Noah
Noah leant against the doorframe and caught his breath before pushing himself from the wall and staggering into the cabin. The single room was lit by the dim white glow of a torch, sat upright on the wooden table in the centre of the room. The reach of the light stopped by the edge of two bunk beds in the far corners of the room, leaving the rest of the cabin in shadow.
He beelined for the single cupboard on the wall. Chipped cups, a plastic plate. No knives. No corkscrews. Damn! Now what?
‘Noah?’ Rachel said from one of the bunks.
‘Rachel.’ Noah spun around, saliva filling his mouth as he watched her, bent over her backpack on the bottom bunk. The inside of his cheeks ached, and the desire to be sick again turned in his head.
‘I’ve been looking for you.’ Rachel turned around, her eyes assessing him. ‘What’s wrong?’
He shook his head. ‘I … it’s …’ Tears fell from his eyes.
‘Hey. What is it?’ Rachel stepped closer, taking his arm and guiding him to the bunk.
His body sunk to the bottom bunk and he buried his head in his hands, wishing he could block out the smell of petrol and the flickering amber light as easily as he could the surrounds of the cabin. ‘The pedestrian I killed … he was … he was Molly’s brother.’ Noah’s chest heaved from the effort of voicing his thoughts and hearing them for himself.
‘Oh.’ Rachel sat down beside him. Her hand touched his leg. ‘It was still an accident,’ she said. ‘You didn’t mean to kill Billy.’
Noah lifted his head and turned his head slowly towards Rachel. ‘How did you know his name?’
‘Oh,’ Rachel said again. The single word laced with understanding, and in that moment Noah knew for sure. It was no coincidence he was on this trip with the sister of the man he’d killed.
Noah’s head pounded with questions, demands, panic, fear – all fighting to take first place in his mind. All of a sudden his mouth was no longer filled with saliva but dry like paper. He tried to lick his lips before forcing out the only three words he could say: ‘You did this.’
A crease formed on Rachel’s forehead and she stared at a spot on the other side of the cabin. It was all Noah could do not to grab her face and force her to look at him.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ she said.
‘How many times have I begged you to find out his name and you said you couldn’t? Wouldn’t more like. What the hell were you thinking, Rachel?’
Rachel raised her chin a fraction before she spoke. ‘I was thinking that you needed to move on with your life. We both did. I was thinking that if you came on this trip and saw for yourself that the guy’s sister had moved on, and was happy and living her life, then you’d realize you could do the same. I was thinking that I wanted my fiancé back.’
‘When were you going to tell me?’
‘Afterwards,’ she said, dropping her head and gazing at her hands. ‘I didn’t know the two of you would become friends, did I?’ she added, sounding more like a petulant teenager than a grown woman. ‘Stupid as this sounds I thought you’d be spending most of your time with me.’
A wave of pure hate washed over his body – the force of a riptide dragging him under. How had he not seen this coming? He’d always known Rachel was driven, single-minded and hellbent on getting what she wanted. But to go to such lengths of deceit, it was close to insane, wasn’t it?
Noah could almost see the warped thought process in Rachel’s mind and how she reasoned with herself to lie and deceive him the way she had, but why hadn’t she just given him Billy’s name when he’d asked her so many times to look it up for him? She still worked at the MET and had access to the files. A few keystrokes and he could have had Billy’s name and found Molly and her mum himself. It was breaking law, but since when had Rachel cared about bending rules?
‘So you weren’t planning to tell me so I could tell Molly how sorry I am and beg for forgiveness? You were just going to tell me, matter-of-fact, after the event? Did you really think that would work? Did you really think I’d be like: “OK then, I can forget all about the two people I killed and let’s get back on track?” And by the way, Molly is not all right. She’s far from all right. I’d always wondered about it, but now I know for sure: it wasn’t just two lives I destroyed that night; it was much more. Molly and her mum, and Erica, and Benton’s father and brother too.’ Noah’s voice cracked but he didn’t care. Tears blurred his vision. ‘How can you play with people’s lives like this? It isn’t a game, Rachel. I killed two people. Don’t you get that?’
‘It was an accident,’ Rachel cried in a low voice carrying the same despair as his own. ‘You didn’t pick up a gun and shoot them point-blank. You lost control of your car chasing two terrorist suspects. For all you knew they could’ve been on their way to kill a hundred people. You were doing your job, Noah. Can’t you see that? Besides, nothing else has worked,’ she said, dropping her voice to a murmur. ‘I wanted you back.’
An accident. Doing his job. Rachel’s knack for creating an alternative truth served her perfectly in the PR team but Noah couldn’t swallow it. He might not have meant to kill Benton or Billy, but he had. All because he’d been reckless and stupid. If only he’d listened to Benton. ‘Ease off.’ Noah could still hear the words ringing in his ears. If only he’d stayed in the passenger seat or better yet, if only he hadn’t joined the force in the first place. He’d only done it to please his father.
Noah closed his eyes tight, trying to wade through the anger and questions without answers contorting in his mind to a point in the distance that mattered more than anything else. What did he do now?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I did it for you. For both of us.’
A pressure squeezed the inside of Noah’s skull. ‘It’s over between us, Rachel.’
‘What?’ she cried out. ‘Noah, don’t be ridiculous. If you just spend some time thinking about this, you’ll realize I was right.’
Noah shook his head. ‘You did it for you. You said so yourself. You wanted your fiancé back, even though I’ve been telling you for months that I’m never going to be who I was. You couldn’t accept it.’
‘Can we just –’
‘Just stop, Rachel. Please stop. It’s been over for months now. I was going to tell you when we got back, but really, what’s the point? When this trip is over, I never want to see you again. What you’ve done is so unbelievable. I don’t even know who you are any more.’
The wave of hate washed away leaving Noah suddenly empty and weak. The exhaustion from the past few days hit him hard, a punch to the side of his head, so that all he wanted to do was curl up in his sleeping bag and sleep, but he couldn’t. Rachel’s, what – Deceit? Game? Selfishness? – whatever the word for it, it didn’t just affect him, it affected Molly too. He had to tell her.
A wave of sickness turned in Noah’s stomach. How many hours had he spent wishing he could talk to the family of the man he’d killed? Wondering if he had a wife and children, a family who loved him and missed him.
Noah had met Benton’s father and brother at the funeral. A retired police officer himself, Benton’s dad had laid a firm hand on Noah’s shoulder. ‘It comes with the job,’ he’d said. ‘My son thought a lot of you.’
Tears had spilled from Noah’s eyes as he’d fought to voice some kind of apology through the rock slicing into his windpipe.
Noah would live with what he’d done for the rest of his life, but it was nothing to the pain and suffering he’d caused Benton’s and Billy’s families. And now he had the chance to apologize to Molly too. How many times had he imagined standing before the man’s family, begging, pleading, imploring for forgiveness? Hundreds, Noah guessed, or maybe thousands. But that was when they were faceless shadows in the darkness of his mind. Now it was Molly he’d have to tell, hurt, beg for forgiveness, and that seemed an impossible feat.
Noah pictured Molly’s eyes, shining like stars, and the light she switched on inside him. Maybe it takes someone just as broken to help fix you. He’d been the one to break her. The one who had shattered her dreams and ruined her life.
A sudden noise carried in the silence. A swish of fabric, a gasp for breath, from a place the torchlight didn’t reach.
Noah drew in a sharp intake of breath, his heart stopping for a split second as his eyes shot to the bunk beds on the opposite side of the room.
‘You killed Billy?’ Erica’s voice rang out in the silence of the cabin. The hump of sleeping bag rustled again, and a second later Erica’s distraught face appeared from the shadows. Her skin was pale, almost translucent in the dim light.
‘You killed Billy,’ she said again, kicking her legs out of her sleeping bag before jumping down to the cabin floor.
‘Yes,’ Noah whispered.
‘You’re a policeman then, not a teacher?’
‘I was a policeman. After the crash I couldn’t do it any more so I quit the force.’
‘Does Molly know?’ Erica asked, rubbing the palms of her hands over eyes swollen half closed before pulling on her gloves.
‘No.’ Noah shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I only just put it together. Molly told me what happened to Billy and I realized the connection. I didn’t say anything then. I know I should’ve done, but I didn’t know how.’
‘I have to tell her,’ Erica said, her voice cracking with the same emotion ripping at Noah’s insides.
‘I’m sorry,’ Noah said, a sob catching in his throat. ‘Billy was your brother too. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ His words rung hollow. They weren’t nearly enough. The darkness crowded around him, squeezing him too tight to breathe all but the shallowest of breaths. What had he done?