My blood roared through my ears, and a cocktail of adrenaline and fear and the addictive feeling of control raced around my body.
“Good,” Arthur said. “Again.”
I lined up the shot, then fired the gun. The bullet hit the target, and a rush of relieved breath left Arthur’s mouth. His cheek was still next to mine, and he leaned in and kissed me. I felt the tenderness of it shiver down my spine.
Arthur released the gun and left me holding it myself. “Again,” he ordered and stepped back. As I felt the trigger under my finger, the balaclava-clad face of the man who’d slit Freya’s throat came to my head, the memory slipping through the cage’s door. Then the man who’d plunged a knife into Arabella’s chest followed quickly behind, showing me her eyes widening as the blade sank inch by inch into her still-beating heart. I remembered how she took the blade without crying or begging, how she met death with a steely bravery and an eerily calm façade.
As I aimed the gun, my hand shook harder. Tears built in my eyes, and the bales before me became a hazy beige blur. I fired, having no idea where the bullet landed. No idea if Arthur spoke to me, tried to help me. I felt it then. I felt the padlock snap and the cage door burst open. My heart plummeted toward the well of grief I had tried to keep sealed off. A place of sadness and despair, a hole of quicksand that wanted to drag me down too deep to return from.
I held the gun steady and aimed again. My head filled with Hugo and my father tied to chairs, frantically begging for their lives. The floodgates of my mind wrenched themselves open.
And as if my dad’s and Hugo’s and my friends’ murders weren’t enough for my mind and heart to endure, an image of my mum came next. Her soft but bony hand clutched in mine. How weak it was as she tried to hold me tightly and say her goodbyes. My mum, the one person who had ever shown me love—true love—leaving me, cancer stealing her from my side. I saw her laughing and smiling and taking me to the park. Afternoon tea at Harrods and holding my hand as we walked along Bond Street.
Then she disappeared, her body and bright smiling face misting away with the gale-force wind of death.
Gone.
I fired a bullet as I remembered watching her fade in her bed. When her chest rose, fell … then never moved again. Her hand, already weak in mine, went limp. Hours and hours passed, and I still couldn’t let her go. A little girl staring at her mum’s pale, still face, wondering why she couldn’t get better. Why she couldn’t smile at me again. Why she couldn’t heal and not leave me alone.
Because I was. After she had left me, I was alone. Maternal love gone, and a distant father’s embrace the pitiful replacement.
Mum.
Dad.
Hugo.
Freya.
Arabella.
I fired the gun over and over until the bullets were replaced by empty rounds sending nothing but air and lost dreams into the bales. Tears flooded my cheeks, and all the fight drained from my body. The gun seemed to weigh ten tons in my trembling hands. My arms fell, dropping it to the ground. My legs felt like jelly, and I felt myself collapsing to the sandy ground, but strong arms caught me before I hit the floor.
All I could see was blood. All I could see were my friends tied up and crying to be free. Their terrified eyes as they realised they weren’t getting saved. Dad and Hugo as they silently begged their attackers for mercy on the video. Two men who were not exactly affectionate or loving to me, but who I loved because they were mine. My only family … I saw my mum kiss my head as she said goodbye, as she told me to be a good girl and that she would watch down on me from heaven …
My family … all gone.
I didn’t realise I was falling apart, wracking sobs tearing from my chest, until Arthur sat on the floor and pulled me into his arms. His hold was like a balm to my torn soul. “They’re dead,” I said, hearing gunshots in my mind. The sounds that would have engulfed the room as the attackers fired into my dad’s and Hugo’s heads.
And my best friends … they died because of me.
“It’s my fault,” I said, my throat raw from the sadness, from the guilt. “My friends died because of me. They’re gone because of me …” Arthur held me tighter, and despite the emptiness in my heart, I felt safe. As I collapsed and exorcised weeks and weeks of repressed sadness and guilt, he kept me upright in his arms, never letting me fall.