Jimmy took a drag on his spliff and smiled sleepily at Holly. ‘Do you want to do a blowback?’
‘Okay.’
She shuffled closer to him, trying not to seem too keen.
‘Wait,’ Morag said. ‘That’s lame. I’ve got something better.’
From her bag, she produced a little bag of pills.
‘Holly? Want to do Molly?’ She laughed. ‘Hey, I’m a poet like you, Lewis.’
Holly was no stranger to drugs. At her school, everyone did them, apart from the really square kids. Mum and Dad had no idea what Holly and her friends did at the parties they went to at weekends, in those big houses in Edgbaston and Solihull where all Holly’s friends lived. A pill right now would make her lose the inhibitions that were stopping her from making a move and asking Jimmy if he wanted to explore the caverns with her.
She took the tablet from Morag, popped it between her lips and swallowed.
Then she looked at Jimmy, expecting him to take one, but he said, ‘I never touch that shit.’
Worse, he looked deeply disappointed in her.
‘Oh crap,’ Morag said. ‘Oh shit.’
‘What is it?’
Morag looked so alarmed that Holly said it again, more urgently. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
Morag told her, and Holly knew immediately that this night was not going to turn out the way she’d expected.
But she could never have guessed how bad it would get.
20
2025
I squeezed my wet body through the low section of tunnel that separated the cavern from the main passage. I had tried to dry myself with my coat but was still so frozen I was seriously worried I could be the next Samir, the next Jimmy. Yet another death in this cold place. I could still hardly believe that I’d found Lewis’s body instead of Jasmine’s.
Where the hell was she?
Halfway through the tunnel I stopped. I became convinced the ceiling and floor were contracting, squeezing me, and I began to panic, trying to breathe, but shivering so hard I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs. There was a screaming pain in my head.
I’m going to die here, I thought, and that thought forced me to move. I didn’t want to die alone, in the dark.
I knew that hypothermia could bring on hallucinations. Victims had been known to tear their clothes off, believing they were too hot. Was this how Samir had felt? He’d been found outside the caves, but had he been in here at some point, in the pitch-blackness, terrified like I was?
I would like to report that I had some sort of mystical experience, that I saw a ghostly figure reach out to me, urgeme on. But there was nothing like that. Just desperation. Fear. I forced my numb limbs to move, pulling myself forward until I reached the tunnel and was able to push myself upright, leaning against the wall, teeth chattering, ice-cold water dripping off me. I knew I needed to get to my car, to turn the heaters on. That was my only hope. It was only forty feet away, but that might as well have been a mile.
I fell to my hands and knees. Holly was going to lose both her brother and her boyfriend on the same day unless I could make myself move.
It’s in your head, I tried to convince myself.Your body still works.
I got up again, staggered forward. Made myself walk.
And then I saw a light ahead of me. Was this it? That mystical moment? An angel, come to take me?
I might have been losing it, but I quickly realized it wasn’t a celestial light. It was the beam from a torch. It bounced towards me and then, not an angel, not a mystical one, anyway. It was Holly.
‘Patrick,’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’
I tried to speak, but my teeth were chattering too much for me to get any words out. I pointed back towards the cavern and saw that my hand was shaking, too.
