A Window Breaks Read online

  The next wave twisted us to our left. The one after that turned us to our right. I tried fighting against it with my floppy rake-oar, digging hard on either side of the dinghy as the wave washed back out.

  ‘You have to paddle again,’ I shouted to Rachel.

  She grunted and got back up, then leaned over the side of the boat up to her elbow and scooped handfuls of water with her good arm.

  My head pounded. It was tough going but we seemed to be making progress. Another few strokes with the rake and we neared the front of the deck. I raised myself up and checked for the men again. Still no sign of them.

  ‘Keep it up,’ I said.

  ‘We’re trying, Tom.’

  I plunged my rake-oar in again, pulling with one long sweep after another. My arms and back ached. My muscles quivered. The next wave was bigger than any we’d faced before. It thundered towards us.

  ‘Hold on.’

  The wave slammed against the boat, shunting us back. The rear of the dinghy bounced hard off a metal girder with a groan and a twist. Again, I worried about being sucked under the decking. But there was one advantage to the wave being so big. When it washed back out, it carried us with it. And the next few waves were smaller. Just. I paddled harder. Rachel and Holly did the same.

  Five minutes of frenzied exertion. Maybe longer. I didn’t look up through any of it. I just paddled and pulled. Paddled and pulled. In my mind’s eye, I pictured us together when this was over. I could see Holly and Rachel sitting with blankets over their shoulders in the back of a police station somewhere, mugs of hot tea in their hands. I could see them looking up at me with tears of relief in their eyes. Safe now. All of it over. A chance to move on.

  I wanted it over.

  The boat jostled and rocked, dragging me back to reality. My ribs stung and ached. My arms were on fire. I made myself take five more strokes before I finally turned and looked back.

  My heart sank.

  We were barely fifteen metres from shore, rocking out in the open, close to the deck. Stuck. Rachel and Holly must have noticed the slump in my shoulders because they turned to look too.

  ‘Oh God.’ Rachel hung her head. ‘We’re not going to make it.’

  Holly just stared. Then she leaned forwards, clinging to the rear of the boat.

  ‘Buster,’ she muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Buster!’ She pointed. ‘Dad, I see Buster!’

  Horror clawed at my heart. Another wave tilted the boat as I pushed my face into the darkness, peering towards shore.

  Please don’t let her see what they did to him. Please not that.

  But the more I looked, the thicker the darkness became. Was Holly imagining it? We were all suffering from shock and exhaustion. No way we couldn’t be. Perhaps Holly was just seeing what she wanted to.

  ‘I don’t see anything,’ Rachel told her.

  ‘There.’ She pointed again, more insistent now. ‘Near the boulders. Under that tree.’

  I squinted, following her finger. And then something buckled inside me. I felt my body sag.

  Buster.

  They’d dragged him out onto the rocks at the edge of the deck. He was lying with his face hanging down, bedraggled and limp. I felt a hot spike of anger, like someone had stabbed me between the shoulder blades. Our family dog. He deserved so much better than this.

  ‘Dad, we have to go back for him.’

  I slumped more, feeling the physical drag in my arms, the tug in my heart.

  ‘We can’t,’ I told her.

  ‘Yes we can. He looks hurt.’

  I didn’t say anything. I just shook my head.

  ‘Dad! Go back! We have time. He can see us!’

  I shook my head no. Holly’s eyes went wide. Confusion twisted her face. Then she stood and made a grab for the rake. I didn’t release it. We looked at each other, our faces only inches apart. How much more could Holly take?

  ‘Mum, tell him.’

  She glanced down at Rachel, a pleading expression twisting her face. But Rachel wouldn’t look up at her. I think it was then that Holly started to understand. I saw a tremor in her cheek. Her lips shook.

  ‘W-why won’t you go back?’

  Tears pricked her eyes.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Please, Holly. Please don’t ask me that.’

  ‘Dad!’

  I looked away, off to the deck. My throat felt raw. It hurt when I swallowed. I snatched a ragged breath, shaking my head.

  I was going to have to tell her now. I didn’t see that I had a choice.

  ‘Buster’s dead,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry, but they killed him. I saw them.’

  ‘What?’

  She stepped backwards, but she didn’t let go of the rake.

  ‘You said he was OK. You promised me we’d come back for him.’

  The pain in my throat was even worse now. ‘Because I lied. I had to. I didn’t want to but I had to. I’m so sorry, Holly. There’s nothing we can do.’

  I saw her shock. I saw her despair and betrayal. All of those years of telling her to trust me. All of it wiped out in an instant.

  ‘Mum?’

  This time, Rachel lifted her face slowly, as if her head was weighed down. Her eyes glimmered darkly. Her mouth was slack.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ Holly’s voice shook. ‘I don’t believe either of you.’

  ‘Why would we lie?’ Rachel asked her.

  ‘I want to go back.’

  She made another grab for the rake, harder this time. The dinghy had twisted sideways and I had my back to the sea, so I didn’t see the wave coming in. It rocked the boat hard, tipping us up.

  A lifting sensation. My bare feet slipped. I toppled forwards, letting go of the rake as Holly fell back.

  I heard her yelp. Heard Rachel shout.

  There was a splash.

  I crashed to my knees, grabbing hold of the side of the dinghy.

  But when I looked up, Holly was gone.

  29

  Three seconds. That’s how long – give or take – I stared into the sea. That’s how long the worst, most crippling kind of fear can grip hold of you for.

  I couldn’t spot Holly anywhere. It was like she’d vanished. The waves were wild, the tide was strong. She had my outdoor coat weighing her down, my backpack on her shoulders.

  I thought of her sinking, fighting to get back to the surface. I felt like unseen hands were reaching up through the bottom of the dinghy and gripping hold of my ankles, pulling me down with her.

  Where was she?

  Rachel leaned over the side of the boat, searching the water. The long seconds ticked on. The dinghy twisted and rocked.

  ‘I don’t see her,’ she screamed. ‘I don’t see her, Tom.’

  Panic took me then. It flooded my system, like a raging electrical storm.

  Think.

  What about the rake? If I used it as a pole, maybe we could find her and pull her out. But as I looked around, I saw that the rake was gone too. Holly must have fallen with it.

  She had to come up. She had to. She . . .

  There.

  A hand broke the surface maybe five metres in front of us, between the boat and the shore. Holly’s face briefly appeared with a flash of white. She gulped air and went under again. I dived in.

  Icy blackness tore through my head. It rippled over my skin. I pulled with my arms and kicked with my legs. My jogging trousers dragged against me. I swam to where I thought Holly had been and came up, looking madly around. Black waves jostled me. The deck loomed high overhead. The dinghy bobbed up. Rachel was watching me, shaking her head in rigid fear.

  Oh Jesus, no.

  I sucked air and went under again. I pulled down hard, feeling the waves and the tides tussling with my body. I opened my eyes into the salty sting but the absolute black was impenetrable, like not opening my eyes at all. I stretched out my hands as far as I could. I did the same with my feet. I floated there, star-like, waving my fingers and toes around
at the far extremes of my reach, straining to feel for Holly, for anything.

  The ache built in my lungs, but I wouldn’t come up yet. I couldn’t. I craved air but still I hung on.

  Then I felt it. Something. A leg? A waist? It was above me.

  I kicked up. But when I broke the surface and grabbed with my arms, another jolt of panic ripped through me. It wasn’t Holly. It was Rachel.

  ‘She’s over there, Tom.’

  Rachel wiped water from her face and pointed to shore. I whirled around, my heart in my mouth, and saw Holly staggering and stumbling up the stacked boulders fronting the shoreline, waves crashing against her, water draining out of her coat and the backpack she had on. She’d made it in. My brilliant, stupid, headstrong girl.

  ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come up without her,’ Rachel said. ‘I was worried you’d think she was still down there.’

  ‘Can you swim?’

  ‘I think so. With the waves, I can.’

  Rachel did her one-handed crawl next to me, turned onto her side. I swam beside her in a clumsy breaststroke, the massive waves bundling us up and tumbling us on. Far off to our right, the dinghy skimmed by, then faltered and rocked back with an outgoing wave before being gathered up and skimming forwards again.

  ‘I couldn’t stay in the boat on my own, Tom. I didn’t want to leave you and Holly alone.’

  I nodded, spitting water, pulling and kicking towards shore. I could see Holly ahead of us. She almost fell back in exhaustion, then pressed her cheek to a rock and clung on for a few seconds before climbing again. I didn’t know how she’d react when she saw Buster, and I was afraid of the men getting to her before we could.

  ‘Should we have told her sooner?’ Rachel asked me.

  I shook my head no. And even if we’d told her, I was pretty sure she would have dived in anyway. She wouldn’t have left Buster on these rocks.

  ‘We couldn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Because we were protecting her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You wouldn’t change it if you could do it again?’

  I stared at Rachel. Why was she asking me this? Again, I felt a quiver of uncertainty as I thought of the question I hadn’t put to her earlier. Do you know what this is? Do you know why these men are here?

  Ask it? Or don’t ask it?

  But what could it change now?

  Waves crashed around us. We were close to the shore. I pushed up to my feet. My legs shook. My arms trembled. I grasped for the boulders and helped Rachel to climb.

  ‘Tom?’

  I looked back. Rachel was reaching up to me with her good arm.

  ‘You know I love you both? You know I love you both so much?’

  I swallowed.

  Don’t ask it.

  Not now.

  ‘We love you too, Rachel.’

  I grasped her wrist and heaved her towards me. There was a blur of grey behind her as the dinghy rushed in on a wave and blasted against the rocks. It rose up wildly, hovered, plunged back down.

  Another wave rocked it, even more than before. This time, water breached the sides and gushed in. The boat juddered and groaned, beginning to flex. It sunk backwards, until just the prow was sticking up at an awkward angle, pinned against the rocks, waves hammering against it.

  I watched the dinghy and knew – with a sinking sensation of my own – that it would be almost impossible to relaunch it until the sea calmed and the tide went back out, and perhaps not even then.

  ‘Dad?’

  Holly was crouching over Buster at the top of the boulders, her hair hanging wetly over her face. Her jaw wobbled.

  ‘I’m sorry, Holly.’ I scrambled up the last boulder to join her and kneel at her side. ‘I am so, so sorry, my love.’

  ‘No. I told you, Dad.’ Her eyes were red and lost, searching my face. ‘Look.’

  She placed my hand on Buster’s flank. I felt everything I didn’t want to feel. He was icy cold. His fur was saturated and dense with salt and mud.

  She can’t accept it, I thought. She just can’t. It’s all too much.

  But then I felt something. The vaguest stirring. A slight, wheezing expansion of Buster’s chest.

  What?

  I lowered my face towards his muzzle. A wisp of air escaped his nostrils and grazed my cheek.

  My body went weak with relief and sadness. Buster. He’d held on all this time. He’d waited for us to come.

  I think that’s what was about to finally break me. The fact Buster had been so strong, that he’d been suffering alone. That I’d been going to leave him behind.

  ‘This was in his leg,’ Holly said.

  My eyesight was hazy from the salt water and fatigue, so it took a few seconds for focus to come.

  I peered closer. Holly was holding some kind of feather. Red, with a sharp steel point on the end.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘A dart.’ Rachel had levered herself up the rocks in front of us. She panted, then reached out to peel back Buster’s eyelid. ‘I think he’s sedated. I think they shot him with a tranquilizer gun.’

  30

  A tranquilizer dart.

  I felt conflicted by that. On the one hand, yes, I experienced a huge swell of relief, because they’d subdued Buster instead of killing him. But, on the other hand, I felt a deep trill of fear. Because didn’t their use of a tranquilizer gun suggest some really detailed planning? And didn’t that mean either the men had been spying on us or they’d been tipped to expect a dog?

  By Brodie? It had to be possible. And now the loose thought that had jangled in my mind about the dinghy came to me fully formed. It was Brodie who’d suggested the only way in here without coming through the gate was by boat. He could have told these men the same thing. And it was Brodie who’d told me where to park our car. So maybe he’d told these men exactly where our Volvo would be. Maybe that was how they’d known to slash our tyres.

  Which made him, what? Some kind of spotter for these men? He knew how isolated it was here. Maybe he’d waited until the right family came along and then . . .

  No. Stop it. Don’t go there. Not now.

  I had to focus on getting us to safety.

  Lifting Buster in my arms, I ran with him towards the south side of the lodge with Rachel and Holly stumbling alongside. Buster’s head drooped over my forearm. His legs bounced and jolted. His fur was soaked and cold. Rachel had said we needed to get him warm and dry, fast. Same thing with us. We were all pale and shivering and I knew we couldn’t stay outside much longer. I wanted to get to the phone in the kitchen. We had to try calling for help.

  The side door to the pool room was out of sight of the far side of the lodge. It was made up of two panels of reinforced glass separated by a horizontal strip of oak in the middle. I laid Buster on the ground and grabbed the screwdriver from the sodden backpack Holly had on. There was a rock nearby. I used it like a hammer on the end of the screwdriver and punched out the glass in the bottom panel of the door, timing my blows with the crashing of the waves.

  After six or seven strikes I cleared the last remaining shards away with the rock and then Rachel stuck her head inside and crawled through, sweeping the shattered glass into a pile with the side of her shoe. She reached back out for Holly’s hand and I followed after them, stooping low with Buster sagging in my arms.

  The pool room was lit green from the lights submerged in the pool. My skin flushed and tingled in the sudden dense heat. We stood there, listening, but the only noise was the hum of the boiler unit for the pool.

  ‘Where first?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘Laundry room. We get dry. We get dressed.’

  She nodded and loaded Holly up with towels from the rack outside the sauna. They hurried around the pool. Holly was limping because of her missing shoe. She looked dazed and wiped, like she’d been awake for days.

  I scanned the deck outside. There was no sign of the men. Hoisting Buster in my arms, I jogged to where Rachel was waiting at the door into the main
part of the lodge, peeking through the glass porthole.

  ‘I don’t see anything,’ she whispered. ‘Are you ready?’

  Probably not.

  She opened the door and I stepped through with Buster, pausing in the corridor. My nerves prickled. The lodge almost sounded too silent.

  There was no movement. No noise. Nothing to indicate the men were close.

  Water dripped out of Buster’s coat, running along my arm and splattering on the floor.

  Now or never.

  ‘I think it’s clear,’ I said, and padded along the corridor in my bare feet. Past the cinema room and the corridor leading to the library. The kitchen up ahead.

  I stopped outside the laundry room. Rachel and Holly caught up to me and moved inside. I backed in after them, hitting the light switch with my elbow and pushing the door closed with my foot. Aromas of detergent hung in the air. Rachel looked around her in a hurry, grabbed a mop, wedged it beneath the handle.

  I felt paralysed with fear. I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

  Rachel spread a towel on the floor in front of me and handed me another. ‘You need to get him dry. Rub him down. Hurry, Tom.’

  The laundry room was only a small space to begin with and it felt much smaller now. Holly staggered backwards into the far corner as I set Buster down. I’d never seen her look so sickly or so pale. A squiggle of purple veins pulsed slowly in her temple, behind the dark bruising to her eyes. Her lips were cracked and blue. She reached out a hand to Buster as she continued to shuffle backwards, a pained look on her face, like she couldn’t bear to touch him just now.

  ‘He’s going to be OK, Holly. Mum’s checked him over.’

  She nodded, but I could tell she didn’t believe me, and I could understand why. I rubbed him down while Rachel opened the tumble dryer and yanked out the socks, trousers and tops we’d spun the previous afternoon. Buster was floppy and inert. He didn’t show any indication of coming round from his sedative.

  I stuck at it as Rachel took the rest of the towels from Holly and began to help her out of the backpack and the old coat she had on. Already I felt like we were taking too much time, making too much noise. I kept expecting the door to crash open any moment. I kept hearing phantom footsteps out in the corridor and that awful crunch-crack of the shotgun being pumped.