Coldbrook (Hammer)(105)

‘But he knows we’re here,’ Jayne said.

Sean blinked at her and shrugged. But there was nothing he could say.

From outside there came that familiar, terrible call. Jayne looked again. They stood motionless now, following Waits’s stare, and before she pulled away from the window again Jayne was aware of every single one of them looking up at her. And she knew that they would wait.





4


This time the dream staggers rather than flows, shifting from one scene to the next like a damaged film missing random frames. And Charlotte stalks the suburbs of Vic’s guilt.

This is my dream I can change it I can make it better.

Charlotte chuckles. The dream flickers, and then they are outside the strange place that always feels like home. Vic tries to run, but he is on his hands and knees, his fingertips melting into the hot road. Charlotte knocks on the door and Lucy answers.

No, he tries to say. Charlotte turns to laugh at him or show him her dead eyes, but it is not Charlotte at all – it is Holly standing there dead before him and mocking his remorse.

‘Holly!’ he shouts, shocked that he had found his voice at last. ‘No, Holly!’

Her mouth falls open and she—

—Vic snapped awake, Olivia crying beside him, and Marc looked back at him from the cockpit.

Shit shit shit, he thought, blinking quickly but not really wanting to close his eyes again. He was afraid that she would still be waiting there behind them.

He looked over Olivia’s head at Lucy, and his wife was just turning away. ‘Lucy?’ She didn’t hear him, and though he took a deep breath he did not speak again. He remembered the end of his dream and what he’d been shouting, and wondered whether he had scared them all with his yelling out of Holly’s name.

Even though the light was weak and the helicopter shook, he could not mistake Lucy’s expression when she’d turned away from him – the heavy eyes, her sadly etched mouth. So Vic hugged his daughter, accepting her innocent, uncomplicated love and wishing his could be like that.

He looked from the window and saw a landscape fired by a red-palette dawn. Red sky in the morning . . . he thought, and Olivia snuggled into his embrace. He remembered Holly, not as she had been in his dream but as he had known her at the height of their affair. Never demanding, never intrusive, their few tentative conversations about being together properly had always been initiated by him, and she had never forced the issue. In her silence he had read the truth – she had wanted it more than anything.

But he’d never truly considered leaving Lucy, and when she had fallen pregnant his and Holly’s relationship had stopped without either of them needing to say anything. He could remember each intimate detail, every sigh and position from the last time they had made love, but he had no idea whether either of them had known it was going to be the last time.

Gary was flying quite low, and as the minutes ticked by it became easier to see the truth of what had happened below them. It also became harder for Vic to reach out to Lucy and try to explain. Her expression as she’d turned away should have prompted him to reassure her, but it had scared him too much. So he looked at the ruin outside and wondered how it could have spread so quickly.

The rolling landscape was speckled with individual homes and groups of buildings, and every few minutes they passed over larger townships. Fires were burning, many small, a few large, probing up at them with smoky fingers – accidents, people protecting their homes, authorities burning bodies on pyres that got out of hand. Some of the smoke was grey and light, some heavy and dark and thick, and he had no desire to understand the difference.

‘Daddy?’ Olivia shouted against the helicopter’s roar. She was fidgeting against him again. Vic gazed down at her. Lucy was looking at him now and something in her expression seemed to have relaxed.

‘I need to pee,’ Olivia said.

Vic nodded, and smiled at Lucy. She didn’t smile back, but the mistrust had gone from her eyes. Perhaps she’d thought it away, or maybe she’d simply discarded it because of everything else that was happening.

Vic slipped on his headset and asked, ‘Gary, where are we?’

‘Baltimore’s close. Airport in about thirty minutes.’

‘Sorry, I slept,’ Vic said.

‘Need the rest,’ Marc said, turning and looking over the facing seats at the family. ‘Don’t worry, honey, you can pee soon.’ He smiled at Olivia and touched his microphone. Lucy got the message and took off Olivia’s headset.