The darkness was a vessel. It took Amanda away from the mansion. As she lay on her side she could feel the rumble of the car’s engine vibrating through her body. Her senses became distorted. Initially she tried to follow her journey, tried to interpret each bend, each turn. But it quickly became too difficult.
She felt her tears soaking into the rough carpet against her cheek, her ears filled with her own muffled, anguished cries.
McAllister was going to kill her.
Her mind refused to entertain other possible solutions. McAllister didn’t believe in loose ends or forgiveness. When the lid of the boot opened up again Amanda would probably be minutes, even seconds, from certain death.
Screaming against the masking tape, she squirmed around the boot, desperately trying to free her hands. The plastic that bound her wrists together was tight. Unforgiving. But she had to try. If she didn’t get out of the car before it reached its destination then she was dead. She tried to keep her thoughts pragmatic, to stem off the hysteria which gathered inside her like a growing storm. She had to get out of the car. If she got out she had a chance of surviving – a slim one, but it was still a chance.
The plastic chord dug into her wrists. The more she moved, the more it painfully pressed against her. Amanda’s fingers became damp with her own blood as the plastic cut through her skin like it was butter. The pain burned but she refused to let her herself feel it. She kept writhing her hands together, trying to work them free of their restraints.
The car made a sharp turn and Amanda was flung against the other side of the boot. Her face smacked squarely against metal. She felt the jarring force of the impact down to her bones. Something warm trickled down from her nose. More blood. But Amanda couldn’t dwell on it. There would be time to assess her wounds later when she was out of the car, back with Shane. When she was safe. If she ever got to experience safety again.
Rolling onto her back, she arched her spine to prevent her hands being compressed by her own weight. She noticed a chink of silver light in the distance, near the wheel arch. It wasn’t much since there was only the moon and stars out to offer any light, but it was enough to guide her, to allow her to trace the outline of the boot, to figure out where its locking mechanism was. If she could just give the right spot a couple of really good kicks then—
There was a bump in the road. Amanda bounced loosely around the boot, crashing against all sides. She thought of the rag doll she’d loved as a little girl, of the doll’s yellow string hair and black button eyes. After a visit to the beach her doll had become covered in sand, her pretty gingham dress darkened and soiled.
‘She needs washing,’ her mother had announced primly, plucking the doll out of Amanda’s grasp.
‘No,’ a six-year-old Amanda had whined. ‘I like her covered in sand. She’s more like me now – an adventurer.’
Corrine had just tutted and put the doll in the washing machine. Horrified, Amanda sat and watched the sixty-minute spin cycle through the clear plastic door as her poor rag doll was thrown around the steel drum and lost in a sea of foamy water.
Another bump in the road. Amanda tumbled around the boot, doing her best to use her legs to steady herself as she braced for the next sharp turn. When it didn’t come she returned to being on her back and tried to place her feet directly beneath the catch on the boot. The only positive she could find in her situation was that the boot of the Phantom was pretty roomy.
Amanda flexed her legs, testing the distance up to the roof of the boot. How long had they even been driving? Where were they going? She recalled all the names in the digital ledger she’d uncovered. McAllister had claimed it was all falsified, but what if that was just a bluff? What if she’d actually found exactly what she’d been looking for?
She delivered a blunt kick up at the catch. Her feet connected with the roof with a dense thud but nothing jangled, nothing sounded like it was being knocked loose.
Was McAllister going to turn her into a name on his list? Was he going to sell her into sexual slavery?
She kicked again. Harder this time. The boot responded by remaining locked tight. Mocking her with its durability.
‘Mmphf.’ Amanda wanted to turn the air blue in frustration but the masking tape pressed across her lips sealed in all of her expletives.
She kept kicking. Harder and harder, she smacked her feet against the roof of the boot, willing it to suddenly pop open. Then she could climb out and run. To where, it didn’t matter. She just knew that she needed to run.
The sound of the car engine changed. It went from a steady rumble to a soft rattle. It was slowing down. Amanda shifted, panicked. They couldn’t have reached their destination already. She needed more time. She needed to escape.
Her heart dropped into her stomach when her fears were confirmed. The engine died away all together. Even in her dark prison she knew that they’d ceased moving. A moment passed and then she heard a car door opening and heavy footsteps.
‘Noooo.’ She manoeuvred herself onto her back. If these were to be her last moments then she’d at least go down fighting. She bent her knees, preparing to kick madly the second the boot lifted up.
*
‘The key to being a good swimmer is to kick furiously.’ Mrs Maddox loomed large at the side of the community swimming pool as she looked down at the gaggle of fresh faces she was currently teaching.
Amanda bobbed up and down in the chlorine-laced water beside a little boy called Daniel. They both clung to the handrail, which prevented them from floating away from the edge of the pool like bounty from a shipwreck.
‘You need to stretch your legs back in the water and just kick. Throw up as much water as you can.’ Mrs Maddox had a perm so tight that Amanda wondered how it didn’t make the old woman’s brain ache. She placed one hand on her wide hips and drew her whistle up to her mouth. She blew into it. One sharp, shrill note.
Amanda started kicking. She stretched out her legs as far as she could and thrashed them about in the water. She tasted chlorine as the turquoise water of the pool got splashed against her face. Her mouth was open as she laughed. She wished she was in the ocean, tasting salt instead of chemicals. But her parents had insisted she learn to swim. Only then, they’d said, could she go down to the beach and roam about freely on her own.
‘Keep kicking,’ Mrs Maddox ordered, her voice a fog horn across the water. ‘Kick as if your life depended on it.’
*
The boot opened with a soft click. Amanda started kicking. She blindly thrust her legs out, hammering them back and forth.
‘Grab her, will ya?’ she heard McAllister’s voice before she felt the tug of strong arms grabbing her elbows and hauling her out. She landed a few kicks against the guard as she was pulled out of the boot, but he didn’t even register their impact. ‘Christ, girl,’ McAllister was standing a few feet away from her, his eyes sweeping over her face. ‘You’ve certainly managed to make a mess of yourself in there.’
How did she look? Was her face bloodied? Her eyes red and swollen?
‘Now…’ McAllister took a menacing step towards her.
Amanda frantically scanned the area around her. The guard’s grip was tight on her arms, preventing her from running away. In the moonlight she saw that they were on a road. A long one which winded away into the shadows. There were no trees, just open highlands which allowed a fierce wind to power over to them.
‘I’m rather fond of my Phantom,’ McAllister cocked his head at her. ‘It’s arguably my favourite car in my fleet.’
There was something upon the wind.
Salt.
Amanda closed her eyes, breathing it in. For a blissful second she allowed herself to pretend she was back home, back upon the cliffs, near her mother’s rose garden.
‘I can’t have you kicking about in there and damaging my favourite car.’ McAllister’s voice was low and sinister.
They were near the coast. Amanda knew it as she filled her lungs with the salt-laced air. So where exactly were they going? Did McAllister have a coastal home? A private air field nearby? A boat?
Amanda’s knees weakened at the thought of a boat. The guard dug his fingers into her arm, keeping her standing up straight. She imagined herself crammed into the damp depths of a cargo boat, sailing away from Scotland as though she were nothing more than a damaged package. Who would be waiting for her on the other side of her journey? And how would Shane ever find her?
‘The next time I hear you kicking my beloved car,’ McAllister leaned in close, moonlight reflected in his eyes, ‘I’m going to stop this car and have one of my men break both of your lovely long legs. Are we clear?’
Amanda nodded furiously.
‘I’m glad you understand. Now, be a good girl and be nice and still for the rest of the journey.’ McAllister eased back from her and walked away.
The rest of the journey.
So it still wasn’t over. Amanda didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more terrified. A journey on a boat was becoming more and more likely. Her mind raced with possibilities of where she could be going.
Europe?
Africa?
Where?
And why?
The guard clutching her arms scooped her up and tossed her back into the boot. Amanda rolled onto her side, keen to catch one last glimpse of the starlit night sky before the boot was slammed shut, returning her to her darkened vessel.
*
She didn’t kick again. She believed McAllister when he said he’d break her legs. He probably kept a hammer under his car seat for such an event. And how could she hope to run with broken bones? The engine hummed as the car bounced along winding roads. In the darkness Amanda did her best to assess her current wounds. There was a throbbing in her left ear and her nose was damp with blood. Both cheeks were filled with a deep ache. Even her arms were starting to grow sore from being continually flung around the boot. And her wrists. They stung like the plastic tie had been swapped for barbed wire bracelets.
The car kept moving and Amanda stared into the darkness, imaging shapes within its depths. She tried to imagine Shane. He’d be sat out in his car now, waiting on the edge of the woodland. Did he intermittently peer at the treeline, expecting her to suddenly burst out of the shadows and come running towards him? How many times had he called her phone? Was he now realising that she wasn’t coming back?
Amanda cried. Her tears mingling with the blood upon her face.
He’d said that he loved her. Before she’d left the hotel those had been his parting words to her.
And she hadn’t said it back.
*
‘I love you.’
The fire crackled and for a moment Amanda thought she’d misheard what Shane had said. She studied his profile in the amber light of the flames. He wasn’t even looking at her, he was staring at a large piece of driftwood which had just caught light.
‘What did you say?’ she tugged on his arm, drawing his attention towards her face. His green eyes glistened but his lips twitched nervously. ‘Shane?’
‘I said,’ he pulled in a deep breath, puffing out his chest, ‘that I love you.’
Amanda blinked at him. Once. Twice.
The sound of John snoring disrupted the moment. He was on the other side of the campfire, curled up on his side, using his hooded jumper for a pillow.
‘These last couple of weeks,’ Shane leaned forward and began wringing his hands together. ‘We’ve been hanging out together more and well—’
‘But we’ve not even done it,’ Amanda blurted. ‘We’ve just kissed and hung out without John a bit,’ she threw her slumbering friend a guilty sideways glance. ‘I didn’t realise it was… you know. Serious.’
‘Really?’ Shane’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. He clenched his jaw but said nothing else.
‘I mean, I have feelings for you, of course I do. But this, us,’ she gestured between them, ‘It’s so new. We haven’t even told our parents that we’re dating or anything.’
‘Jesus, Amanda. Love doesn’t have a timeline or anything.’
‘I know but—’
‘I’m sorry if I don’t fit into the weird schedule of romance you’ve got in your head but I saw you looking into the fire and I felt something in my heart and I just knew. So I just went with my feeling and said it. I didn’t expect you to say it back or anything.’ He stood up, dusted the sand off his baggy jeans and began walking down the beach, away from their fire.
‘Shane!’ Amanda hurried after him.
‘What?’ he spun around, his frustration etched into his sixteen-year-old features.
‘I…’ Amanda wasn’t even sure she actually knew what love was. All that she did know was that it was meant to be forever. Her parents had loved each other, and even after her dad died her mum went on loving him, even though he was a ghost. Love was infinity. Love was everything.
‘You don’t feel the same. It’s fine,’ Shane remarked tersely.
‘No, I do.’ Amanda held his arms and looked up into his eyes. In her heart she knew that if she ruined this moment, if she let him just sulk away down the beach she’d regret it forever. Shane was like oxygen. She needed him to survive. A world without him just wasn’t a world at all.
‘Are you scared to say it?’ he questioned tenderly.
‘Yes,’ Amanda admitted as she looked down at her feet in frustration. ‘But only because it scares me. Because when you say it – it changes everything.’
‘I know that.’
‘And you said it anyway?’
‘I said it anyway.’
‘But it’s like…’ she chewed her lip, searching for the right words. ‘I don’t want to say it and then lose you.’
Amanda thought of the walls in her house covered in her father’s image, how the place had become a shrine to him. And in her continued devotion to her husband, Amanda’s mother got to go to bed alone every night. Corrine always said that she didn’t mind, that her memories kept her warm, but Amanda wondered how true that could be, especially during the bleak winter months? Loneliness surely lingered on the fringes of her mother’s existence, testing her previous declaration of love.
‘You’ll never lose me.’ Shane sealed his promise with a kiss.
‘Ever?’ Amanda gazed deeply into his eyes as they parted, the tips of their noses still touching.
‘Never ever.’ He kissed her again. ‘I’ll be here for you, Amanda. Until the end of time. And even after that. I swear it.’
‘I love you.’ The words came easily. Amanda said them and saw Shane’s features soften. He opened his mouth but someone bellowed from behind, speaking before he could.
‘Oh my God you two need to get a room. I’m seriously getting sick of being a third wheel, guys!’ John shouted from where he’d woken up beside the fire, his hair matted and sprinkled with sand.
Hand in hand, Amanda and Shane headed back to the warmth of the flames.
*
Amanda’s head sagged against her chest. The car took a corner and she braced herself with her legs so that she didn’t go tumbling all over the place. The memory of the night when she’d first told Shane that she loved him was keeping her warm, was keeping some of the denser shadows at bay. He’d been right back then, about how love didn’t keep to any sort of schedule. It just… happened.
With Will it had just happened. Like a hurricane he’d swept into her life and it’d been impossible not to get pulled along by the sheer force of it all. He was strong and spoke his mind.
And he lied.
Amanda squeezed her eyes closed, refusing to cry anymore. Will might have lied to her throughout their marriage but he’d had his reasons. And ultimately he’d loved her. He’d used his final breaths to tell her as much.
Her chest heaved. With each grumble of the engine, Amanda knew she was creeping ever closer to her own end. Either McAllister was going to haul her onto some ship destined for God knows where or he was going to shoot her point-blank and watch her lifeless body drop into a shallow grave. Shane didn’t factor into either of those scenarios. Amanda was going to be denied a chance to see him one last time, to tell him how she felt.
The car bounced over a bump and Amanda’s head ricocheted up at the roof of the boot, hitting it so hard that she almost saw stars.
Just hold on.
She tried to find the will to remain focused. She didn’t want to become a ghost, a memory to keep Shane warm on lonely nights. She wanted to see him again. To see Ewan and her mother. Her desire to live burned within her, keeping her strong. The car engine began to slow again. They were stopping.