As he listened, the sound was getting quieter, then louder – he could hear it, and then he couldn’t again – then it was back, louder.
He felt a squeeze to his hand. He looked down at Ben; the man nodded and whispered a few more words:
‘I... had the satellite... called for... help. But she...’ He fell silent.
‘Yes – she? Ben, what? What did she do?’ said Scott.
But there was no reply. Ben’s eyes flickered and rolled backwards, opened again briefly, then fell closed one final time.
And then he felt it. The hairs on his arm standing up; a trickle of ice running from his scalp down to his heels.
He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did.
Somebody was watching him.
He whipped his head round, scanned the trees beyond, tried to work out where the feeling had come from. Was that a shape, just there, behind that tree – a human outline? Was that somebody moving out there – or was it just the trees in the mid-afternoon breeze, a wind that seemed to be gathering steam now, as the day drew to a close?
It was impossible to tell; still the feeling of being stared at, surveyed, remained.
And then the leaves and branches shuddered and a figure emerged, walking towards him – slowly, with purpose – and a soft voice said:
‘Ah. Here you are, Scott.’
CARLY
If there was one thing Carly had become an expert at over the years, it waspretending.
She had to do so much of it, all the time, relentlessly.Pretendingto give a shit about people’s dreary, humdrum problems; acting as if they were telling her something completely new and different and unique and special every time, when in truth, everybody complained about the same old crap.
They were all the same, really, people’s wounds. You’d seen one, and you’d seen them all. She wanted to scream at the thought of it: the memory of the fifty-minute slots, one blurring into another, the same thing, all day, every day, without end.
Until she’d met Robyn. Robyn, who’d changed all that for her. Who’d been so beautifully unique, so different to anyone else she’d ever met. Robyn, who’d made Carly feel a kind of love she hadn’t known was possible.
And then someone destroyed the best thing Carly had ever had. Someone took Robyn away from her. Someone killed her.
Hannah.
Carly stared down at Scott, still crouched on the ground next to Ben. She gripped the now blood-soaked knife in onehand, the satellite phone in the other. She wondered why he hadn’t said anything yet – perhaps he was in shock?
She’d hoped the source of the noise Scott had heard earlier in the trees was Ben, but it was still amazingly lucky that it was, and that she’d stumbled across him when she did – they must have all ended up close together when they were going after that helicopter. She’d not said one word before slamming the knife – which she’d snuck out of Naya’s bag when she was looking for painkillers for Scott – hard into the side of Ben’s chest. It filled her with guilt and horror – none of this was his fault – but what else was she supposed todo?
Then just a moment ago, she’d been lurking in the trees with the satellite phone, trying to find out how far away the rescuers were, when she’d seen Scott limp into the clearing, move towards Ben, lay an ear to his grey lips.
Finally Scott spoke. ‘Did you do this, Carly? Did you stab Ben? And what about Hannah – was that you too?’ He leaned over to one side, away from Ben, and retched onto the ground; nothing much seemed to come out, they were all too dehydrated for that, she supposed. Carly watched as he wiped his mouth, then turned to look back at her. ‘But... I don’t get it.Why?’
Carly pondered for a moment how much to tell him. He didn’t need to know every detail, sure, but it might be good for him to understand some of it. She wanted him to know that she’d had a good reason for coming here to confront Hannah; for doing everything she’d done.
‘I lost someone,’ she said eventually, her voice soft, wistful – the way she always sounded when she thought about Robyn. Those three little words could in no way sum up the enormityof her pain, her grief. ‘Then after I lost her, I lost everything else.’
And it was true. After Robyn died, Carly had spiralled. She’d found she could no longer be a therapist; could no longer listen to people talk about their nightmare dates or low self-esteem or how much they hated their boss. She could no longer kid herself that she was any good at helping anyone with their struggles; if she couldn’t even save the person she loved most in the world, what the hell was she doing trying to support anyone else?
So, she’d stopped practising, found herself unable to work – unable tofunction– for months, until she’d defaulted on her mortgage. Eventually she’d taken a crappy customer service job at a local tech company, reading robotic scripts instructing people on how to set up their new devices, because it was the only thing her traumatized brain could handle.
Not that any of that could compare to the loss of Robyn.
Scott shifted then on the jungle floor; Carly turned to look at him. He was watching her, eyes full of confusion.
‘But what’s that got to do with Hannah?’ he said.
