Marion Lennox - Nine Months to Change His Life

‘I don’t need a walking-stick.’

‘Yeah, you can get up and hike right up the beach without even a wince,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. Lie still and think of nothing at all while I go and find what I need. Do what the lady tells you. Stay.’

* * *

Stay. He had no choice.

‘Smash ’em Mary.’ The name echoed in his head, weirdly reassuring.

The last few hours had been a nightmare. In the end he’d decided it was a dream. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness or that was how it’d seemed. The past was mixing with the future. He and Jake as kids in that great, ostentatious mansion their parents called home. Their father yelling at them. ‘You moronic imbeciles, you’re your mother’s spawn. You’ve inherited nothing from me. Stupid, stupid, stupid.’

That’s how he felt now. Stupid.

Jake, flying through the air with the blast from the roadside bomb. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Jake on a rope, smashing through the waves.

‘Ben, look after your brother.’ That was their mother. Rita Marlene. Beautiful, fragile, fatally flawed. ‘Promise me.’

She was here now. Promise me.

Where was Jake?

This was all a dream.

His mother?

Smash ’em Mary.

There was no way a dream could conjure a Smash ’em Mary. The name hauled him out of his stupor as nothing else could.

Stay.

He had no choice but to obey. The nightmare was still there. If he moved, it might slam back.

He’d lie still and submit. To Smash ’em Mary?

She’d been so close he’d seen her face. She had an elfin haircut, with wet, short-cropped curls plastering her forehead. She had a finely boned face, brown eyes and freckles.

She had shadows under her eyes. Exhaustion?

Because of him? Had she been searching for him—or someone else?

How many yachts had gone down?

Memory was surging back, and he groaned and tried to rise. But then she was back, pushing him down onto the sand.

‘Disobedience means no elephant stamp,’ she told him. ‘I said lie still and I meant lie still.’ Then she faltered a little, and the assurance faded. ‘Ben, I can’t sugar-coat this. Your leg might be broken and there’s no way I can assess it here.

‘In normal circumstances I’d call an ambulance, we’d fill you full of nice woozy drugs, put you on a stretcher and cart you off to a hospital, but right now all you have is me. So I’ve found a couple of decent sticks. I’ll tie one to your leg to keep it still. The other’s a walking-stick. You’re going to hold onto me and we’ll get you off this beach.’

He tried to think about it. It was hard to think about anything but closing his eyes and going to sleep.

‘Ben,’ Mary snapped. ‘Don’t even think about closing your eyes. You’re cold to the marrow. The tide’s coming in. You go to sleep and you won’t wake up.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ It was a slur. It was so hard to make his voice work.

‘Because Jake needs you,’ Mary snapped again. ‘You pull yourself together and help me, and then we’ll both help Jake. Just do it.’

And put like that, of course he’d do it. He had no choice.

* * *

Afterwards she could never figure out how they managed. She’d read somewhere of mothers lifting cars off children, superhuman feats made possible by the adrenalin of terror. There was something about a cyclone bearing down that provided the same sort of impetus.

She was facing sleet and sand and the blasting of leaves and branches from the storm-swept trees of Hideaway Island and beyond. She had to get this man two hundred yards up a rocky cliff to the safety of the cave. The sheer effort of hauling him was making her feel faint, but there was no way she was letting him go.

‘If I had to find a drowned rat of a sailor, why couldn’t I have found a little one?’ she gasped. They were halfway up the path, seemingly a million miles from the top. Ben was grim-faced with pain. He was leaning on his stick but his left leg was useless and he was forced to lean on her heavily. His weight was almost unbearable.

‘Leave me and come back when the storm’s done,’ he gasped.

‘No way,’ she said, and then, as he propped himself up on the walking-stick, turning stubborn, she hauled out the big guns. ‘Keep going. Jake needs you even if I don’t.’ She didn’t have a clue who Jake was but it shut him up. He went back to concentrating on one ghastly step at a time, and so did she.

His leg seemed useless. He was totally dependent on one leg, his stick and her support. Compound fracture? Blocked blood supply? There hadn’t been the time or visibility on the beach to see. She’d simply ripped her coat into strips and tied the stick on his leg to keep it as steady as she could.

But it was bad. He was dragging it behind him and she could feel that every step took him to the edge.

She felt close to the edge herself. How much worse must it be for him?

‘If I were you, I’d be screaming in agony,’ she managed, and she felt him stiffen. She could feel his tension, his fear—and now his shock.

‘Smash...Smash ’em Mary screams in agony?’

‘I’m good at it,’ she confessed. ‘It’s great for getting free points from the referee.’

‘You’re...kidding me.’

‘Nope.’ She was trying desperately to sound normal, to keep the exhaustion from her voice as they hauled themselves one appalling step after another. Dizziness was washing over her in waves, but she wouldn’t succumb. ‘I’ve watched wrestlers on the telly. I swear their agony is pretend but they make millions. Some day I might.’

‘As a wrestler, or with roller derby?’

‘I might need to work on my muscles a bit for wrestling. I should have done it earlier. Muscles’d be helping now.’

They surely would. He was doing his best but she was practically dragging him.

Left to his own devices, he’d have lain where he was until the storm passed. Or not. This diminutive woman was giving him no choice.

‘Mary—’

‘Shut up and keep going.’

‘You don’t have to—’

‘Lie down and we lie down together,’ she muttered, grim with determination. ‘I don’t give up. I might get it horribly wrong, but I don’t give up. Ever.’

He had no clue what that meant. All he knew was that she was iron. She wasn’t faltering. No matter how steep the ground grew, she wasn’t slowing.

But she stopped talking. She must be as close to the edge as he was, he thought. If he could only help...

And then suddenly, blessedly, the ground flattened. His leg jolted with the shock of a change of levels but she didn’t pause.

‘Heinz... Heinz’s waiting just round this corner.’ She was gasping for breath, not bothering to disguise her distress now they were on level ground.

‘Heinz?’

‘My...my guard dog.’

Somehow she hauled him another few steps, around a bluff that instantly, magically chopped off the screaming wind. Ten more steps took them towards darkness...the mouth of a cave? Five more steps and they were inside. The rain ceased. The light dimmed.

‘Welcome to my lair,’ Mary managed, and that was all she could get out.

‘I can’t...’ she muttered—and she folded into a crumpled heap.

What the...?

Somehow he dropped beside her, fumbling to lift her head, to clear her face from the sandy ground. Was this a faint? Please, God, let this just be exhaustion. To have hauled him so far...

This woman had put her own life on the line to save his. She’d given her all and more. Her faint had to be from sheer exhaustion, he told himself fiercely. It had to be. If it was worse, he’d carry the guilt for the rest of his life.

Her eyes were open, dazed, confused.

‘Hey,’ he managed. ‘It’s okay. We’re safe now. You’ve saved me, now it’s your turn to relax.’