Worth the Shot

Prologue

Then

This road always feels to him like it’s running along the edge of the world. On one side he can see the dark shadows of the gorse bushes, the low dry-stone wall built by hand hundreds of years ago, and beyond that, the dark, felted-looking patchwork of the fields.

On the other side, the black water is flecked with the lights of the town. Small, blurred circles of illumination like he’s looking at them through bleary eyes.

‘Let’s drive home on the sea road,’ he’d suggested when they left the restaurant. ‘Our special place.’ His wife hadn’t wanted to take the long way home, but it had been a great evening, and the promised rain hadn’t materialized in the end.

She’d grumbled but hadn’t put up a fight.

He drives now with one hand and leaves the other loose and relaxed on his knee.

He’s left his window open a crack to relish the smell of the night air, heavy with salt and damp vegetation.

The car hums faintly beneath them. A low, mechanical moan that sounds almost as if it’s alive.

He inhales. It’s the exact same smell as from the night he’d proposed to her three years ago.

‘You shouldn’t have had that last drink,’ his wife says quietly, a tension edging her voice.

He grins. ‘It was only an extra half. Barely counts! When I was a kid, my dad would drive us home from the welfare club when he could barely see straight. Never had so much as a scrape. If you don’t count the time he reversed into Santa Claus outside the Co-op, that is.’

She laughs despite herself. ‘You said that was your Uncle Pete in a beard.’

‘It was Santa Claus to me and my brother back then. So it was quite traumatic.’

Her hand rests on the round of her belly and he glances away from the road to look.

Sometimes, when he’s there at the right time, he can feel the baby shifting like a precious, slippery fish under her skin.

There’s just a month to go if the dates are right.

Thirty more days and their world will tip and then settle, and everything else that feels important now will fall away.

He thinks of the business, of the new contract signed that afternoon for the brand-new unit. The draft balance sheet with the biggest numbers they’ve seen so far.

He pictures the new cot he hasn’t yet assembled, the apple-green paint for the nursery walls he argued against and then gave in to. A good life. Seeing himself as a father. It’s all finally lining up just as he’d dreamed it would.

The car stutters—one small twitch, then another. He frowns at the dash, at the road ahead, as the steering feels oddly light and loose beneath his hands. The wheel turns a fraction more than he expects and he corrects it instinctively. Then it happens again.

‘What was that?’ she says.

‘Nothing.’ He pats the wheel and winks at her, despite his own misgivings. ‘She can do this when she’s sulking . . . like someone else I know.’

They drift slightly towards the edge of the road again and he eases them back, his jaw tightening. He steers toward the lay-by ahead, tracing a shallow arc beside a rusting sign warning of loose cliff edges.

‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘I’ll call rescue. They’ll be out in no time when I tell them you’re heavily pregnant.’

The headlights throw pale bars of light on to the road ahead. The town is a smear of illumination across the water and the cliff drops away just a few yards from where they sit.

She presses both palms to her belly. ‘You’d better ring them then.’

He digs for his phone, but he already knows. Still, he holds the handset high and the screen stays stubbornly blank.

‘Oh, brilliant,’ she mutters.

‘I’ll get us sorted, don’t worry,’ he says.

He adjusts his grip on the wheel, flexes his fingers as if that might fix it.

For a second the steering seems to respond normally, then there’s a soft give beneath his palms. He turns the key and the engine clicks, gives a faint whine.

On the third try the dashboard flickers and then dies completely.

‘We’ll flag someone down,’ he says, upbeat. ‘A cab’s bound to come along. Or—’

‘We’re in the middle of nowhere.’

‘Romantic, though, isn’t it?’ he says, trying to lighten the mood. He kisses her knuckles and her hand feels warm. She gives a weak smile, then looks to her left, where the darkness disguises a sheer drop into the inky froth.

He’s about to suggest waiting ten minutes before they try the engine again when a set of headlamps suddenly appears, flooding the lay-by in a powerful glare.

He opens the door and jumps out, lifting an arm and then taking a step into the road. The salty night air bites his lungs and he watches as the vehicle slows and he recognizes it.

He laughs, relief collapsing his chest. He waves both arms. ‘Hey!’

The Land Rover slows and noses in behind them.

The driver leans out, squints under the brim of a cap and then grins.

It’s only his best friend and business partner—the man he’s built this shiny new business thing with, brick by brick through late nights and cheap pizza and ridiculous optimism.

Of course it’s him, and now they’ll be fine.

They meet halfway between the vehicles in a clumsy hug, two coats scratching and their hands thumping at each other’s backs.

‘What are the chances, eh?’ the friend says.

‘You absolute legend.’

‘You stuck here?’ The friend looks past him at the car and, beyond it, the cliff line. ‘Battery?’

He shrugs. ‘Think the dashboard lights could mean fuel pump but didn’t get chance for a proper look before she gave up on me.’

‘No worries. I’ve got the tow in the back. Get inside. It’ll take me two minutes to pull ahead of you. Stick her in neutral, handbrake off. Let me do the faffy bit.’

He lifts both hands. ‘You’re the boss.’

He grins. ‘For once.’

He slides back into the driver’s seat. The car smells faintly of her peppermint lip balm. She is breathing quite fast and he reaches for her again, feels how damp her palm is.

‘Told you it’ll be OK,’ he says. ‘He’ll tow us to the garage, and we’ll dump it there until the morning. We’ll be in bed by two thirty.’

She glances doubtfully down to her left. ‘Tell him to be careful.’

‘He’s always careful. Too careful. It’s the one annoying thing about him.’

He opens the door slightly, leans out and calls, ‘Ready.’

‘Handbrake off?’

‘Yep. In neutral, too.’

He shuts the door and glances up at the rear-view mirror. The Land Rover shoots forward but remains behind the car. It looks to be a little too close to veer around them.

‘He knows what he’s doing,’ he starts to say, and stops when the Land Rover bumps the back of their car. A small, polite nudge.

‘Shit!’ He flinches, starts to open the door again. ‘He mustn’t realize he’s—’

The second bump is not as polite. It’s a full lunge in the back before a quick reverse.

The car jerks forward and he reaches for the brake on reflex.

The pedal lowers under his foot as if the floor has swallowed it and it keeps dropping with nothing to press against. Nothing to push.

An icy wash floods his veins. He stamps again, but there’s no bite there.

She grips his arm. ‘What’s happening?’

The third shunt slams into the back end. The Land Rover is on top of them now, the engine a steady churn.

And then they are moving, faster than the space in the lay-by allows. The cliff edge looms closer with each agonizing second. The grit gives way to the verge and then to nothing.

He twists in his seat. In the wash of the Land Rover’s lights the other man’s face is visible through the windscreen. It isn’t angry. It isn’t anything.

‘For God’s sake, stop!’ he shouts through the glass. ‘Stop, stop—’

His wife gives a sudden yelp and she is sick in her lap. The smell is sharp and reeks of fear. She wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist and begins to cry, and he grabs her hand and holds it, hard enough to hurt, because he cannot think of what else to do.

The edge of the cliff comes at them sideways.

He yanks the flaccid steering column left, then right, to no avail.

He hauls at it until his shoulders burn while the tyres scuff and slide.

The Land Rover keeps pressing on, relentless as the tide.

The sign with the warning about the loose cliff edge flips into view in their headlamps and then spins out of the light.

In a split second that lasts and lasts, he thinks of the office, of the papers he signed that afternoon, of a contract containing his friend’s name—the two of them bound tighter than blood.

He thinks of the chat in the pub last week, the way the friend had said, quietly, I’m in a hole, mate, and how he had slid across the twenty grand in cash because that’s what you do for the ‘family’ that you choose.

This is just between us, the friend had said, eyes bright with relief. You’re saving my life.

The front bumper kisses air and the whole car tilts forward. She makes a sound he has never heard her make before. He tastes metal.

He tries to pray for their unborn child. Tries to steady his breathing. He turns the wheel again, harder this time, and it spins too freely, slack and useless in his hands.

In the last second he realizes he could open the door and jump. He can’t save her, but he could leave her. The thought arrives, horrifying and tempting. But he tightens his fingers around hers until his bones ache.

‘I’m here,’ he says to her, fierce, his voice suddenly steady. ‘It’s us three together now, for ever.’

The last push takes them all the way over. For an instant the tyres scrabble at nothing and then the sensation shifts and they are pulled clean away, like a rotten tooth. The sea swoops up to claim them and the world turns into one of shattered glass and freezing air.

As the car tips, he thinks he hears laughter up above, and then breathing—fast and high—and he hears the sea open its mighty jaws to receive them. The kaleidoscope of town lights slides and then vanishes as the dark rushes in.

Silence washes over him and then there’s only the frail bones of their linked fingers and the tiny, faint kick beneath his hand. A final, doomed tap against the world they’re leaving.

One that will ripple long after they have gone.