Page 44 of Meet Me at Sunset

He pulled over to wait for Andre and Lucas to come around the bend. Where were they? His eyes shot nervously over the side of the mountain. The drop here had no trees to break the fall, and it was a long way down … still no sign of them.

‘Shit.’

Paulo reversed out of the verge and turned his car around, it was twilight now, and he switched his car headlights on.

As he rounded the bend, he felt the air knocked out of him as his headlights picked up the mangled Ferrari, upended, and dangerously close to the mountain verge.

He pulled over, his hands and legs shaking as he quickly climbed out of the vehicle, and walked in a horrified daze towards the wreck.

‘No, no, no.’ He dragged his hands across his scalp, willing the sight to be just a bad dream.

As he approached, he could see Andre had been thrown from the car, and was lying unconscious in the road, his limbs and neck nauseatingly contorted, blood pouring from his head.

His eyes darted to the vehicle … Was that Lucas in the driving seat?

He’d been driving? Of course … it was Lucas who had flipped him the bird, Lucas who always thought he was better at everything than Paulo.

Not this time.

‘Help me …’

Paulo saw Lucas struggling in his seat, dangling upside down, as blood poured from a gash across his face, his arms flailing as he tried to release himself, caught in the snare of his seatbelt, which had saved his life, but which now threatened to kill him by strangulation.

Suddenly released from his inertia, Paulo raced over to the car.

He pulled uselessly at the driver’s door, which was too crushed to open properly, but with the top down, Paulo was able to stretch himself over and release the belt, groaning as Lucas dropped out of the seat with a tortured cry, partially falling into his arms.

Paulo hauled him out, then stumbled for a couple of steps before collapsing to the ground with Lucas, who was now groaning in agony.

‘My dad …’ Lucas gasped. ‘Where is he … my dad?’

Paulo shook his head, not able to say the truth, that Andre looked like he was about meet his maker. Lucas grabbed Paulo’s tuxedo jacket with his bloody hands, his words ragged.

‘You … you did this.’

‘No,’ Paulo shook his head, and Lucas gripped him harder, his eyes wide and wild.

‘It was you …’ The effort seemed to drain every last effort from Lucas whose head fell back, seemingly slipping into unconsciousness as his head crashed onto the road surface.

Paulo rose to his feet, staggering back. ‘You can’t blame me, it was you, you idiot, if you die it’s your own fault, not mine.’

Paulo scrabbled back to his car, threw himself into his seat, fumbling to get his key in the ignition.

Casting one more glance in the wing mirror at the prone bodies lying in the road, his car tyres screeched as he spun the wheel around and slammed his foot on the accelerator, speeding as quickly as he could away from the scene, driving like all the demons in Hell were on his tail.

‘So it was me driving …’ Lucas said slowly, his throat thick with emotion as the memories came flooding back and the realization dawned. ‘Paulo was right.’

Camille turned to Paulo, a stunned expression on her face, her tone accusing. ‘I didn’t know you were there. I thought Andre and Lucas were alone. I didn’t know—’

‘That’s how I knew,’ Isobel said to Camille, ‘when Paulo talked about the accident, that night, he said “we were racing too fast on the mountain road.” Though there was never any mention of that in the reports, which just mentioned the icy conditions.’

‘I saved his life,’ Paulo yelled, looking at Lucas. ‘He would have choked to death if I had left him hanging there. When I realized Lucas had crashed his dad’s car, I was less than a mile from Günther’s Bar. It was still open. I drove straight there to use their phone and called an ambulance.’

‘And then you fled,’ Camille spat.

‘I was in shock!’ Paulo shot back. ‘I didn’t know what to do!’

‘You saved your own skin, as usual,’ Camille yelled.

‘Well, you wouldn’t have saved me! I’d already spent the evening being treated like the poor friend, having to borrow Lucas’s clothes just to fit in and paraded around Andre’s rich buddies like some kind of pet monkey.

It was made clear to me exactly what my place was that night, so can you imagine what would have happened if I’d told the authorities that I’d been there when the accident happened?

That we were racing? That Lucas was the one who was driving that night?

Andre shouldn’t have been driving – he’d been drinking and taking cocaine – but he was in a better state than Lucas.

It’s a miracle they weren’t both killed. ’

‘I killed my father …’ Lucas murmured, as everyone turned to look at him. Stephanie moved across to comfort him – whatever the truth of everything, it was clear that her heart went out to him at that moment – but Lucas barely noticed. ‘I’m a murderer … I killed him … I killed my father …’

‘No, you didn’t kill your father .’ Paulo shook his head, a triumphant expression on his face.

‘It was only when Isobel told me about the rumours of an affair that were circling around before Lucas’s birth that it suddenly all made sense to me.

You only have to look at the two of them closely and it’s obvious. Why don’t you tell him, Camille?’

Lucas’s head jerked up. ‘Tell me what?’

Paulo stared at Camille, his dark eyes boring into hers. ‘Tell him everything.’