Coldbrook

dreamlike, and for the first time in her life she put the cliche into action and pinched the back of her hand. But she did not wake up.

‘How do you feel?’ the man asked.

‘Head hurts,’ Holly said. ‘And I need to pee.’ She almost smiled. What an auspicious introduction to another world.

‘Sorry about your head,’ the man said. ‘Precautionary. We’d been watching, and we didn’t know quite what to expect.’ He stood to one side as if allowing her to pass, and the little girl fled back through the doorway.

‘In there?’ Holly asked. From inside she smelled the faint hint of cooking meat, and heard the distant jangle of music. And then she saw the small logo on his jacket — three intersecting circles, their overlapping areas shaded black. She recognised it from the back of the jacket of one of her rescuers.

And she recognised it from home.

‘In there,’ the man confirmed. ‘Welcome to Coldbrook.’

7

In the end, they drove to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Tommy knew how much Jayne loved it up there, and the weather gave them a long, dry day of walking and picnicking, talking and being in love. He frequently surprised her with such gestures, and sometimes in his company she went for hours without being reminded of her illness. She’d forget herself under the spell of his kindness. He always waved off any comments, saying, It’s what you do for someone you love. But she always made certain that he knew how much she appreciated everything he did, and every small part of him, because she never wanted to take him for granted. And the gratitude was for herself as much as for him, a reminder of where she was and how important Tommy was to her well-being. If she didn’t thank him, she feared that she would lose her way.

She knew that she was lucky to have Tommy, and at least once each day she experienced a mortal fear of what would happen should that luck desert her.

Walking back towards Tommy’s battered old Toyota, holding his hand, Jayne’s discomfort was just beginning to grow as the sinking afternoon sun started to lengthen their shadows. The day was already a pleasing memory. Some days lived for ever; she never usually knew that when they were happening, but some time after she would realise that they had been among the best days of her life.

Jayne’s mother was still alive, somewhere, and the only time there was true tension between her and Tommy was when he suggested that they should get in touch. Didn’t you see her? she’d ask him, never quite shouting, never truly calm. You have no idea. No concept of what I went through before I met you. And he’d let it lie because he knew it would do no good. Jayne had made that very clear from the start; she was on her own, two thousand miles from where she’d been born, and her family had died with her brother. He’d been a small-time criminal, dragged into the LA gang culture and found dead at the age of seventeen with a bullet in the back of his skull and his genitals cut off. The coroner hadn’t been able to tell whether the mutilation was post-mortem, and Jayne had the impression that no one cared. One less gang-banger, one less headache for the LAPD. And when her mother had received the phone call she’d hung up, drunk another bottle of wine, and told Jayne later that evening when she arrived home from school.

Johnny’s dead, hon. Can you fetch your mother another bottle?

Why didn’t you call me!?

What good woulda that done?

Johnny!

He knew how it’d end up. I told him often enough. Now get your mother another bottle, hon.

Another bottle, and another, was the way it had been going, and the way it continued from then until Johnny’s sad funeral. Three fuckers had shown up an hour after the last mourners had left, when Jayne was still kneeling beside her only brother’s grave watering the soil with her tears. They’d sauntered past her and stood beside the grave, then pulled pistols and fired three quick shots as some sort of fucked-up salute. Jayne had stood to run after them, beat some sense into their twisted, drug-addled brains, but her legs had folded beneath her as her muscles cramped, driving wedges of pain into her brain. They’d laughed as they ran away, and she’d woken later with paramedics tending her along with the old lady who’d found her and was fussing around nearby.

Next day, she’d remained at home long enough to pack some clothes and steal a thousand dollars from her mother’s back-drawer stash. Then she’d called her school sweetheart Tommy and told him she was leaving LA to live with her cousin in Birmingham, England.

‘It’s been a lovely day,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

‘Only did it ’cos I want a blow job tonight.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Jayne laughed, and the freeing of tension lessened the pains in her neck. Complete relaxation is the key, one specialist had told her, while another had said Exercise as much as you can, gently and often. Walking in the hills with her love gave her the best of both options.

When Tommy had said he’d come with her, she’d seen a whole new future opening up. They’d got as far as Knoxville, fallen in love with the place, and stayed. On days like today she was living in that future, bright and secure as if she awaited the fate of a normal person, not someone destined to die young. The churu was an insidious beast, kept at bay by a morning massage while it ate away at her from inside.

‘No, I mean it,’ Tommy said, mock serious. ‘I need head. I’ll be sitting on the sofa, and you can have a floor cushion so you’re comfortable.’ He took a small tin from his pocket and extracted a ready-rolled joint. ‘Hands free.’ He tucked the joint in the corner of his mouth, a poor James Dean. ‘Then if you’re lucky, baby, I’ll return the favour.’

‘Nah. American Idol’s on tonight.’

The joint tilted groundward. ‘A man knows where he stands.’

‘Yeah.’ Jayne squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back before letting go to light up. She turned away to look down over the hillside towards the car park and the lowlands beyond. The trees cast complex afternoon shadows and in the distance she could just make out the haze of Knoxville. Closer by were several smaller towns they’d driven through on the way here, set in the landscape like diamonds on felt. She caught a whiff of pot and walked a few steps, trying to blink away the memory of Johnny. Usually she could successfully avoid dwelling on the past, even when Tommy’s smoke took her back home for a few brief, intense seconds. But today Johnny grinned at her and showed her his latest gang tattoo, a mark he’d got for robbing a drugstore the previous week. There was pride in his smile, and disgust in her voice as she chided him, though now she couldn’t even remember the words. Her memories were tainted by the alcohol haze of their mother as she breezed into the room, unaware of either of her children’s lives.

‘Sorry,’ Tommy said. ‘I know you don’t like it.’ He held her arm, having already inhaled most of the joint and stamped it out.

‘You know you never need to apologise,’ Jayne said, and she meant it. Tommy’s need and her own history were different animals, and if they ever met and fought that was her concern, not his.

The view was gorgeous. There were still twenty or more cars in the car park, their owners walking the hillsides or lighting barbecues in the picnic area a quarter of a mile to the north. She could see a few people down by the cars, hanging around the vehicles’ open doors as if to put off leaving for as long as possible. And she knew why. Maybe lots of people came to this beauty spot to escape something else, and the process of going back always dampened an otherwise bright day. Not everyone’s sad, she thought, and as ever that idea shocked her. Was she sad? She liked to think not, but sometimes her friend Ellie would have a glass too much wine and tell her she carried sadness around like a haze. Not a cloud, she would say, not like someone can see, but. . like heat haze. I see you through it and you’re distorted. Not the woman you want to be, but the woman you really are. Sad. Jayne would tell her to fuck off, then pour another glass for them both. But these infrequent yet serious statements from Ellie stuck with her, nestling in her subconscious to sabotage moments like now.

‘I’m not sad,’ Jayne said.