– chapter eleven –

I scrambled to my hands and knees and groped the saturated ground. But all I connected with was Jack’s leg.

“Ow!”

“What’d I do?” I gasped, stiffening.

“My leg,” he moaned.

My eyes slowly grew accustomed to the dark. And I saw that his left leg was stretched straight in front, his right twisted awkwardly to the side.

“Do you think you can stand if I support you?” I asked.

He tried to move his foot and stifled a scream, trapping it between clenched teeth.

“N-no.”

“Where are we, Jack?” I asked quietly.

“Not really sure,” he said, groaning. “A natural well, an old bomb crater?”

“Rot in hell!” Dougie’s evil laughter filtered down to us.

“That’s your destiny, Douglas Smith,” I yelled. “Not ours!”

“You don’t think?” he shouted. “I’m staying here to make sure of it.”

“You just wait ’til we get out of here, Dougie!” I said.

“Ain’t happenin’ on my watch,” Dougie said. “Now that you’re both here, you just made it really easy for me. I can say you were in on it together.”

A slight rush of air pushed past my back as Jack flopped back against the squelchy mud wall. Panicked, I slapped his cheek and his eyes struggled open.

“I’m sorry, Kathy,” he moaned.

“But you didn’t do anything!” I sobbed. “And I knew it was wrong, Jack. If I had my time over, I swear I’d do it all differently.”

I flopped back against the well wall, exhausted. I would never, ever steal anything ever again.

“Goodbye, Kathy,” Jack whispered, caving in to his concussion.

“Don’t you say that, Jack Stewart!” I sobbed, shaking his shoulder with my good hand. He moaned again as he fought through his faintness and then vomited on the ground beside him. “I’ll get us out! And I’ll get Mum to hold a fancy dress party for my birthday so you can take part and I won’t. That wasn’t fair what I did to you, Jack.”

My feet slid as I struggled to stand. My hands, the pain irrelevant now, fumbled around the lumpy wall of our prison. It was narrow and almost circular. I stood on tiptoe. The walls were taller than me. And then the air became saturated.

“Kathy!” Jack said. “Breathe!”

I realised then that I was choking on my own blood.

“By dose,” I said, pinching it with my good fingers. “Beeding.”

My knees sagged and I remembered at the last minute not to fall on Jack. I propped myself against the wall, sinking lower and lower as my strength gave out. A black haze wrapped around me like a comforting blanket and I sank gratefully into its welcome embrace.

Light filtered through my eyelids and I lazily opened them, in no hurry to leave my dreamless sleep. A circle of daylight shone like a spotlight on Jack’s horribly twisted leg.

My feet barely gained traction in the mud, but I managed to kneel beside my cousin. His breath came in short, sharp bursts.

“Jack, wake up!” I shook his arm. “It’s daytime!”

“Mmm.” He licked his lips and tried to focus on my face but his eyes didn’t find mine. “Wh–”

“Shhh,” I said. I glanced at his watch but the hands weren’t moving and it had stopped at ten to three. I wound it up, desperate to make it work. Uncle Bill had given it to Jack on his tenth birthday and it meant so much to him, but it still didn’t work, broken by the fall or the dampness maybe? “Don’t try to talk. They’ll find us soon.”

I struggled back to my feet. The top of the hole was probably no more than an arm’s length above my head. I tried tiptoeing again it was but no use. The sound of Dougie humming Freddie’s favourite tune was like a knife stabbing at my heart. We’d meet again, Freddie, have no doubt, I raged.

“Help us out, Dougie!” I screamed. “Or I’ll…”

But he hummed without interruption.

I clawed mud from the inside of the pit but my purple and black fingers were swollen and so stiff they wouldn’t bend.

“Jack?”

His eyeballs rolled behind his closed lids and I knew I had no choice. I had to get him out even if Dougie was still on guard. I didn’t know how much longer Jack could last.

“I’m going to have to hoist you up, but it’s gonna hurt.”

Jack’s head lolled to his shoulder.

“No, Jack! Wake up!”

The sun shifted higher in the sky. Mid-morning maybe? The light shone right onto me now, and the puddle of blood I was kneeling in.

Jack had managed to straighten his leg out in front of him but the unnatural bend in his shin made me gag and blood seeped from a gash in his thigh.

I had to stop the blood. But how? My jacket? I tore it off and wrapped the sleeves around his leg, but the fabric was too thick to secure tightly. I let it fall into the bloody puddle as I searched for something else. Jack’s trousers? But I couldn’t risk tearing them and hurting him more.

Jack’s limp body slid further to one side and his braces slid off one shoulder.

I gently reached behind him, unclipped the braces from the back and pulled them towards me. Then I did the same at the front.

The blood trickled from his wound, not pulsed, but I slipped one end of the braces under his knee, grasped the other in my teeth and see-sawed it back to the top of his thigh. Knotting them with only one hand and my teeth was difficult but I managed.

Jack flinched slightly in his unconscious state but didn’t murmur.

“Jack? I know you can hear me!” I howled. “We have to get out. You need a doctor!”

If I could just lift him high enough, he could haul himself out and then help me.

I nudged my shoulder under his armpit but Jack didn’t respond and his thin, ration-starved body felt like an elephant against me. The pit swirled with the effort and I sank back to the ground, realising, with despair, that most of the blood around me was mine.