of the lab. Probably caused by teenagers who’d been smoking and didn’t
stub out the butts. An ‘accident’.

It should be the final piece in the jigsaw of what happened last night. Except I don’t recognise the picture. What I
do
know is that there’ve been too many
‘accidents’ in my life lately. Kids smoking on an industrial estate miles from anywhere? A discarded cigarette that just happened to ignite when I was strapped into a machine in an
isolated lab?

This was no more an accident than what happened to Zoe in Barcelona was an accident. I was
that
close to ending up the same way as her.

I shiver.

‘And you’re sure you don’t need any more painkillers to take home with you?’ the doctor is asking.

I shake my head. ‘Everything feels numb.’

The doctor nods but I can’t make out his expression because my eyes are still not opening properly, and what I
can
see through the narrow gap is blurred. That’ll get better
soon, they say. Now I’m conscious again, they can’t wait to kick me out of hospital.

‘That’s normal, isn’t it?’ my mum is asking.

In only a few hours I’ve gone from being terrified of blindness, to feeling relief that I can’t focus on the pain in my parents’ faces. It’s bad enough to hear it in
their voices.

And all because of Soul Beach.

‘Delayed shock, probably. But Mrs Forster, do call us immediately if any of the symptoms on the printout recur. Particularly any change in skin tone. Sometimes the body’s response to
carbon monoxide can be delayed. Don’t worry about bothering us; it’s what we’re here for.’

‘Thank you. We really are very grateful.’