Page 27 of The Boathouse By the Loch

He was back.

It was the sudden darkness that scared him most; the bright white world taken from him in an instant by the snow enveloping him, crushing him, until he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t escape back to the light, realising that it was all over sooner that he could ever have imagined.

He wanted his last thoughts to be good, to be true. He didn’t want his last moments to be wasted in a futile struggle against the inevitable. So, he tried to recall with as much vivid detail as possible the people he loved, so he could at least feel he wasn’t making that final journey alone and perhaps could leave the world enveloped in a kind of peace.

‘Remember that night you stayed over at my house?’ said Faye.

Jake opened his eyes. Of course he did. He’d been babysittingNatty while Faye was on her course that day, training towards her headship qualification. She’d been stuck in traffic on the way home, and hadn’t got in until very late. Natty had already been in bed, and was asleep. Jake had stayed over, sleeping on the couch. Natty had woken up at a silly hour that morning while Faye was fast asleep. She’d come down for a drink of water and had snuggled with Jake on the sofa, eventually falling asleep.

‘I heard you, Jake.’ He listened as Faye recounted what had happened that night. She’d been woken by a noise downstairs. It had been around midnight. She had got out of bed and automatically checked her daughter’s room. Finding it empty, she’d expected Natty to be in the kitchen making a racket as well as a glass of water. But the kitchen had been empty, the lights off, and Faye had begun to feel anxious.

She always locked every door, checked every window; her little ritual twice around the house before lights out. But that night, unexpected company in the form of Jake crashing on her sofa had thrown her little ritual into disarray; she had forgotten it.

Jake’s voice had pierced the silent stillness. He’d sounded agitated; she’d thought he had called out her name. She’d bounded through the lounge door. ‘What is it?’ she remembered asking as she approached the sofa. She had found Jake still asleep but sweating profusely – great beads of sweat were on his forehead, like he had a fever. And he seemed to be having trouble breathing.

‘I thought you were having an asthma attack. You were really bad, Jake. But when I called your name, and you woke up, you were fine.’

‘I can control it during the day, Faye, when I don’t think about it. But at night …’

At night, it was out of control, and Faye was right; it was reallybad. Jake hadn’t had an uninterrupted night’s sleep since the accident. Every night he was back. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe; trapped in a snow-white coffin, paralysed with fear, until a movement above, snow shifting, light, blinding, dazzling, beautiful light.

But the nightmare didn’t end there. It never ended there.

‘At night, I constantly relive that moment.’ The moment when Jake’s relief at being freed from the darkness, being able to breathe in that crisp white air, turned to horror at the thought of Eleanor just a few feet away, so close, yet so alone in her own snow-white coffin.

‘As soon as my lungs were filled with air, I was screaming at Marcus to leave me and find Eleanor, get her out. He left me. Then he returned, asking me if I was OK – asking me what happened, as if he hadn’t heard a single word I had just said. Christ, I felt so helpless.’

Jake remembered that overwhelming sense of helplessness at being trapped in the snow, unable to help rescue Eleanor. ‘He left me again. I was still trapped, but at least I could breathe. But I was desperate to know what was happening. Had he found her? Was she alright?Please, god, tell me she’s alright, I prayed.But Marcus wouldn’t tell me anything. All I could hear was his voice repeating her name over and over.’

Jake took a moment to remember to breathe, trying to stave off a panic attack as the memories came flooding back.

‘Then they arrived out of nowhere.’ Jake recalled the thumping sound of the rescue helicopter appearing overhead, whipping up a mini snowstorm around them, threatening to bury them again. He remembered looking up through the driving snow and seeing a man in bright colours being winched down beside ametal cage. He looked back and wondered at how quickly they’d been found.

‘They took her first. I insisted. After they had resuscitated her, I wanted them to get her to the hospital fast; I didn’t want to run the risk of losing her again.’

Jake’s attempts to convince a sceptical rescuer that he was alright so that they would leave without him wasn’t helped by Marcus’s constant interference with the words, ‘You don’t look alright.’ At Marcus insistence, they checked him over. There was some bruising, but no broken bones. Jake even got to his feet to prove he was alright, which he wasn’t – not really. He was suffering from shock. He was shaking so badly that he didn’t know how he was going to make it off the mountain. But he did, because all he could think of was being reunited with Eleanor.

‘I saw her. We both did.’ She was nearly free of that white tomb. ‘I remembered thinking …’ Jake shook his head, ‘why her? I should have done something more to stop her.’

‘You can’t blame yourself.’

Jake cut across Faye’s protestations that it wasn’t his fault. He knew what she was going to say; it had started to snow hard, and it was just a coincidence the way that ledge had collapsed on his approach. It wasn’t his fault there had been an avalanche.

Jake wasn’t having any of it. ‘I remember standing there staring as they flew her straight to hospital, thinking it should have been Eleanor that Marcus dug out first.’

Jake stared through the window at The Lake House. If they hadn’t rowed, if he’d only listened, Eleanor wouldn’t have felt the need to prove a point, and she wouldn’t have been standing under that ledge. They’d have spent Christmas in London instead. And Marcus wouldn’t have been forced to make an impossible choicehe would have to live with for the rest of his life.

Ultimately, Jake knew, by hating Marcus, by punishing Marcus, by withdrawing his friendship, his love, he was really punishing himself for being the cause of it all. Until Jake could forgive himself for his part in the tragedy, how could he hope to forgive Marcus?

‘Up there, he made the wrong choice,’ Jake said again.

Jake expected Faye to make sympathetic noises, say something, anything. ‘Faye, are you still there?’

‘He told me you’d say that.’

Jake’s eyebrows shot up. So hehadtold her! Marcus perpetrating the lie, making Jake look bad in front of Faye. Making himself out to be the innocent party, the wronged man. No wonder Faye had told Marcus about his holiday. No wonder she was mad at him for getting Marcus thrown in jail when he’d followed Jake on holiday to Scotland, and Jake had informed the local police he might have brought drugs on the flight with him.

‘He says you’ve got it all wrong.’

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