Then Caspar was racing off down the corridor, past the startled gaze of Justin, who was waiting outside. Caspar expected to hear the thud of footsteps pursuing him, but no, and glancing back he realized that Justin had heard the crash of Katie hitting the floor and gone to her.
As Caspar burst through the double doors to the entrance hall, Greg at the porter’s desk looked up, startled. Caspar slowed down and waved a hand, tried to smile. At the very moment that his hand touched the outer door an alarm went off. That must have been Katie.
Then he was out into the night. The wind had got up. It was as if his inner turbulence had spilled into the outer world. Clouds streamed across the sky, and the trees seemed alive with writhing branches. He ran down the path towards the promontory, almost carried along by the wind at his back.
He wasn’t thinking, he had no plan, just an instinct to flee. If he could only get off the island, somehow escape from this place and the wreckage he had made of his life. He could find somewhere to hole up. He had plenty of money. He had friends all over the world; he could go to Africa.
His car was in the car park at the base of the hill. He didn’t need to consult the schedule of the tides. He knew them by heart. It would be tight, very tight, but he’d driven over before when the water was beginning to slop over his tyres. And he had never minded taking a risk.
He jumped into the car. The moon was full and high, and for a few moments the clouds dropped away and he saw the bay in the moonlight. The water was lapping up against the promontory. He drove down the ramp onto the road and the wind buffeted the car. Already there was a thin wash of water spurting up from his tyres.
The clouds covered the moon and he put the car into second gear and ploughed on into the darkness.
He was less than halfway across when he realized that he had misjudged the speed of the tide – or not taken into account the gale force winds. It was too late to go back. He knew without looking that the sea had closed in behind him. His headlights shone on choppy water and the resistance that the water offered was growing as he urged the car forward. If he could just pick up enough speed to carry him through!
The undertow lifted up the car and pushed it sideways and he fought to keep the car on the road. The sea was trying to take the car and him with it. He had to get out! He managed to push open the door a few inches, but the pressure of the water pressed it back. The window – frantically he tried to get it open, but it was all too late. Water had got into the electrics. He was losing control of the car. It was rocking and slipping sideways into deeper water.
They say that when you’re drowning your whole life flashes before your eyes.
He saw again that village in the jungle, and himself gazing down at the sick boy. He’d tried to conceal his impatience. He had gone out to the Congo to do research on diseases that had made the leap from an animal host to human beings, but he had never expected to deal with actual patients. He was not a clinician, after all.
He saw himself wiping the sweat away from his forehead as he looked at the boy, careful not to touch him or go too near.
“What’s that?” he’d asked the interpreter, pointing to a recently healed wound on the boy’s hand.
The interpreter asked the father and relayed the answer: “He was bitten by a baby monkey.”
“When did that happen?”
Again, a consultation. The father waved an arm to indicate a place some way off.
“It was ten days ago,” the interpreter reported. “At his uncle’s village.”
Ten days ago. And the boy had got sick a few days ago. Perhaps he had contracted this disease from the monkey. That would fit with a plausible incubation period.
“How far away is it?” he asked.
“Ten kilometres.”
“And is the monkey still there?”
The father shrugged and spoke. The interpreter said, “He thinks so. He’s not sure.”
Caspar had looked again at the boy, weighing up the situation. Could this be Ebola? No, the symptoms weren’t quite right and he would surely be sicker than this.
The mother spoke. The translator said, “She thinks he is a little better today.”
He had come to a decision. In his eagerness to discover the source of the boy’s illness and make an important breakthrough, he had behaved incredibly foolishly. Afterwards he wondered whether the heat had somehow sapped his judgment.
And it had all been for nothing anyway: when he got to the uncle’s village the monkey had already been killed and eaten. When he got back to the little village three days later the boy was dead and everyone else was sick and dying. Worse, he had neglected to ask the family about the boy’s movements. He had simply assumed that the child had not left the village. In fact he had gone from his uncle to his boarding school, and his parents had brought their child home from there, but not before he had infected thirty-five other boys, twenty-eight of whom had died. Altogether, several hundred people died before the disease was brought under control.
No one from the village had survived and he had been able to pretend that the first visit had never happened. The only person who knew otherwise was Gemma.
And now the sea was rising up against the windows, and as the car tipped sideways he understood that his luck had finally run out. Perhaps it had run out that day in the DRC when he had made the wrong call and Gemma had witnessed it.
It was simply that it had taken him this long to understand there was no way back.