Jack drives fast through the city, as fast as he can. The traffic is heavy but he overtakes, undertakes, ignoring the horns, refusing to acknowledge the drivers he knows are shouting at him. Down under the river, through the tunnel and out into the last light of day, the dying light that shows up all the smears on the windscreen, and he’s slipping left and right with the speed cameras popping, and thinking, rambling, letting his thoughts run. ‘Why now? Why can’t you just wait? It might be okay, it might work out . . .’
He doesn’t really believe that any more than she does. They have three more nights to get through, then she will wake up early in the morning and take a test like all the ones she has taken before. Padding downstairs with the pen-shaped thing in the pocket of those tartan pyjamas she got from her dad, the big, baggy ones she wears for comfort. Cuddle Jams. He’ll be outside, by the closed door, listening and waiting.
The first time she took the test was the only time she let him in the room, and he felt so unwelcome, trying to give her space and not react to what he was hearing, smelling, seeing. The sound of her water. The yeasty scent rising, mingling with toilet damp and lemon freshness. Sarah counting down from thirty, under her breath. ‘Twenty-seven, twenty-six . . .’ Jack was ambushed at that moment – as he waited in the shadow of her warmth – by the thought of a life just starting. A whole life of living and loving. A boy or maybe a girl, laughing and smiling, cuddling and tumbling, learning to walk, kicking leaves in the forest, playing football in the park, holding and being held, knowing they were loved. Daddy would always be there.
But there was no life starting at all. No damn blue line. Then came the tears, the shouting. The lashing out. Then the silence.
Such a long silence, longer every time.
But all the silences so far were just leading up to this one that is coming. The last time. The last chance. They have no money left. No more strength. No hope. No expectation at all that it will work. He knows he has lost her and he fears what she will do. Wouldn’t she wait, though, for the result? Wouldn’t she just want to hold out for this one last chance?
‘Come on . . .’
Shadows are filling the car. They’re up to his waist, up to his neck and he’s drowning in them. They’re over his head now. He’s under the surface and the red tail-lamps glowing all around him in the slow-moving motorway traffic are the lights of an undersea procession, the people of the depths all calling for their queen. The indicator clicks and he drifts left, into the deeper darkness of the countryside, following the signs and road numbers and the memory of the numbers. Twenty-one. Two-six-seven. Like Sarah counting down the seconds of the test, to the moment when she knows.
‘Fifteen. Fourteen.’
Faster. Too fast.
The tyres hiss. The car slides. Leaves splatter the glass, branches lash the windscreen. A flash of white and an explosion. ‘Shit!’ The wing mirror has gone. He jerks the wheel one way then the other, wrestling to keep her straight as he brakes, pumping the pedal, and the car slides and shudders and slows to walking pace. And stops. ‘Sweet mother . . .’ Jack flicks on the wipers, and through the muddle of mulch and muddy water sees a churchyard, a stone angel. Not much of a guardian angel right now. This is a dark road, someone will come up fast behind him soon. The key turns, the engine coughs and coughs but then starts again and he is moving, creeping past a pub with lights all aglow.
Jack crunches the gears and accelerates into the blackness. Rolling his shoulders like she taught him, to ease the tension. Feeling sick. Where is she? Please God she watched the sunset, as she loves to do, got some peace from it then turned away, back from the edge, to find some pub or a bed for the night. Or home, even. Please let that be true and not the other. How did she get there anyway, without the car? Why hasn’t she called? Has she called? He fumbles on the seat where the phone was but isn’t now; it’s down the side or somewhere and it’s too dark to see and he would have heard it anyway.
The half-blind headlamps peer at grasping branches and sudden level crossings as Jack slows and speeds, slows and speeds, until the land rises, to say here we are, this is the Downs at last. The wind quickens against the side of the car as it climbs on a winding road and the door trembles against his thigh. He forgets to change gear and the elderly engine rises in pitch to meet the song in the speakers: the shimmering, enchanted Jeff Buckley version of ‘Hallelujah’. And the world is only the music and the arc of light beyond the bonnet, white lines streaming through it, the empty eyes of a hare quickly gone and the orange numbers on the dashboard. A sign looms out of the darkness, saying ‘You Are Not Alone’. There’s a number for the Samaritans. He remembers it from when they came before, together, in much happier times. They made a joke. This is it then. Gravel under the tyres. Right. He will get out of the car, and cross this car park, and walk in the moonlight over to the edge of the cliff and she will be there and he will hold her and she will be glad and he will take her home. Now. Go.
The wind and the waves and the blood all rush in his ears in a monster roar. It’s cold out here and the rain stings and he’s shoulder to shoulder with the blasts coming over the edge as he climbs, beyond the car park, up a steep slope on a path that cheats his feet and has him stumbling, tripping, down on one knee. Agony. Maybe a stone has sliced through his jeans to the ligament, it hurts that much . . . But no, he can get up. Get up there, Jack. Find her.
‘Sarah?’
The moon is bright in a halo of cloud, and the night is not as dark as it was just now. He can see the glitter on the sea far away and the lantern of a fishing boat flashing and dying who knows how far out. The edge is hard to see and he could walk right over it. Stay away, he tells himself. Keep your eye on the glitter but look up too, look ahead, for a movement in the dark, for a sign.
‘Sarah!’
She’s here, she must be. Why would she be here in the dark? She must be though. There! A shift in the shadows, a long shape forming into a body, gliding, merging with the ground, getting closer to where the glitter starts.
‘Sarah! Babe!’
The head turns. The shape shifts again and the whites of her eyes come to him through the darkness, and it’s her and he’s found her and . . .
‘Get lost!’
It’s a stranger, weird and angry, turning his back and walking into the black, gone. And in that moment, the moon succumbs to the cloud. The stars fade, the glitter goes. The cliff is the edge is the sea is the sky, and Jack stumbles again. He’s on his knees on the sodden sodding grass with sheep shit oozing between his fingers, and he can’t get up this time. He wants to lay down and hug the earth and say, ‘Keep her, keep her close, will you? Don’t let her go. Don’t let her fall. Love her. Sarah. My Sarah . . .’
But Sarah is lost. And so is he.