Free The Fallen by Jassy Mackenzie Page A

yellow.
    Again, she noticed the twinge in the pit of her stomach she’d felt the first time she’d spoken to him. Not unease … something else.
    ‘Don’t you …?’ he said, then stopped himself as if he’d been going to ask her something personal but had decided against it.
    And then, after a pause, he continued. ‘Don’t you want to drink it?’
    ‘What, now?’
    ‘Yes. Now.’
    Jade could feel the tension in the air, like the way everything had felt before the thunderstorm, as he waited for her to answer.
    She hadn’t looked away from him. She found that at that moment she couldn’t.
    ‘ OK .’
    Craig moved over to the door. The key rattled as he locked it.
    The pop of the champagne cork sounded very loud in the otherwise silent room.

12
    Jade dreamed about drowning that night. She was far under the water, which was warm but pitch black. She had no scuba gear on, no diving apparatus at all, and, in the gloomy depths, she couldn’t tell which way was up. She knew she had no more air left, that the next breath she would take in would send water rushing into her lungs, but somehow the knowledge wasn’t frightening.
    ‘Follow the bubbles,’ a woman’s voice whispered.
    ‘But it’s too dark,’ Jade responded, although how she spoke the words she had no idea. ‘I can’t see any bubbles. Can’t I just stay here with you?’
    ‘No. You can’t do that.’ Suddenly a slender, pale arm appeared in front of her. Its hand opened and the index finger flicked out. ‘There they are.’
    A stream of silvery bubbles flooded upwards and Jade followed them, speeding through the blackness like a shooting star. She broke the surface and she was out, into the clear, beautiful air. She was blinking water out of her eyes, and in her ears she could hear the scream of seagulls.
    The birds’ loud, intrusive calls continued as they wheeled above her. They grew shriller and shriller until the irritating noise pulled her right out of the dream.
    It was fully light on a grey, rainy morning.
    Her hair was tangled and her mouth felt dry. She could taste stale champagne and fresh guilt.
    And the shrill ululations were still coming from somewhere nearby, audible even above the splashing of rain and the moredistant booming of the sea. Rubbing her eyes, Jade sat up, trying not to wake the sleeping man lying next to her, and listened.
    She was sure that somebody, probably the cleaner, had opened Monique’s door and been startled by the devastation inside.
    Jade swung her legs over the side of the bed, stood up, and pulled on her clothes. In the bathroom, she ran her hands through her shoulder-length hair, splashed some water on her face and drank some from the tap, then unlocked the front door as quietly as she could.
    As soon as she opened it, the spray-soaked wind snatched her hair away from her face. Ahead of her was the restless ocean, which, if Craig’s facts were correct, was flanked not by a beautiful national park, but by a war zone. A territory where developers and miners, the indigenous population and ecologists, fought for the upper hand every day.
    Above the sound of the rain, she could still hear the cries. They were, if anything, louder than they had been. Jade started to feel uneasy.
    She was starting to fear that her first guess might have been wrong.
    Ducking her head against the hard, driving rain, she ran towards the staff quarters, following the direction of the sound. A few seconds later she burst into the narrow corridor, under cover at last.
    Right in front of her was the cleaner. She was a few feet away from an open door, crouched down against the railings, her head buried in her hands. Sobs racked her body and the loud cries burst from her lips, harsh and agonised, as if she had no control over them at all.
    ‘Hi there,’ Jade called. ‘What’s the matter?’
    She could hear the uncertainty in her own voice, too. She walked forward and, although her feet made a loud noise on the hollow-sounding