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“Stop the car, stop the fucking car! I can’t breathe in here!”
“Just hang on...”
“Now Nathaniel! Stop this fucking car right goddamn now!” Sarah lunged from the passenger seat and wrenched the steering wheel towards a dusty layby, populated by a scattering of picnic tables and some battered old snack wagon.
“Jesus Christ!” Nathaniel stamped on the brakes and the car slewed to an untidy halt in a cloud of dust and a clatter of small stones. “You trying to get us both killed?”
Sarah was out of the passenger door before Nathaniel could finish his sentence. She began pacing like a trapped animal, muttering to herself as a torrent of guilt, regret and fear washed her away and left her scrabbling for the shores of reason. “Do you know what I’ve sacrificed to be here with you? Oh Christ, what have I done? What have we done? Why did you come back into my life? No wait, why should I come back into yours? We’ve done it now; he won’t just let this go, he can’t.”
Nathaniel stepped out of the car, grateful that there was nobody else around save for the man from the snack wagon, who seemed to be conspicuously absent. “What’s wrong?”
Sarah rounded on him in a fury of sharp nails and even sharper condemnations. “What’s wrong? Are you crazy? No, maybe you’re not, but I sure as hell am!”
Nathaniel held up his arms to fend off the worst of the blows and waited till the fury subsided a little. “I know this is going to get bad before it gets good...”
Sarah took a deep breath and clenched her fists in an effort to stop them from shaking. “You don’t know him; you don’t know what he’s capable of. What’s even worse, I don’t know what you’re capable of either.”
“Me?”
“If I want to be spoken to like a child, I can just call my fiancé. Just what the hell are you mixed up in?”
Nathaniel frowned. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
Sarah pointed a shaking finger down the empty road. “That car; and don’t you damn well dare ask me which car, the car that’s been following us for the better part of an hour.”
Nathaniel said nothing as he looked back at the deserted stretch of tarmac.
Sarah calmed down a little and placed a hand on his forearm. “Listen, you can be the big hero if you want, but you’ve got no idea how much trouble we could both be in. Solomon’s worked hard for everything he’s got, including me, and he knows how to fight to keep what’s his. I know he’s hurt people before, and as for Seth...” She trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence.
Nathaniel looked down and gently stroked a tear from her cheek. “Listen, I’m no movie tough guy, but I’ve seen enough of this world not to be rattled by the likes of Solomon.”
Sarah turned away with a sigh of exasperation. “When I saw you again it seemed like a dream. My knight, my lover had sought me out, just as I’d sought him out. I even let myself believe we could just turn away from everything and start again.”
“Well, you should know all about that. I’ve still got your lovely note, you know, the one where you told me you would seek the verdict of the ocean. That was very poetic by the way.”
Sarah looked down at the ground as the tears started again. “You’ve every right to be angry, but the truth is I did what I said I would, and I nearly didn’t make it.”
Nathaniel’s tone was weary and bitter. “I guess Solomon’s fancy house and shiny car convinced you that life was worth living after all. Pity I couldn’t do it with patience and understanding. So much for poetry.”
Sarah sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes, turning her back on her old flame and gazing out across the ocean. “Maybe I’m not the woman you thought I was. I tried to tell you I’m not any kind of earthbound angel, but I think you’d fallen for some romantic notion of who I really am. The truth is I’m not some abstract idea but a real person just like you, and just like you, I can screw up hugely. Besides that, you were always too wrapped up in your own troubles to really see mine.”
Nathaniel rolled his eyes. “I tried everything I could to help you, but in the end I had to make a choice. Sure, you can hate me for leaving if you want, but here we are still, after everything that’s happened.”
Sarah continued staring out to sea. “After you’d gone, I felt like the last plank was kicked out from under me. In case you were wondering, I really did try to end it more than once with pills, by drowning; hell, I even tried jaywalking once, but something always happened to stop me. One of the biggest things to stop me was Solomon. I still don’t know what he saw in me, but whatever it might’ve been, it was enough to make him propose.”
Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed. “And you agreed, on one condition...”
“That’s right. I told him I wanted to make a fresh start, put everything behind us and move to Formentera, the place where they hang the fish from the trees.”
“You really said that to him? You used those words? Jesus!”
“I did it because I could, and he would never know it was the dream we’d shared, the song we sang in each other’s arms. He will never know how I swore I would come here or die trying.”
“Well, maybe you’ll get your wish after all, because when Solomon finds out he only moved here to help fix his fiancé up with an old boyfriend, I reckon he’ll do the job himself.”
Sarah’s voice was low and thoughtful. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s what I deserve, and maybe you should’ve taken me seriously when I said I wasn’t some magic spell to end all unhappiness. I’m just a woman, as foolish and fickle and messed up as the rest of my kind.”
Nathaniel watched as the man with the battered snack wagon reappeared and promptly began packing up, clearly favouring an early finish to hanging around on the off chance. “So, just what the hell are we doing here?”
She turned and gently touched his face. “I’ve dreamed about finding you again every day, every night since you left, but now that we’re together again I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
Sarah pushed hard against Nathaniel’s chest. “I’m afraid of you!”
Nathaniel looked puzzled. “Me; why?”
She shook her head with exasperation. “You’ve been the centre of all my hopes and dreams for so long now, but I could cheerfully murder you with a baseball bat right here in this car park. You really have no idea?”
“How can I frighten you?”
Sarah ran her fingers through her hair and growled with frustration. “Depression, suicide attempts and a crazy scheme to follow you here with maybe an even crazier fiancé in tow. I was a normal girl before I met you with your brooding mystery and flights of romantic fancy. I could’ve been happy, but now all I have is this ache inside me that’s terrible when I’m with you and even worse when we are apart. I’ve done crazy things, insane things, dangerous things to keep myself close to the source of my madness, and you ask me how I frighten you?”
Nathaniel watched as the little snack wagon coughed into life and clattered away in a cloud of roadside dust. “I don’t know how to fix any of this. All I know for sure is that we’re meant to be together. I know I’ve kept secrets, but sometimes the secrets are better than the truth.”
Sarah shook her head. “If there’s one thing all this madness has taught me, it’s that secrets are never better than the truth. If we’re going to stand a single chance in this screwed up world, then the only place to begin is with the truth.”
Nathaniel nodded slowly. “Okay then, no secrets, but you might find out that I’m not the man you thought I was either.”
Sarah took a deep breath. “Okay then. Who is Kal?”
For a moment Nathaniel was silent. “Why start with that question?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because he’d been following us in his car for over an hour, and don’t even try to tell me you didn’t notice.”
“How do you know Kal, have you met him?” Nathaniel sounded genuinely confused.
Sarah sighed and clenched her fists once again, trying to hold onto her temper. “Christ, how many times do I have to tell you this is a small island? Word of your little bust up last week has gotten around. No, I’ve never met Kal, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know who he is...so who is he?”
Nathaniel took Sarah’s hand and led her to one of the chipped and sun-bleached picnic tables. He waited till they were both seated before speaking again. “I’ve known Kal for a very long time, but even now I’m not really sure who he is.”
“You’re not making sense, Nathaniel.”
“I know, I know, just listen and I’ll try to explain.” He paused again as he gathered his thoughts. “I’ve already told you I had a pretty strange kind of childhood.”
“The orphanage, right?”
“In fact, there were a couple of orphanages; the first was St Gemma’s when we were younger and then the second, where Kal was in charge.”
Sarah smiled. “Do you know that’s more than you’ve told me the whole time I’ve known you?”
Nathaniel continued. “St Gemma’s was a pretty standard affair, run by the church and a bunch of nuns who were more fearsome than any nightclub bouncer I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, they have a reputation.”
Now Nathaniel smiled. “St Gemma’s was really strict, but at the same time it was safe and me and Benjamin were mostly content with our lot. Even though it was heavy on the religious side they taught us well, they fed us well and generally things were okay. I know there’s a lot of horror stories about these places floating around nowadays, but that wasn’t really our experience.”
Sarah pressed him gently. “Do you realise that’s the first time you’ve mentioned your brother’s name?”
“Really?” Nathaniel sounded genuinely surprised.
“Yeah; you said you had a brother, but I never knew what his name was.”
Nathaniel looked thoughtful for a moment before continuing his tale. “So that was mine and Ben’s life, at least for the first decade or so. I remember it was just past my twelfth birthday when I saw a woman walking into the office one day. That was unusual because she wasn’t a nun or anything; in fact, she was pretty glamourous. I remember her because we rarely saw outsiders. Anyway, it turned out that she represented this special school that me and Benjamin had been selected for.”
“Selected?” Sarah raised her eyebrows.
“Yeah; I don’t remember doing any tests or anything but before we knew it, Ben and I were packed off to the Trinity Foundation School. All the nuns seemed very excited, telling us how lucky we were to be going to such a prestigious place.”
Sarah sighed sadly “It must’ve been hard leaving everything you’d ever known, just like that.”
“It was, but it wasn’t like we had a choice. Still, we thought we were heading to a new kind of school with maybe a bit more freedom, but we had no idea what was waiting for us.”
Sarah squeezed Nathaniel’s hand. “Kal.” She said softly.
He nodded. “Yeah, well, to cut a long story short, Kal was the man in charge of Trinity.”
Sarah’s eyes widened.
Nathaniel quickly continued. “When I say he was in charge I don’t mean he was there day-to-day, but he owned the place, and he called the shots. Every now and then he’d come by with sweets and little gifts. He’d talk to me and my brother, and the other kids too, telling us how very special we were.”
She took his hand gently in both of her own. “It’s okay, I get the idea.”
Nathaniel shook his head, almost angrily. “It wasn’t like that though, really. Okay, so he was, is, a really strange guy, but not in that way. In fact he always made sure we were safe and well looked after. And the guys who did run the place never left us alone with strangers.”
“Sounds like they did their best for you, so what went wrong?”
There was a long pause before he continued. “Ben and I had spent our whole lives in those two institutions, and for the most part I suppose we were happy enough. Looking back, I think we got a better than average education, but it all came at a price. We weren’t exactly prisoners at the school, but we weren’t exactly free either. Sure, we could go out and about, but there was always a chaperone, always somebody watching and making sure we didn’t spend too long with the kids on the outside.”
Sarah didn’t really know what to say, having had no experience of such things.
Nathaniel continued; seemingly keen to tell his story at long last. “It was weird too, a complete reversal of St Gemma’s. Back there, all the teachers had been women, nuns, while at Trinity they were all men, and they were all African too; I mean African like Kal is, complete with same accent and everything. The deference they showed to that man was bordering on...no, it was creepy. It was like he had some sort of power over them.”
There was a silence while Sarah thought about what she’d heard. “Another church, or another branch of the same church I guess.”
“Yeah maybe, although I’m pretty sure they weren’t any kind of official church. Whatever the case, those guys were a lot sterner than the nuns, and that’s saying something. There was talk about them having been in some army or militia somewhere, but I never managed to find anything out for sure.”
“So, it was a military academy?” Sarah sounded confused.
“No, it wasn’t; just a bunch of rumours spread by kids. All the same, I can’t help thinking those stories were based on something, judging by the way the teachers handled us.”
Sarah placed her hand on his cheek. “My poor baby, they must’ve been so rough on you.”
There was another pause while Nathaniel marshalled his thoughts. “It was kind of like that and yet it wasn’t. As long as you did as you were told and tried your best in class the masters were really great, like kindly old uncles or big brothers; but if you did wrong then wow, did they ever freak the fuck out. It was real Jekyll and Hyde stuff. As long as you behaved then everything was cool, but if you crossed them, it was the belt, if you were lucky. So that’s how it went on, with Ben and I trying to keep our heads down and more or less avoiding a beating for breaking the rules.”
“Didn’t anyone ever come to check up, like the church or the government?”
“Sure, they did, but we knew better than to cross the schoolmasters, let alone the man in charge. Anyway, that was my life and Ben’s too; sure, it could be rough at times, but everybody knew where they stood.”
Sarah nudged him along gently. “So, what happened next?”
Nathaniel just shrugged. “Nothing specific, I just hit my teens and started discovering things like girls and music, the usual sort of stuff, I guess. Being educated about the great big world out there wasn’t enough; I wanted to see at least a little bit of it. Besides, I could tell something was up at Trinity Academy, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Maybe it was all in my head; maybe I was the one who’d changed by noticing more and more things outside of myself. Either way, I started to act up and even sneak out when I could.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “Yeah, I can imagine how that went.”
“I got away with it a few times, or so I thought, but they weren’t fools and eventually I was found out. Sure, the beatings were bad but that was just part of the deal, and it didn’t really scare me. What did scare me were the rumours about what had happened to kids who’d played up in the past. Thinking back, I don’t know if any of them were true, but I can’t say there was nothing to them either. The worst part was the effect it had on Ben. He was only ten and he really believed his big brother might just vanish one night and never return. He stopped eating, he couldn’t sleep, and he even started to wet the bed, which was something he’d never done before. Of course, that incurred the wrath of the schoolmasters and things just went from bad to worse. I tried to protect him but there wasn’t much I could do. In the end I realised the only way to properly look after my little brother was to get the hell out of there, so that’s what we did.”
Sarah swallowed, almost afraid to ask the next question. “Is that how Ben died?”
Nathaniel took a deep breath and paused before continuing, glancing up and around the empty parking area as though ensuring he couldn’t be overheard. “We’d only been in Barcelona for a couple of days before they found us. We’d kept a really low profile, but we must’ve been spotted and tracked to our hideout by the river. That was typical of them, to move in when everything was nice and quiet. Anyhow, the first we knew about it was when we spotted Abioye, one of the schoolmasters. We tried to run but the bastards had been watching us for a while and they had us surrounded. The only way out was to swim, so I just jumped in and told Ben to do the same. It was only when I’d made it across that I realised he wasn’t with me. I never really saw what happened, in fact the only thing I did see was Abioye and one of the others diving around in the middle of all that murky water. I guess Ben had gone under and they were trying to find him. Before I knew it the rest had split up, with some staying on the bank and the others piling into a car to chase me down again. I could either stay or run, so I ran.”
Sarah was quiet for some time as she considered Nathaniel’s harrowing tale. At last, he’d answered so many questions about himself, although one still remained. “So why is Kal here, now?”
“I don’t know, but whatever he wants, it won’t be anything good.” Nathaniel’s eyes began to shine with silent tears of grief.
Sarah paused again before she spoke. “We should go to the police, they’ll help you.”
“No!” He grabbed her by the shoulders, staring intently into her eyes. “Promise me you’ll never do that! I mean it, Sarah!”
She wrestled free from his grip, rubbing her aching shoulders. “Jesus! What’s got into you?”
Nathaniel’s words tumbled out in a torrent of emotion as the dam finally burst. “You don’t know what he’s capable of, the others, there are still other out kids there.”
“All the more reason...”
“No! Listen to me! You think I haven’t already tried that? He’s protected by...well; he’s protected in ways we’ll never understand. You think there were no questions after Ben died? Nothing ever came of it though, just a troubled boy and a tragic accident. All that’s left of my brother is a number, a statistic, a name buried in a dusty file somewhere.” The tears finally welled up and spilt silently down Nathaniel’s cheeks. “Don’t go chasing some phantom called justice because there’s no such thing, not in this world.”
Sarah pulled his head to her breast as he began to sob quietly, his tears moistening her soft flesh as she ran her slender fingers through his hair.
Nathaniel breathed Sarah’s perfume deeply, pressing his head to her chest as he listened to her heart beating strong and steady. He spread his fingers across her back, pulling her body closer to him as he felt the softness of her breast against his cheek. He felt her hand tighten on his head as she pushed him further into her chest and his lips brushed the soft, feminine swelling of her breast.
Sarah softly murmured encouragement as she subtly guided him to her rapidly hardening nipples. She felt confused yet still she knew that Nathaniel was the only thing she wanted, right there in that dusty layby above the ocean. Her body ached and quivered at his touch, and she silently thanked the fates that she’d been born a woman.
As Nathaniel’s agony was scorched by the flames of sudden desire, he needed no further urging from his lost love as he rolled his thumb over Sarah’s hardened nipple and squeezed her breast. His other hand glided down to the small of her back as he pulled her closer to him, his arousal quickly climbing to match hers. Within a second his lips had found her mouth and he tasted not just her warm, moist body, but something far deeper and more profound, an essence of some inner truth expressed in the very cells of her lithe form. Suddenly his mind was filled with a torrent of ideas that swirled around the central pivot of his want for her. Life, spirit, truth and something profound yet impossible to vocalise filled his mind as his hands searched for the hem of her skirt.
Sarah was ahead of him, and Nathaniel swallowed hard as her hand somehow found its way inside his jeans and gripped him tightly, as though testing his hardness, his fitness, his worthiness to lay claim to her body. She’d always been a sexy lady but there was something less refined, more urgent and more primal in her than he’d ever sensed before. She whispered something in his ear, but lust slurred her words as she suddenly swung her leg over him, straddling him right there in broad daylight. He assumed nobody was watching, although it was too late anyway as she skilfully shifted her hips and suddenly, he was inside her. She hadn’t even waited for him to undress!
Again, he heard the urgent, wordless whispering as she dug her fingernails into his back and pushed her hips forward, refusing to back off as she hungered for every single part of him.
Nathaniel felt both eager and powerless as Sarah put herself squarely in control, moving against him with a rhythm guaranteed drain him dry in the shortest time. Her expertise paid off in less than a minute as he was unable to hold back. The shockwaves rocked both their sweating bodies as every muscle in Nathaniel’s body tightened before he slumped back, empty and spent.
In turn, Sarah dug her fingers into him for a few seconds longer before she began to relax, the rhythm of her hips slowing as she descended from the dizzy heights of ecstatic, animal fulfilment.
Neither of them spoke as they stayed locked together, panting from their exertions and trying to find the strength to separate.
Nathaniel ran his fingers through her hair and gently kissed her ear, wondering who the familiar stranger in his arms really was.