Run Away (25 page)

“And you came to see me before your mum?”

Sam squeezed Kayla’s hands. “I knew you’d need me more. She already knows I’m okay—­I called her in the taxi on the way up.” He swallowed and bit his lip. “And . . . I never told you I love you. So I needed to do that.”

He stood then, took Kayla’s hands and pulled her up from the swing to stand in front of him. He cupped her face in his hands and in the softest voice Kayla had ever heard him use, said, “I love you too, Kayla.”

Then he kissed her, with the passion of a man who’d spent the last six weeks in a Thai monastery dreaming of this very moment.

Chapter 42

September 14, Turkey

“S
O, HOW MANY
­people have died doing this?”

Sam’s knee bounced up and down; an old nervous habit.

Ali, their new Turkish friend, sat in front of them. His eyes darted frantically as he tapped the last of his cigarette ash out of the bus window. “Here? Four or five. Something like that.” With one last puff, he flicked away the glowing remains and reached into the pocket of his khaki trousers for another.

“Re-­Really? That many?” Sam choked back his horror and tried to gaze nonchalantly out of the window. The falling temperature sent a shiver down Kayla’s bare forearms. The violent lurching of the twenty-­year-­old minibus careering over boulders and potholes rendered any attempts to relax futile. In any case, the three-­thousand-­foot cliff edge beginning half a meter left of the semiflat tires was enough to twist even the steeliest of stomachs.

Ali nodded gravely. “One guy had a heart attack halfway through. Very sad. Very, very sad. Cigarette?” Sam shook his head. He’d never been a smoker, ironically preferring to err on the side of caution for the majority of his life. Kayla accepted the offer.

Ali inhaled deeply on the white stick dangling out of his mouth. Kayla was sitting with her back to the driver, and Ali was sitting opposite. His eyes looked like lumps of charcoal set within his cappuccino skin and had too much white surrounding the pupils, giving the impression that he was constantly a combination of surprised and manic. When he smiled, his blindingly bright teeth and obscenely wide grin made him look more like a cartoon villain than a middle-­aged Turk who Kayla and Sam had entrusted with their mortality.

Erkut, the grey-­haired mountain of a man next to him, decided to elaborate. “Another was impaled on a tree.” His eyes remained firmly shut behind his thickly framed glasses. He did not smoke, instead opting to gently hum an improvised tune and tap his index finger against his bicep in time with the repetitive rhythm. “Gruesome.”

Sam’s knee began to bounce with increased velocity. Despite the cool mountain air and the goose bumps speckling every inch of her exposed skin, beads of cold sweat started to trickle down the back of Kayla’s neck. What had previously felt like flutters of excitement in her stomach had now evolved into intense cramping, similar to the sensation she usually experienced after one too many cups of coffee. The dense cloud of tobacco smoke clinging to her nostrils and lungs did little to alleviate her panic, instead adding to the sensation of being smothered by a lethal combination of ash and fear. They were only fifteen minutes away. She kept smoking.

Ali suddenly erupted into raucous laughter. It was a chesty cackle, evidence of his three-­packs-­a-­day habit, and caused Kayla to leap out of her seat in shock. “Why the sad faces?” he roared. “It’s only life. So what if you die? We all do someday.” He delved into his backpack and emerged with a camera, attached to the end of a metal pole with peeling duct tape. “SMILE!”

Kayla wasn’t sure what she thought the build-­up to running off a 6,500-­foot mountain, supported by a single parachute, would feel like. Perhaps she had never truly believed they’d go through with it. In fact, she still wasn’t sure. Ascending this mountain in a minibus whose last MOT couldn’t have been more recent than 1992, accompanied by four mentally unstable Turkish strangers with no insurance whatsoever, was slightly out of her comfort zone.

After Kayla’s father and nan had been arrested, Sam suggested they get away from England for a while. Not on another epic adventure. Not yet anyway.

They’d invited Dave and Russia to join them in Turkey, but since the happy ­couple was currently traveling through India—­exploring Dave’s heritage, he in a wheelchair, until he couldn’t explore anymore—­they were preoccupied. Bling was somewhere overseas too, though neither Sam nor Kayla had any idea where. Shortly after the Greyfinch scandal leaked into international news, Kayla had received a text message from her.

Kayla, there aren’t enough words in the English language to explain how sorry I am. I had no idea what I was agreeing to—­if I had, I never would have done it. I really hope you’re okay. I would love to meet you in person to apologize properly, but for now it’s not safe for me to return to England
. I truly hope you can forgive me, even though I wouldn’t. Lots of love, B x

Kayla had replied maturely, much to Sam’s utter amazement, with genuine gratitude for Bling’s apology and well-­wishes for the future. Maybe Cassandra wasn’t such a bad shrink after all.

One day she and Sam would return to the university to pursue careers of their own. Sam? To take another stab at med school, yes, but ultimately to dedicate his life to finding a cure for ALS. Her? Crime scene investigation and forensic science. Joint honors.

But for now it was all about the present. About love, and about adventure.

T
HEY HAD SPENT
the first three days of their holiday in Olü Deniz sipping lukewarm beer by the pool and admiring the paragliders overhead as they descended onto the pebble beach a hundred meters away; silhouettes of fearless fliers strapped onto the bottom of brightly colored parachutes, gracefully weaving their way down through the gusts of wind that kept them airborne. From the ground it had looked almost peaceful.

Much to Sam’s horror, Kayla introduced the possibility of doing it themselves. He came up with thousands of reasons not to: it was too expensive, too hot, they were too hungover from last night’s abuse of the all-­inclusive bar. It was a bit cloudy that day. Kayla was much more proactive. As usual.

Polishing off the last of her postbreakfast vodka, she stood up from her sun lounger and wrapped her stripy beach towel around her midriff.

“Right. Let’s go and find out how much it costs with one of those street vendors on the beachfront.” She deftly twisted her thick, Bourneville chocolate-­colored hair around in her fingers and tied it up out of her face.

“But if we go with them, we won’t have insurance. At least with Thomsons, we know we’re covered if something goes wrong.”

“Yeah, and they charge over a hundred quid for the privilege. Realistically, if something goes wrong at six-­and-­a-­half-­thousand feet, we’re dead anyway. Don’t really need insurance for a mild case of death, do we?”

“I s’pose not. How do we know if the guys on the street are legitimate?” Sam sat up on his sun lounger, took a gulp of beer and put down the dog-­eared crime thriller he’d been reading.

“Well, that guy we met in bar last night seemed nice, if a little odd, and he’s a paraglider. Let’s go and find him.”

“Do we even remember what he was called?”

“Andy or Ali or something. I don’t know. Shall we go?”

“What, now?” Sam hastily threw his feet into his battered, sand-­dusted flip-­flops and readjusted his faux Ray-­Bans, which regularly slid down his heavily sunscreened nose.

“Well, why not?” Her logic was flawless.

“Because I don’t have any trainers. And we’ll miss lunch. And it’s cloudy.”

“So? We just had breakfast.”

“You have to wear trainers. I don’t have any.”

“It’ll be fine. I bet Dave wishes he could do something like this. Let’s go.”

Bloody Dave
. Sam sighed. “Okay. Just let me nip to the toilet first.”

Ali had pointed at them and shrieked as they walked through the shop front, presumably in the place where the door should have been, and announced that they’d like to go paragliding with him. “NO WAY! Are you serious? Shut your face. I saw you drinking last night. You’re not serious!”

But unfortunately they were serious. And forty-­five minutes, fifty pounds, and some alarmingly casual paperwork later, they were clambering into their rusty white minibus armed with some parachutes, borrowed trainers and a hipflask of Raki. The bus smelled like sweaty socks and laundry that had accidentally been left in the washing machine overnight.

“Does anybody ever get to the top then change their minds?” Kayla asked.

“No, never. Because the ride back down the mountain in this old thing would be ten times worse than running off the top. You’ll see.”

He wasn’t wrong. The dirt track that led up to the summit barely seemed wide enough for a Mini Cooper, let alone a rickety old bus full of equipment and ­people. With every rock the bus hit, the wheels lurched to the side, and at one point Kayla was certain they tilted over the edge. She made a mental note never to allow her future self to indulge in the luxury of fear again. Rather like when you have the flu and would trade anything for normality and fully functioning sinuses, she really missed being at sea level, and swore she’d never underappreciate being at a sensible height again.

They were nearly at the top. Sun and warmth had given way to compacted snow and clouds that engulfed the bus and reduced visibility to a mere few feet. The knot in her stomach tightened. Ali was ranting about Brits, Americans, and their apparent obsession with health and safety.

Sam was staring out of the window in terror. “So who will I be flying with?” he asked.

Ali gestured toward the well-­built man sitting in the passenger seat at the front of the bus, who was hanging out of the window with his video camera and, inevitably, smoking a cigarette. “You’re with me. Kayla will be flying with Erkut, he will keep her safe,” Ali explained, winking at Kayla before taking a gigantic slurp out of the hip flask swaying steadily in his right hand. Erkut peeled open one eye and, by means of confirmation, allowed one corner of his mouth to curl upward in a semismile. He sniffed and readjusted himself in his seat, zipping his fleece all the way up to his chin and tucking his hands into the deep front pockets before closing his eyes once again.

Kayla couldn’t figure out whether she desperately wanted to arrive at the summit to escape the smoky and dingy atmosphere inside the bus, or whether she never wanted to move again.
It’s quite frankly incredible that after everything that’s happened over the past ­couple of months, I’m still capable of such crippling fear
. Sam appeared frozen to his seat, his fingers tightly gripping the sides, and the air felt thick and furry around them.
Give me Mek the Bengal tiger over this, any day of the week
.

Too soon, the ancient brakes screeched abruptly to a halt. They had reached the top.

Even though they hadn’t passed a single car or bus on the way up, the large paved area was full of ­people. It followed the natural shape of the mountain peak, with very little flat surface and plenty of slopes to run off. All over the widest point, paragliders were sprawled on the ground surrounded by their rucksacks and parachutes, absorbing the incredible views before they flew down to the ground like exotic birds. Some had brought picnics, others hip flasks, and everyone looked relaxed and happy. Kayla overheard one ­couple talk about the various locations they’d visited for this very reason.

“If it was that traumatic they wouldn’t do it twice, right? Just like childbirth. If it was that horrific, nobody would have more than one kid,” Kayla whispered. “I mean, Ali does this every day.”

“Yes. But Ali is bloody mental.” Sam shivered. It was extraordinarily cold, considering they were wearing shorts and T-­shirts. Not the kind of numbing cold that stings the skin like a whip burn, but rather the shiver-­inducing temperature usually present toward the end of British autumn. The regulars stared at the newcomers with a certain level of bemusement from behind the comfort of their windbreakers, hiking trousers and fleece jackets. Luckily, Sam and Kayla were soon provided with canvas flight suits to protect them from the mountain chill.

From twenty feet away Ali’s notorious guffaw ripped through the air. Kayla and Sam walked hand in hand back to the minibus, the supposedly safe place in which their easily torn parachutes were slung carelessly over the back of the moldy chairs, and stared in disbelief.

A mountain goat had broken in and perched right on the seat that held the equipment. Its huge brown eyes gazed dopily back at them, seemingly amused by their utter bewilderment. Ali was clutching his sides, doubled over with laughter, as Erkut tried to shoo the docile creature away before it could do any serious damage to the gear. It hopped out of the bus obligingly and trotted away back down the dirt track. Kayla began to wonder whether she was hallucinating.
Am I really about to run off a cliff strapped to a total stranger? Did a mountain goat really just break into our bus? Will my mother murder me for running off said cliff without insurance? Probably
.

And then the wind changed, and all hell broke loose. Apparently, the relaxed ­people hadn’t been chilling out at all—­they’d been waiting for the gusts of air to switch to the right direction for their flight path. Clusters of pilots began gathering their belongings and loading up their backpacks in a bid to beat the rush, and the smiles and chitchat made way for looks of intense concentration and focus. Some held up flags in order to analyze the exact wind direction, while others ensured that all of the appropriate straps of their parachutes were securely fastened.

From behind her, Kayla heard the stomping of heavy boots picking up speed, and turned around just in time to see a flier take off. The wind caught in the fabric of his bright green parachute, lifting the black boots clean off the rubble they’d been running over. Instead of leaving the mountain face and starting to descend immediately, the lime green mass rose in the air and glided away toward the coast. For a moment nobody spoke. It was like staring into a log fire and becoming utterly entranced by the movement of the flames. They couldn’t tear their eyes away.

The silence didn’t last. The aggressive Turkish commands rang in Kayla’s ears as two pairs of hands grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her into the suit with the speed and precision of a Formula One pit stop. They then began strapping her to a fluorescent orange parachute that had last been seen beneath a goat’s backside.

“Okay. You’ll go now. Start here, please.”

“Wait, I thought Sam was going first?”