Soul Storm (33 page)
I click on the link, trying to collect my thoughts: the messages I want Danny to pass on to my sister, if he ever sees her again, and the words of comfort I can offer him.
06:05
.
The screen goes dark, as though the system is about to crash. I hold my breath.
Danny’s words to me drift into my mind:
The only good choice now is for you to walk away. And stay away
.
But that was before I found Meggie’s killer. I deserve to see her again. It should be my reward. Except when has the Beach ever granted me what I want, without adding some kind of horrible
twist?
Forces like these are unpredictable. Nothing comes without consequences
.
Javier said that to me. I close my eyes and summon up a clear picture in my mind of him playing cards with Gretchen in the shade of a palm tree, gambling with piles of tiny pink and white
shells.
Javier smiles up at me, fire and defiance reflected in his dark eyes.
And then I remember Triti, her face turned up to the heavens on a sultry Soul Beach night, her shiny earrings jangling in the breeze as she watched the most incredible fireworks display
I’d ever seen.
I open my eyes again, lean into the screen.
I’m on the Beach. It’s still wrecked, the sand a dirty brown, the sea covered in oil that reflects back a moody grey sky. It’s hard to tell what time it is on the Beach but, if
Lewis is right about the location, it must be the same time zone as here.
This has been my longest night.
The shore appears empty, but I know Danny should be here, suffering an eternal sentence in solitary confinement, regretting the things he did. I shiver.
No one deserves that. No one except Ade.
And then I hear something. The same sounds – the same
words
– I heard that very first time. A melody as familiar as the contours of the rocks.
‘Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound . . .’
‘Meggie? Megan London Forster, is that you?’
‘That saved a wretch like me.’
Her voice is closer now.
‘I once was lost but now am found,’
I spin round.
‘Was blind, but now, I see.’
She’s there, standing amongst the timber and metal remains of Sam’s bar.
‘Yes, Alice Florence Forster. It
is
me.’
My sister holds her arms out wide and I run to her. She feels so solid, so real, but something is different when we hug this time.
No flashback. No vision of black leather gloves. Just contentment so deep it almost makes me sleepy.
‘You did it, Florrie.’
I smile at the nickname that made me so cross when I was small.
‘I did.’ I don’t ask how she knows. ‘Do you want me to tell you—’
Meggie shakes her head. ‘No. Don’t. Whoever it was, they weren’t important. What’s important is that
you
did it, and you’re safe. Aren’t
you?’
I nod. ‘Yes. I’m safe.’ I’m surprised, but she’s right to stop me. I don’t want her to go wherever it is she goes next with her head full of what was done to
her. What matters is here, and now. ‘Justice has been done.’
‘I knew it would be, baby sister. You’re like that. Determined. I always wanted to be like you, you know. Clever. Sharp. Unlike me – a butterfly – pretty enough but too
busy fluttering to achieve anything much.’
It makes me think of what Lewis said about her – and what he said about me. ‘You achieved a lot, Meggie. You brought music into people’s lives. You made them
feel
something they wouldn’t have felt otherwise.’
Only after I’ve said it do I realise I’m talking in the past tense. ‘I mean – you
make
them feel like that.’ My mistake hangs in the thick air between
us.
‘It’s OK. I know it’s my time. I’m fine with it. It was getting a bit dull around here, you know? Same old people. Same old beach.’ She laughs.
‘I don’t see anyone else.’
‘Tim’s waiting for me. I came back down because I hoped you’d be here, though Danny’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘I scrambled down the rocks expecting to find him but there was no sign. Might something have changed in your world? Something
you
did?’
I shake my head. ‘His is the only story I know that can’t be made right, Meggie. Unless,’ I think of the email from his father, ‘well. Maybe it has.’
‘I hope so, baby sister.’
I squeeze her tighter, before I ask a question that could have me banished if anyone from the Management is still listening. ‘What’s it like? Beyond the Beach?’
She squeezes back. I’m still in her arms.
‘It’s kind of . . . nothingness. But nice. Like the time between being awake and being asleep. Do you remember how it was when we were kids and shared a room? When I used to let you
climb into my top bunk because neither of us could sleep on the night before a holiday or Christmas or something? And then once we were snuggled up together, we’d be out within
minutes.’
‘Except I’m not with you, am I? Not really.’
‘You are. Just like I am always with you, Florrie. Not in a creepy way. I won’t be hanging round, wailing, in a white sheet. But I’ll be there when you need me. And don’t
you dare worry about me. I wish Tim hadn’t died, but the selfish bit of me is glad he’s with me.’
‘I’m glad too,’ I whisper. ‘But don’t tell him.’
‘You’ve got someone with
you
too, haven’t you?’
I wriggle out of the hug so I can see her face. I blush. How could she know?
‘Older sisters always know. It’s in their job description. I think he’ll be good for you, you know. And you’ll be good for him.’
‘But—’
‘I was never right for him. He needs an equal. Though any boy will struggle to be
your
equal, Florrie. You’re special. Don’t ever forget that.’
She looks so beautiful right now, with her soft blue eyes and her wild beach-babe hair. Ade tried to turn her into something she never was, a perfect angel with a halo of blonde hair brushed
smooth as silk.
She was too strong to be turned into a
mannequin
.
I’m aware of sunlight shining into her eyes, making the colour even more intense.
‘Dawn,’ she says.
‘Yes.’ I know what it means but I won’t cry. I have to be brave for both of us.
‘Hold me, little sister.’
I do what she asks, my arms wrapped tight around her back, my face buried in her hair. She smells of sea-spray. I close my eyes.
I feel her chest expand. Breath being pulled into her lungs, a soft vibration in her throat as that song –
her
song – surrounds me like warm seawater. Her voice is as sweet
and pure as it ever was.
‘T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear.’
‘Don’t be afraid, Meggie, I’m with you now,’ I whisper. ‘You’re not scared, are you?’
I sense her shaking her head as she sings, more stridently,
‘And Grace, my fears relieved.’
‘No, of course you’re not. You were always my wonderful, fearless big sister. I’ve learned so much from you.’
Her voice is fading, carried away on a breeze.
‘How precious did that Grace appear . . .’
I try to cling on but it’s no good.
‘The hour I first believed.’
I sense a change in the air, like the first chill September morning after a summer that seemed to go on forever.
‘You were the best sister, Meggie. The best. I’ve been the luckiest sister alive.’
‘I once was lost but now am found,’
There’s space where she was. Coolness. But I can still
just
hear her voice, though it’s fading faster than I want it to, as the end of the song nears . . .
‘Was blind, but now, I see.’
She’s gone.
When I open my eyes, the screen is blank. The computer time reads 06.20.
And when I click back into my email account, the invitation email has gone, too. But the one from Danny’s father is still there.
I rub my eyes and cheeks with the backs of my hands, getting rid of the tears I didn’t want Meggie to see. I need a moment before I open that email, a moment to accept what just
happened.
Come on, sis. No time to waste
.
It’s not really her voice, I
know
that. But I sense Meggie with me. Not a shroud in a white sheet, but her vitality, her brightness, her impatience. Before, I felt a
responsibility to live her life as well as mine, and that was a burden.
Now it’s like I have twice the confidence and twice the urgency. I open the email.
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Miss Forster,
I write in response to your letter, which I was surprised to receive. Though we travelled extensively in Europe, as far as I am aware, my son never met an English
female with your name, and certainly never had the kind of intimate relationship that your correspondence implies.
The letter’s formality makes me uncomfortable but I read on. Surely he wouldn’t have replied simply to tell me
that
?
I have had thousands of letters from cranks and from bounty-hunters who believe I’ll pay up for ‘information’. Mostly I don’t read them
– my correspondence team screens them – and I certainly never reply. It was a decision I reached a long time ago for my own sanity. But your letter was passed on to me because of
certain facts you shared that it’s not possible for some English schoolgirl to know. So here I am, replying. Maybe I no longer have a grip on that sanity.
You said you can’t tell me how you know what you know. And I sure as hell cannot see how you’d know any of it, either. The private security operatives
I have had working for me since the beginning are one hundred per cent trustworthy. But, you know, you’re right: the ‘accident’ was no accident.
Maybe it was a lucky guess on your part, but I had my guys follow it up. We already had our suspicions regarding what the US and Mexican authorities had so
conveniently concluded about Danny’s supposed recklessness; sure, my boy could be stubborn, like me, but I knew he wasn’t dumb enough to take the controls of a plane mid-flight
over that terrain.
The mystery was why the plane was there in the first place, way off-course. Your letter provided a plausible explanation, though not one any father ever wants to
read of his son. This was the information we needed, however, and my operatives are just through briefing me on the follow-up I ordered right after reading your letter. Miss Forster, you were
right and you were wrong. My son Daniel was foolish, but not evil. My pilot was both, it transpires.
The pilot? But the pilot died, how can Mr Cross blame him for—
The pilot was ahead of my boy. Way ahead. He set up the little ‘deal’ for Daniel, to make him feel like a big shot. But the
real
deal
wasn’t narcotics. It was kidnapping. Why settle for a minor drugs deal when you could get millions for holding the son of a billionaire?
My pilot had been security-screened, of course, but that had been years previously and he’d got greedy since. Greedy and over-confident. The plan was to
make it look like he’d been kidnapped too, then share the profits after he and Daniel were released when I’d paid a suitably large ransom.
Except he talked too much. Another gang heard about the plans and thought they’d take a slice of the action. While the pilot’s gang waited on the
ground, another tried to intercept the plane. The pilot freaked, took evasive action and we can only assume that’s why he crashed.
And so no one got the prize.
I gulp for air.
Poor Danny. To die because of a stupid mistake, and then to face an eternity of guilt when it wasn’t even his fault.
Danny’s death wasn’t going to be resolved by the pilot’s family forgiving him; it was about his own father discovering the truth.
Yet I feel an awful dread as I scroll down the email. The pilot’s young daughters lost their father. Now they might lose the support I know Danny’s father has been providing since
the crash – after all, why would he pay when the pilot conspired to put Danny in danger?
Justice is important – but could I have done more harm than good in setting Danny free?
Of course, knowing the truth and proving it are two different things, Miss Forster. You can’t prove you knew my son, yet I sense that you did somehow. And
what my operatives found seems like the missing piece from the jigsaw – but how to prove it in a court of law?
There are other ways to get justice, ways that I don’t want to explain to a nice schoolgirl in England. But there’s a final point in your letter I
will address: what happens to the pilot’s family.
I thought that Daniel dying would turn me vengeful, but now I realise that’s not the case. My wife says I’m a softie these days, but I have been
providing for the pilot’s family since he died and I won’t change that. The people who killed my son will pay, but the next generation, the girls who had no knowledge of how their
father behaved, they shouldn’t have to suffer.
So, there you go, Miss Forster. I don’t know why I wrote, except that you must care, for your own reasons, and I wanted the story to have an ending. Not a
happy one, but a just one.
I don’t want to hear from you again, but I thought that you deserved to know.
Sincerely,
Vincent Cross
CEO, Cross Enterprises
I close the email. Yes, I did deserve to know. I fear the justice that Danny’s father’s ‘operatives’ will mete out isn’t what I would have chosen
but, of all people, I know that grief affects every one of us differently. And it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for the men who caused the death of my first love.