Page 19

Nineteen

TAM

For all the calm I’ve fostered while I’ve worked the night away, it dissolves like salt in water when three a.m. rolls around and Bhodi’s still not home.

Chill. He’s worked late before.

Sound logic, but it’s lost on me as irrational dread grips my heart and I pace my house like a lunatic.

Something’s wrong .

I have zero evidence except the darkened annex and the empty spot on the pavement where Bhodi’s car should be, but I’m so convinced it’s true I barely last another hour before I’m dashing outside to my van.

Sans boots, of course, and the return of the frost is the shock I need to stop me in my tracks.

“Fuck.” I press my fist to my chest and take a deep breath, utilising every tool I possess. But the fear in my heart remains and I do the only thing I can think of. I call Sab and garble at him before he’s even awake, a messy torrent of French and English even he has trouble understanding.

“Whoa.” His voice catches like he’s swallowed glass. “What’s wrong?”

I say it all again.

I think.

I fixate on the rustling at Sab’s end as if it can drown out the panic rising in me. The raw feeling I haven’t faced head-on in years. I can’t remember the last time my little brother had to talk me down from the ledge.

Bet he can, though, and I let flashbacks pound my brain with every weak moment I’ve ever had. Because that’s super helpful right now.

“Take a breath,” Sab orders. More awake. “Then go back in your house and call Bhodi instead of me.”

“What if he doesn’t answer?”

“Then you’ll know he’s driving or working, and either fucking way, he’ll be home soon.”

He’s right. I know he is. Bhodi’s shifts have run over before. By longer than this. But with so much unsaid between us, everything feels different.

I feel different. “Je l'aime.” I love him.

“I know.”

“How?”

“Because I know you . And I’ve never seen you as content and happy as you are around him—” Sab yawns and runs out of words.

Guilt threatens the anxiety still gripping me. He’s sleeping in a shitty Travelodge after packing his stuff into storage, and I want him here with me. With Esme. But it’s not happening anytime soon—if ever—and I have to accept that. “I’m sorry I woke you up. Go back to sleep.”

“Tell me you love me and promise you won’t drive while you’re this wired.”

“I love you.”

“ Tam , promise me. Or I’m getting in the fucking van and driving down there.”

“Ne le faites pas.” Don’t . That’s the last thing I want. I fight the tide, hurling everything I have at it, and finally get a tenuous grip on myself. “I’m good, I swear I won’t drive if I’m messy.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“I don’t fucking believe you. Or I’d make you swear on my baby girl’s life. But I’m gonna trust you like you’ve always trusted me. Now simmer the fuck down and wait for your man to come home.”

Sab tells me he loves me and hangs up. I’m not na?ve enough to believe he goes straight back to sleep, but I can’t do anything about that. I need him and he needs me. It’s how it is.

I heard him, though. I go back inside, change my wet socks, and contemplate my phone before I realise how dark it is in my house. Like, pitch black, even the stand-by light on the TV is out.

Power cut.

It happens round here all the time, especially in winter. But like everything, it seems ominous now, and I fight for the calm Sab’s forced on me and call Bhodi.

No answer.

I call once more, then tap out a message with shaky fingers.

Tam: You’ re not home and I’m really fucking worried. Let me know you’re okay?

Damn. I was going for something more subtle, but it has to do. I fire it off and sink onto the couch, bracing my elbows on my knees and folding my hands as much as I can with this stupid fucking cast.

The urge to saw it off sweeps over me.

Bhodi’s disapproval stops me, and I hold onto that. To the fact he’ll be home any minute and the spiked fear lancing my heart will be over.

This is you.

Not him.

I close my eyes, smelling woodsmoke from the burner and the piney scent of the Christmas tree. Breathing deep, slowing my thoughts with every cycle of air. And for a while it works, until Rudy makes me jump out of my skin, barking at something and fucking nothing, as restless by now as I am.

Calm deserts me. I surge to my feet and stride to the window in case I’ve somehow missed Bhodi coming home and slipping into the annex without talking to me. With every light out, he might’ve assumed I was sleeping.

Sound logic, but his car is still gone.

I call him again.

No answer.

Maybe the hospital lost power too and he had to stay.

Another theory that makes perfect sense, but the hospital is in the city, and in all the years I’ve lived here, the power cuts that affect the villages have never extended that far. Natural disaster, then . But that doesn’t make me feel any better, and my phone is running low on battery .

Sab has my power banks. The only sensible thing I can think to do is to drive to the all-night petrol station and buy more. I make myself linger long enough to stamp into my boots, then I’m out the door and behind the wheel, gritting my teeth to keep my promise to Sab.

The streets are dark . Dawn is a couple hours off and I pass few vehicles. I pass the fucking petrol station , lit up by emergency lights, and I don’t stop. I keep going, only realising where I’m heading when the hospital comes into view.

My foot falters on the accelerator and the van slows down. My concern for Bhodi is a noose throttling my windpipe, but old ghosts don’t care about that. They smell disinfectant and blood. They hear the angry beep of machines, they hear Sab crying, and the panic monster waiting to strike finds some new friends.

Black spots dance in my vision and my hands tighten around the wheel. I’m not breathing right and I know better than to suck more air in. I let it out, slowly, and battle to keep the van moving. You’ve been here twice recently and nothing fucking happened.

Because of him.

No.

I know better than that too. With or without Bhodi, I’m stronger than the anxiety clawing at my back.

But fuck me, life is better with him.

I keep driving and rumble through the main entrance. Bhodi parks round the back, but I need a staff pass to get that far with the van. So I ditch it and hurdle the barrier on foot.

It’s late and the car park is lit by a security light that’s half broken. Shadows are everywhere and I decide that even when Bhodi’s home in one piece, I hate him fucking parking here. So what? You’re going to tell him he can’t? Or follow him to work every day like a fucking psycho?

Considering it occupies my thoughts for the brief minutes it takes to search every inch of the staff car park, and then every space and bay beyond. I even check the side streets, but come up blank.

Bhodi isn’t here.

He isn’t fucking here.

I jog back to the van, my phone pressed to my ear, and I shout in frustration as my call goes unanswered, agitation flooding my veins again.

Bhodi, where are you?

I throw myself behind the wheel and leave the hospital car park with no real idea where I’m going, except that it’s not my usual way home. The city slips by me in a blur, my body aching with wasted adrenaline, a headache squeezing my skull. Honest to God, I feel sick with fear, and it’s so much worse than the PTSD that kicked the shit out of me after the crash.

Back then, I was afraid of something that had already happened. This is different—this is real , and if even a hint of my imagination is on point, I could lose Bhodi forever.

My phone buzzes with a message. It’s on the seat and I can’t see it while I’m driving.

Despite the madness raging in me, I pull over before I pick it up.

Bhodi .

Nope.

It’s my brother and the caps lock on his smashed up iPhone is still broken from when he dropped it trying to stop me killing Charmaine’s mope of a fuckboy.

Sab: FIND HIM?

Tam: No. I checked the hospital. He’s not there

Sab: DID THEY SAY WHEN HE LEFT?

I’m such a fucking idiot.

Tam: Didn’t ask. I just looked in the car park

Sab: WHAT IF HE DIDN’T DRIVE THERE TODAY?

Tam: Then where the fuck is his car?

Sab: AT THE GARAGE. AT A MATE’S HOUSE. THERE’S A MILLION POSSIBILITIES BEFORE WHATEVER YOU’RE THINKING

Tam: You don’t know what I’m thinking

Sab: YOU THINK HE’S DEAD

Sab’s not shouting at me on purpose, but it feels like he is, and the words stare up at me, stark and loud . I drop the phone on the seat and start driving again, longing for a cigarette so much that I search the glove box with my casted hand while steering with the other, and as luck would have it, I found a squashed box of the rancid Silk Cut I downgraded to when I was trying to quit.

No Zippo. But I jam a smoke between my lips anyway and wrestle with the van’s corroded lighter. It barely gets warm, but somehow it’s enough to light the cig and I take an inhale of toxic smoke that’s a thousand times more kill than cure.

But it’s something to do, and the familiarity of the ritual brings me back to earth. I’m heading for the motorway, I realise, a route I usually avoid like the plague, but I’ve never told Bhodi why, so I know he still drives this way to and from work, chugging along in his battered Golf with no clue that my blood is soaked into the slip road he takes to get there.

The slip road that’s coming up ahead, but I don’t give a single fuck about right now.

I drive on, smoking until the cig burns my fingers.

The slip road passes and I merge onto the motorway. There’s zero traffic and the road starts to darken as I get nearer home and the power cut zone, and of course, the van stereo chooses the same eerie moment to crackle to life, blasting me with Bing Crosby at a volume loud enough to rattle my overwrought brain.

Wrestling with it derails me from smoking more, and with the comforting buzz of nicotine already at home in my nerves, my thoughts start to even out, common sense returning.

I just missed Bhodi. He’s probably already home and wondering where the fuck I’ve gone. That he hasn’t called me yet to find out is something I start to contemplate as I lower the radio to a dull boom and refocus on the road. The wide expanse of the motorway that’s no longer dark.

The frosty winter night lit up by flashing blue.