Day 4
Noah
‘Help me, please.’ Noah spun around, pleading with the onlookers. Why wouldn’t they help him?
‘Dad?’ Noah’s scream was silent. His father didn’t flinch, didn’t move. Statutes – all of them. His parents, Rachel, Benton and his team, the man whose name he didn’t know. Their eyes were glassy, lifeless, and yet Noah felt their disappointment slice into his skin like a dozen slashes of a knife.
Why wouldn’t they help him? Why couldn’t they do something?
Flecks of grit and stone dug into his knees as they dragged across the tarmac.
The darkness closed in around him and he could smell the blood clogging his nostrils. The watchers disappeared, but somehow their eyes remained, along with their contempt, hanging in the cold night air.
Sirens squealed long and urgent, drowning out the sound of his cries and the thud of a fist punching into his body.
You’re too late.
Noah shot upwards, scraping the top of his head on the tent roof. He rubbed his eyes and gasped for breath. A dizzying sense of being lost spun in his head. For a few seconds he had the unsettling feeling of being in his childhood bedroom with the posters of Sheffield Wednesday players covering his walls.
He patted the sleeping bag wrapped around his body as his sense of reality returned.
He ran his fingers along the side of the tent. The fabric was icy to touch and covered in a fine mist of frost that made his fingertips tingle with cold.
His hand found the slim silver LED Lite torch he’d stowed beside his sleeping bag before falling asleep, and he flicked it on. A white circle spotlight illuminated the small tent.
Noah glanced at the sleeping hump of Rachel’s body cocooned inside her sleeping bag and angled the torch away from her face. He wasn’t going to pretend this was out of consideration for Rachel. Sure she needed the sleep and to rest her shoulder. Noah suspected the full day of sledding had hurt more than she’d let on. But that wasn’t the reason he didn’t want to wake her. The truth, hell, the truth was he couldn’t bear to see the disappointment on her face when she realized he’d had another nightmare. The same disappointed eyes he’d woken up from.
A sharp pang of resentment hit his gut. It had as much to do with her presence in the nightmare as it did with her presence beside him. It was crazy to blame Rachel for the shit going on in his head, but Rachel wanted so badly for this trip to change something between them – something in him more like. To what end though? If this trip was helping him, and Noah wasn’t sure if it was, then it was a Band-Aid to a fractured skull.
Noah flopped back onto his back and flicked off the torch. Exhaustion tugged him back towards sleep. A heartbeat later the tendrils of the nightmare snatched at his mind, pulling him into the darkness. The blare of the sirens, the blue lights, coming too late to save him. Noah bolted upwards, his fingers fumbling for the torch until he found the button and the bright white light flicked on.
The walls of the tent closed in, smothering his breath. There would be no more sleep tonight. Noah kicked off the sleeping bag and pulled on his jacket and boots. He felt for the weight of the Swiss Army knife in his pocket before he unzipped the tent and crawled out onto the snow. He had to stop the sirens wailing, and the cut from last night was no longer hurting.
Noah chewed the inside of his lip. He knew the blade of the knife was not a solution. Hell, it was barely a temporary fix, a way to distract his thoughts from the darkness, but that’s all there was for him. As long as he kept the cuts high on his thigh, hidden underneath his boxer shorts, then no one would know, not even Rachel.
Cold air stung the skin on his face and burned the tips of his earlobes. He pulled his hat further onto his head.
The cloud cover above his head had broken and shifted, revealing gaps in the sky like windows to another world. A shock of bright stars shone against the pitch-black night. He squinted upwards for a while as he trudged across the deep snow, gaining distance from the tent and the nightmare lurking inside.
The stars were magnificent. Every single one brighter than any star he’d ever seen, but Noah’s eyes kept moving, hoping to catch a glimmer of the colourful waves of the Northern Lights.
A sudden crunch of snow and movement to his right startled him. Panic swept over his body, tightening his throat. He shone his torch towards the noise and stumbled back.
‘Looking for the Northern Lights?’ Molly asked, holding up a hand to block the torchlight from her eyes.
He nodded, the scream dying in his throat. ‘Sorry,’ he croaked, moving the torch beam to the ground.
‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ she said without a hint of the dark mood Noah had witnessed earlier. Molly had practically thrown herself into the tent to avoid talking about her running injury.
Molly perched on the ledge of the tri-nation border post. ‘I fall asleep all right,’ she said with a deep yawn, ‘but I wake up a few hours later and that’s it – I’m awake.’
‘Nightmares?’ he asked without thinking.
‘No,’ she said, glancing at him with another questioning look. ‘Just awake. You?’
‘Sometimes.’ He rubbed a gloved hand over the back of his neck and focused his attention on the beam of torchlight. ‘The fresh air helps,’ he lied, thinking of the knife in his pocket and the real reason he’d come outside.
‘Hey.’ Molly smiled, pointing at his feet. ‘You’re in Norway, and I’m in Sweden. That’s weird right?’
He smiled. ‘Yep.’ Noah walked around the edge of the stone until his feet found his boot prints again. ‘I just walked through three countries in twenty seconds.’
‘Superman.’ Molly yawned again.
Noah slid onto the rock, sitting beside Molly and balancing the torch upright in the snow between them. The white beam illuminated the square block of cement and nothing else. For all Noah knew, the camp, the tents, the sleeping dogs could all have been swallowed by the snow and they wouldn’t have a clue.
‘Is it out there?’ Molly asked. ‘Will we get to see the Northern Lights, do you think?’
Noah shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s the end of the season. We might have missed it.’
‘I read somewhere that it’s not as good with the naked eye,’ Molly said. ‘The lens of a camera brings out the colours so most people when they come to see it go away disappointed.’
‘I’ve heard that too, but I’d still like to see it.’
‘Me too.’
‘You’re a teacher, right?’ Molly asked after a pause.
Noah thought for a moment. ‘Sort of. I’m still training. I’ll be a qualified primary school teacher in the summer and hope to start my first teaching post in September.’
Molly turned her gaze away from the sky. He could feel her shining eyes assessing him in the torchlight. He turned his head to meet her gaze. All of a sudden Noah felt the absolute still, the silence. He held his breath waiting for the scream of the sirens to echo in his ears, the roar of his heartbeat, but all he heard was silence. Beautiful silence. Noah moved his hand instinctively to the hard edge of the penknife. The desperate need to slice his skin was gone. He didn’t need the distraction from the darkness any more.
‘What did you do before? No offence but you’re a bit old to be training aren’t you?’
Noah smirked. ‘It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I’ve always known I wanted to help people. After university I followed my father into the family business. The golden child and all that, but it wasn’t for me,’ he said, continuing with Rachel’s half-truths without knowing why.
Noah pictured his father. The black suit and puffed-out chest, the belly bulging against the buttons of his jacket. Too much time drinking at the golf course and not enough time playing. An image of his father’s face floated in Noah’s mind. The proud, smug look that had spread across his jowls on Noah’s first day on the job. The image was followed by another face – pursed-lipped disappointment – the look he’d had the last time Noah had seen him, and every time since Noah had walked away from the business.
‘Is teaching? For you, I mean,’ Molly asked.
‘I think so. I like the innocence kids have. Even the fifteen-year-olds with all their lip, they aren’t resigned to a set life. Although I prefer teaching younger kids. Eight-year-olds question everything, including authority, and I think that’s a good thing. I like the guiding role a teacher has in their lives and knowing that if I do my job right then I can make a huge difference to their lives.’
‘You sound like you’ll be a good teacher. My brother was like that. He always knew he wanted to help people. Although he always knew he was going to be a doctor. He couldn’t wait to pack his bags and go to one of the big medical schools in London.’
A silence grew between them. Noah watched the rawness of the pain creep across Molly’s face. What was she thinking? Why was she sad? Molly had mentioned Billy in the hut on the first night. Something had happened to him. Something bad. Noah had a desperate urge to take Molly’s pain away. He sure as hell could do nothing about his own.
‘I’m only thirty-two, you know,’ he said. ‘A minute ago you made it sound like I was ancient.’
She smiled. ‘No, Erica’s ancient, but don’t tell her that or she’ll probably have a meltdown.’
‘You don’t seem to like her much.’
‘It’s not that I don’t like her, it’s just … complicated, I guess. We’re family. We don’t have to like each other.’
Another silence.
‘When’s the wedding?’ Molly asked.
Noah frowned. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, ‘What wedding?’ when he realized – his. ‘Oh, I dunno, it’s…’ Noah struggled for the word.
‘Complicated?’ Molly asked with a wry smile.
Noah smirked again. ‘Something like that.’ Complicated was the understatement of the century, but how else could he explain?
‘Are you enjoying the challenge?’ Molly asked.
‘I think so.’
‘Think?’
‘I … it’s hard to talk about but something bad happened. It changed me. That’s when I decided to give up the family business and try something new and try to be a better person. I … still have nightmares … and I have these, like, flashbacks.’ Emotion crackled in his voice. His throat hurt with the effort of not crying. He’d never told anyone about the flashbacks before.
It was as close as Noah had come to telling anyone about the darkness. Noah bit the inside of his lip again and stopping himself saying more. Talking about it would only bring it to the front of his mind again.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Anyway,’ he said after pause. ‘That’s sort of why I only think I’m enjoying it. It was Rachel’s idea to come. She thought it would be good for me.’
Molly made a sound, somewhere between a huff and a tut.
‘It’s OK. I know you don’t like her.’
‘Sorry.’ Molly pulled a face. ‘I really don’t.’
‘She’s stuck by me though. I’ve not exactly been the nicest person to live with recently. When she met me I was this high flyer, climbing the career ladder. We were into the same things; we wanted the same things. She hasn’t changed, but …’
‘You have,’ Molly said.
He shrugged and gave a small nod of his head. ‘Feels like it. The career stuff, it just doesn’t interest me any more. It’s more than that …’ His voice trailed off. Why was he saying all this? He was supposed to be defending Rachel, not sharing his relationship problems. ‘Rachel could’ve walked away at any point and I wouldn’t have blamed her for it either, but she didn’t. She’s stuck by me through all of it.’
‘But why? I mean, what’s the point if you want different things? If you’ve changed and she hasn’t?’
Noah stared at Molly’s face. The torchlight cast an angelic glow across her features. An image of the airport flashed in his mind, and watching Molly’s face then, just as he was doing now. The feeling of having someone look not at him, not through him, but into him. Molly had somehow managed to voice the thoughts lurking at the back of his mind, that he had yet to face himself.
‘I …’ He stammered, willing the image away and words to replace them. How could he explain something he didn’t understand?