Chapter 44
Jodi Castle
At first, Jodi convinced herself that Nash would punish her for a few minutes and then turn the bus back to collect her.
He could be a callous and vindictive knob, but he wasn’t heartless.
At least that’s what her jittering, held-together-with-elastic-bands faith in his core values told her.
It took ten minutes of shivering alone in the dark, to realise maybe Nash was in fact twice as big of a knob as she’d ever imagined, and how much evidence of that did she really need to get with the picture.
The bus wasn’t coming back. At least not before daylight arrived and the rest of the band awoke.
That was likely hours off, and consequently, the bus would be hundreds of miles further south if not on a ferry by the time it happened.
Conclusion, she was screwed. Properly screwed.
Help didn’t seem readily available. Traffic along the road was sparse, and there hadn’t been much of a hard shoulder, which meant standing out there trying to flag someone over ran the risk of her not being seen until it was too late, thence, splat, pancake time.
Hell no! Being stranded was bad enough without the prospect of becoming roadkill.
There was also the matter of Flugwhump. The mighty devil refused to be restrained and kept disappearing into the undergrowth.
She could only hope he wouldn’t stray too far, and that if someone did come along, he’d come when called, and they wouldn’t drive off convinced she was mad when they realised she was in her pyjamas and prattling about her black cat she couldn’t catch.
The longer Jodi sat, the deeper the wind bit into her flesh, turning the exposed parts blue. The pair of them needed to find some shelter or build a fire or something. Alas, she was no Paul Reed. Conjuring flames from two rocks and a bit of moss wasn’t in her skill set.
Why had she told him to keep his distance?
She ought to have said, I’m yours. I’ve always been yours right from the very first moment we met.
I’ll always be yours. Can I please be yours?
Instead, she’d blinded herself to reality and stoppered up her ears to anything that didn’t affirm the illusion she’d been blithely inhabiting.
Well, it was too late for that now. There were no knights in shining armour coming to her rescue.
With the wind still nipping at her, Jodi headed over to the deserted building.
Maybe she’d get lucky and find the door unlocked or a window that she could shimmy through.
She tried the door, but it was fastened tight.
The windows were all boarded, leaving only the shallow indent of the doorway to shelter inside.
It wasn’t the first night she’d spent alone outdoors, and likely wouldn’t be the last, unless she froze to death.
Comforting thought. Norway, even in October, was significantly colder than the UK, especially after the sun dropped.
Here, the land was on the cusp of winter. Right on cue, a flurry of snow arrived.
God, she was such a fool. Why had she ever imagined Nash would be reasonable about her calling quits on them? When had he ever been reasonable about anything? Also, why had she stuck it out this long when she knew they were doomed?
She was such a moron.
Unfortunately, the answer was as simple as it was cynical.
Because it’d been better than this. Living with Nash, putting up with Nash and his whims and tempers had been better than this. Being his girlfriend beat the hell out of the misery of surviving winter on the streets.
The dumb part was that she’d been blind to the obvious and significantly better alternatives to both of those options. Foremost: Paul Reed. Secondly, that her friendships weren’t dependent on Nash. Hell, maybe they were even despite him.
So, while she’d forfeited Paul, the guys would come back for her. They would. They’d talk to Nash. They’d talk to Ray. Figure something out. Nash might be willing to dump her in the wilderness, but not the rest of them.
They’d do something, even if they couldn’t turn the bus around and collect her.
If she just endured. Sat tight, waited for however long it took, one or all of them would appear. Or they’d arrange a pick-up, a taxi, something...
Her bare feet were like blocks of ice. She rubbed them, trying to offset the numbness setting in, then folded herself up small by pulling her knees against her body, and drawing her pyjama top over them.
Damn it was bitter! And to think it’d only been a week and a half ago that they’d all sat outside around a campfire.
Mind, that’d been a stretch further south than she currently was.
She imagined being swaddled inside Paul’s oversized jumper, the threads ticklish against her arms, and the faint trace of his scent still captured amidst the fibres. He always smelled so good. Earthy, but clean. Snuggly, not that snuggly described a scent, except it kinda did.
How far off was dawn? Two, three, maybe four hours away. That wasn’t so long, really. She’d endured sound checks that lasted longer than that.
At least her position here gave her a vantage point from where she could watch the car park for arrivals.
Someone might stop. She could ask to use their phone.
She wouldn’t ask for a lift, not unless it was a family, not while she was dressed in skimpy nightclothes.
That sort of thing was risky enough all buttoned up and with pepper spray in her pocket.
No, she’d just ask to use their phone. Not that she knew any numbers.
She could phone Paul. She did have his number, or rather Flugwhump did. She’d been wary of storing his number on her phone given Nash’s attitude, so she’d filed it on a curl of paper inside the little capsule tag on Flugwhump’s collar.
Okay, so, she’d phone Paul, but would he answer?
He would. She was sure he would. Even if he hated her.
He’d still answer. That was who he was. He kept his promises, and he’d promised her all those things—that he’d take care of her, be there for her.
She needed him to be here for her now. Not that there was any way for him to know that.
Yes, he’d help if, or rather when she called.
He would.
God, he would, wouldn’t he?
Tears trickled down her cheeks. Jodi rested her damp skin against her knees. The snow had stopped, having only glazed the surroundings. She’d stopped shivering too. Maybe the temperature was warming up as dawn approached.
Damn, she blinked to stop her eyelids falling. It wasn’t half hard keeping herself focused on one spot when it was so unchanging.
**
Jodi was back in the glass dome. The remnants of her message to Paul still smudged the glass by the door.
She’d been trying to light a fire for an hour now, but the collection of twigs refused to catch.
The night before he’d made it look so easy.
The former pub dining shelter contained most of the same comforts it’d provided the night before, all except the vital one, the one that’d turned the temporary shelter into a palace.
She hadn’t expected him to still be here when she’d returned, but she’d not been prepared for his absence either. It had left a funny lump in her throat and an ache in her chest that no amount of massaging would shift.
They’d lain, there. He’d sung to her, there. Handed her the best cup of tea ever brewed, there.
The kittens were back in their trough, their three little pink noses peeping out from their fur.
The vet had said they were maybe three to four weeks old, and that she could start offering wet food alongside cat milk.
At least they could lap that up. No need to bottle feed.
It was going to be too cold for them, though, if she didn’t get this fire lit.
Why...wouldn’t...it...just...bloody...strike.
Increasing the pressure she used to scrape it along the striking surface caused the match to snap.
Jodi dropped it into the bundle of twigs with a cry of frustration.
Why hadn’t she joined the Girl Guides instead of wasting her youth hotwiring cars?
Then maybe she’d have some useful practical skills.
Catch. Please. Oh, fucking Christ. Just catch will you.
The tiniest of tiny flames formed around the edge of one of the twigs. “Please,” she begged, pushing more of her bird’s nest of kindling towards it. “Please...please...please.”
It caught.
It finally caught.
“Impressive, Castle.” She turned to find him sliding open the glass door to her shelter in a way that had definitely never happened.
**
“Castle? Hey, wake up.”
Her sluggish brain took a while processing that Paul Reed was standing over her.
His face was rimed with shadows, and for a moment, she thought they were in the glass dome the morning after she’d drowned his tour bus.
Then he shifted enough for her to see the stars behind him, and she remembered.
They were in Norway, three years on from that event.
And it was impossible for him to be here.
He was just a hypnagogic bit of wish fulfilment.
She blinked, but he remained. Crouched now, and peering at her in obvious concern.
“You here with me, Castle?”
“Yeah.” She lifted her head from her knees. Her neck and all her limbs were stiff. Her fingers screamed for mercy as she straightened them. “How?” she croaked, still staring at him, almost certain that he’d blink out of existence if her attention lapsed even for a second.
A smile tugged his lips away from his teeth. “Got a call from some friends of yours a bit frantic about your absence.”
So, the rest of the Ghost Boys had realised she was missing and acted.
Yet, it wasn’t daylight. Wait, Jez had been awake, hadn’t he?
She’d glimpsed him right before she’d climbed out of her bunk.
So, they’d called Rock Giant when they realised she wasn’t onboard.
And he’d come. Exactly as he’d promised her, even though she’d given him no reason to.