Chapter Three
Kelsey Brown handed the microphone back to her runner and pulled her hood over her rain-bedraggled hair. This was not what she’d had in mind when she’d taken up the position of roving reporter—a job she had once believed would involve lots of trips to exotic foreign lands and, quite frankly, very little in the way of reporting. Of course, she knew she had to work her way to the top, but it seemed a very distant place from where she was now, telling the nation about the demise of a run-down fish and chip shop following a yawn-inducing cliff collapse in a drab little backwater that no-one had heard of.
The only reason Kelsey knew of it was that she had grown up there, and she had left at the first opportunity. It was a dreadful place, and not even the fact that a man may well have lost his life could bring her any empathy for the story. She grabbed an umbrella from a member of the crew, stormed off towards the van and climbed into the passenger seat, discarding the umbrella and slamming the door shut behind her. The upturned umbrella rolled around the pavement, gathering rain, and then took off and flew across the road towards the sea.
* * *
“Well, that went all right,” Brian, the driver, said hopefully. He’d been working with Kelsey for less than a week and had already experienced the full measure of her wrath on several occasions. Having failed to acknowledge her with more than a polite nod was his only crime. It wasn’t in his job description to socialise with the news crew. He just drove the van, and the lads were all right. But Kelsey Brown… He was quickly discovering it was far safer to risk saying the wrong thing than to say nothing at all.
“Humph.” Her response came through lips pursed to take on more pink gloss.
Brian pretended to programme the satnav in the hope it would keep him from further awkward small talk with the latest star of Blaze News. He needn’t have worried. Evidently, she wasn’t in a talking mood.
A minute later, the back doors of the van were flung open, part wind power, part eagerness to get out of the rain, and the crew climbed in with their equipment. A pat on the back of the cab indicated they were ready to depart for the next headliner: a farm with a talking chicken. Brian started the engine but waited for his passenger to belt up. Instead, she delved into the big brown leather bag she kept stashed under the seat, exchanged her lip gloss for a cigarette and struck a match.
“You can’t smoke in—”
“What in God’s…” Kelsey interrupted, staring directly in front of the van, lit match poised in hand.
Brian followed the direction of her gaze and turned back to ask what the problem was, in time to see her climb out and march over to a group of people huddled against the large chunk of cliff the fire service crane had lifted from the fish and chip shop.
The wind was howling around the van, and it was raining far too hard to make out anything she was saying, but her flaying arms and the violent way she jerked free from the grasp of the man in front of her suggested it wasn’t the sort of interaction anyone would volunteer to be a part of. Several minutes passed while she shouted and waved her arms like a human helicopter at the man in the anorak who was trying to talk to her. Brian’s attention drifted, to the cliffs and to thoughts of what to have for dinner later. Probably not chicken… The next thing he knew, Kelsey was back in the passenger seat.
“Get a move on!” she yelled.
Brian smiled tightly, threw the van into first gear with the minimum of crunching and edged his way past the group of people and the giant rock. His curiosity wasn’t great enough to ask what the fuss was all about, and he was also rather keen to get a peek at this talking chicken whilst also wondering if it was a bad thing that his mouth watered at the thought.
They drove on in virtual silence, but for the tapping of fingernails on Kelsey’s mobile phone as she frantically reeled off several text messages that were unlikely to be of a friendly nature, given her current disposition. Whatever it was that had happened back at the fish and chip shop, she didn’t like it much and wasn’t up for sharing, so the twenty-mile journey ahead was going to feel a lot longer. Brian wished he was in the back with the rest of the crew, laughing and chatting, instead of sitting up front with his antisocial passenger, but it was not to be. He’d wanted a job in the media, so he’d just have to get on with it, even if being in charge of a beaten-up old transit van wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind. He and Kelsey at least had that much in common.
“At the next roundabout, take the second exit,” the satnav piped up. Kelsey glared as if it had pointed out her eyeliner had run. Brian quickly muted the sound and slowed for the predicted roundabout. A quick glance revealed no other traffic; he continued around it and around it again.
“Strange,” he muttered to no-one in particular, which was fortunate, seeing as Kelsey wasn’t listening and the others couldn’t hear him. As he travelled back down the road they had just come up, he looked for somewhere to pull over and turn around.
“I must’ve missed the turning,” he explained to himself, pulling in sharply at the next lay-by. With no other vehicles in sight, he did a rather undignified U-turn and drove back to the roundabout, checking the screen on the satnav to make sure it was definitely the second exit he needed.
A little slower this time, he started on the clockwise journey and looked out for the first exit, then the second. Once again, he found himself back on the same road.
“This is too bloody weird,” he said, perplexed. This time, he caught Kelsey’s attention.
“What are you going on about?” She didn’t look up from her phone.
“Do me a favour, Kels?” Brian asked, turning the van a second time.
“I’ll do you a favour, all right. Don’t call me Kels and I won’t rip your balls off.”
“Sorry, but can you watch this roundabout for me? We need the second exit, but, well, I can’t find it.” He smiled sheepishly.
“Ha! Surely not a man admitting to having no sense of direction?”
Brian ignored her sarcasm. “Here it is,” he said and drove onto the roundabout for the third time. He nodded at the first turnoff. “Exit One, yes?”
“Obviously.”
“And Exit Two.” He turned off and pulled over.
“Well done, Brian. You’ve passed. Now, can we carry on?”
“Only if you want to go back to that fish and chip shop, or haven’t you noticed we’re on exactly the same road?”
She squinted through the raindrops smeared by rapid windscreen wiping and raised her eyebrows.
“Clearly, you missed the turning.”
“If that’s the case, so did you.”
“Well, the satnav must be wrong, then, and you need the first exit.”
“But that’s my point. The first exit was also this road. We went round the damned thing twice. It’s a dead end.”
“No, we didn’t. You’re being ridiculous.”
“All right, once more with feeling.” Brian turned the van and drove straight around the roundabout. He was starting to get annoyed. “That’s it. I’m going back the way we came, talking bloody chicken or no.”
He put his foot down and headed back towards the coast. Kelsey huffed and carried on with whatever she was doing on her phone. The crew in the back had settled down and didn’t appear to have noticed any of the curious navigational issues. Soon, they passed the turning up towards the cliffs and were on their way out of town but in the opposite direction with the satnav attempting to plot an alternate route to the farm.
How miserable it must be to live here, Brian mused as he switched the wipers to intermittent. Sure, it had brightened up since they arrived a couple of hours ago, although the rain had set in and the splash-back from the vast puddles either side of the narrow winding road suggested it had been so for a while. He’d heard it was standard weather in this neck of the woods, as normal as day turning to night. It was no wonder they all looked so pasty and miserable.
“In three hundred yards,” piped up the satnav, “turn right, then turn left.”
“I’m not playing that game again, thank you very much, and I thought I muted you anyway.” Brian pressed the button on the top of the satnav. The screen flickered and went black. He took the next left, then went straight on.
“I take it you know where you’re going?” Kelsey asked, again without looking.
“More or less,” Brian replied, swinging the van hard to the right as he rounded a bend. “I know it’s northwest of here, and that’ll do. There’re plenty of road signs.”
For the next couple of miles, Kelsey watched the road, waiting for the opportunity to tell him so. He was wrong. There were no road signs, not even those dictating a speed limit. He slowed at a T-junction and rubbed his chin.
“Left, I reckon,” Kelsey said smugly.
“Why?”
“Why not? You have no more idea where we are than I do.”
She had a point. Brian shrugged and followed her instruction. Another mile along the road and another T-junction. He went left. It all looked the same: winding roads with occasional passing points, waterlogged fields of some crop or another, farmhouses dotted along the way and yet another T-junction.
“Left again?” Kelsey suggested helpfully.
“That’ll take us right round in a circle.”
“Well, more of a square, if you want to be finicky about it.”
He ignored her and turned right, not that it made the slightest difference. Soon, they passed a whitewashed farmhouse on their left that looked spectacularly similar to one they had recently passed on their right. Then there was the scarecrow in the field opposite the chapel. The scenery was just the same, the rain still as wet and their destination as distant as it had been half an hour ago.
“I vote we go up to the caves and ask for directions,” Kelsey said.
“And how do you propose we find our way? The satnav can’t get a fix on our location, and we’ve taken so many turns now I have no idea which way we’re going.”
“The caves are that way.” She pointed at a turning a few yards ahead, complete with a brown tourist sign.
To the Caves.
“Jesus, there’s something bloody odd about this place.” Brian took the turning and dropped into a low gear to deal with the steep incline up towards the entrance to the caves. At least he might get a half-decent cup of tea and a biscuit, if he was lucky.
If the road before had been difficult to handle, it was nothing compared to this. It was like one of those games at a church fête, trying to get a hoop around a wire without making it beep, or, in their case, falling off the road. Several times, the van almost stalled as he struggled to keep enough forward momentum, and it sounded like half the gear was pinned against the back doors. No grumbles from the crew, though, so hopefully it wasn’t too rough for them, but then, they couldn’t see the sheer drop on his side of the road that probably wasn’t quite as frightening a sight yesterday as it was now.
Jagged outcrops of clean, white rock marked the edge of an ever-increasing plummet down to the perilous coast below, the top of the lighthouse clearly visible without the cliffs to obscure it from view, its walls bearing the scars of last night’s assault. Since then, according to local radio, the cliffs had remained stable, and the rescue mission had proceeded without incident. Prior to that, the roads in and out had been blocked, with only those needing to evacuate being allowed passage. Strangely, no-one had chosen to leave, even though many homes were now literally hanging off the edge of the cliff.
On the plus side, the denial of visiting rights meant that the caves were all but empty, with no other vehicles in the car park. Through the café window, Brian saw only a couple of local people huddled in one corner, and the cave guides—university students, by the looks of them, garbed in woolly hats and hiking boots—were sprawled out in another, gloved hands clasped around steaming cups, laughing and chatting as if all were well.
To Brian’s mind, it most certainly wasn’t. Generally, he was a placid man, not easily agitated by silly things like poor road signs, sulky news reporters or getting lost with said sulky news reporters in dreary coastal resorts. Most days, he could even be described as the laid-back, happy-go-lucky sort, although on most days, he didn’t open the back of his van to find his passengers had disappeared into thin air, along with most of their equipment. It took him a few seconds to register the fact, by which point Kelsey had joined him.
“Oh, shit!”
“That’s an understatement,” Brian muttered.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know, do I?”
“You didn’t leave them behind, did you?”
“Of course I bloody didn’t!”
“Well, could they have fallen out of the back, you know, when we were coming up here? The road’s very steep.”
“Don’t be daft. We’d have noticed, or I would.”
“Oh, well, I dunno then,” She took a tissue from her bag and dabbed at her lips. “I’m sure they’ll turn up sooner or later. You coming?”
With that, she was off in the direction of the café, leaving him staring into the back of his van. After a minute more of wondering where they’d gone and coming up with nothing, he locked up and followed her inside, where it was only marginally warmer than outside, but definitely dryer. Kelsey was already sitting at a table and, of course, hadn’t bothered to order any drinks. Brian frowned angrily in her direction, safe in the knowledge that she wouldn’t notice, seeing as she was once more preoccupied with her phone. He went to the counter and waited.
The entrance to the caves was just visible from where he was standing, and it looked strangely haunted with no-one manning the ticket booth and no groups of tourists wandering in and out of the gift shop. He’d brought his son here a few years back, in the so-called height of summer, although the universally extortionate peak-season prices were the only thing that could be described as high. As was to be expected, it had been raining, the wind blowing so forcefully that they couldn’t hear even when they were standing right next to each other. They might even have visited the fish and chip shop that had been destroyed, although he couldn’t be sure. It was unrecognisable with several tons of rock on top of it.
The caves, however, had looked the same and were pretty awesome, so his son bragged to his friends when they returned to the superior weather at home. It was true: the size of some of the caverns alone was enough to make even a cynical teenager wonder at the powers of nature. Over millennia, the caves had been carved by the constant dripping of water through the porous rock, the stalactites making it seem like a spooky grotto, especially with the red backlighting.
Then they’d wandered around the gift shop, buying confectionary and over-priced slivers of quartz to take back for those who’d chosen to stay in the caravan rather than brave the chill of the caves, and it was freezing down there. One of Brian’s workmates had been before and advised him to take gloves, which, foolishly, he’d chosen to ignore. Gloves? In August? What a silly idea.
Right now, it wasn’t the middle of summer, so it was even less temperate, but there was a heater in the café that was doing a sterling job, considering the doors didn’t shut properly and the one-storey building was of a shed-like construction with no insulation. Eventually, even this would fall into the sea—possibly before he managed to get a cuppa, at this rate. Just as he was about to ask the guides in the corner what one had to do to get service around here, a woman popped up behind the counter, as if she’d been there all the time.
“Afternoon, sir. What can I get you?”
“Two mugs of tea, please.” Brian reached into his pocket for some money. His hands were so cold he could hardly feel it beneath his fingers.
The woman collected two melamine mugs from under the counter. “That your van out there?”
“Yeah.” Brian managed to locate a couple of coins and placed them on the counter.
“You might be best moving it up, what with all the rock falling and that. I dare say this time yesterday, the car park was twice the size it is now.”
“Really?” Brian hadn’t intended to sound so incredulous.
“I may be exaggerating a bit,” she admitted with a smile. She paused to hoist a significant steel teapot and filled the cups. “We’ve lost a lot of coastline, and it’s not done yet. I can feel it.”
“Oh, right.”
She placed the full cups in front of him and picked up the coins, turning away to ring them into the cash register. “I’ve lived here all my life and seen it a few times, but not like this. We all knew it would be a big-un one day, but that poor lad in the chippy, bless him. He wouldn’t have seen it coming, mind, so that’s something.” She turned back and smiled again. “Will that be all?”
“Do you have any cake?” Brian asked, suddenly feeling the need for a serious dose of sugar. Delayed shock, perhaps, at the crazy journey that had taken him out of town, back in again and now up here, right to the heart of the danger. Not to mention the mystery of the three missing crewmen. And there was no way he was risking going out there to move the van, not until he’d sat down for a while and regained his driving legs.
“You all right, love? You’ve gone ever such a funny colour.”
“I’m fine,” he mumbled in reply. “Just an early start and no breakfast.”
It was a lie, but he wasn’t about to tell her that he was scared witless at the thought of being trapped in her hometown. If he believed for one minute it would work, he’d have run like hell and kept running until the cliffs were a distant, blurry mass behind him. But, based on the day’s experiences, any and every attempt at escape would be thwarted. In his head, a battle raged as he tried to contain himself. In the red corner, the voice of reason was whispering reassuringly in his ear, ‘Calm down, Brian, nothing to worry about.’ And in the blue corner, the coach had given up and the men in white coats wanted to take him away.
Somewhere beyond the racket of the voices in his head and the thump-thump of his heart, he swore he could hear a woman talking about organic carrot cake, chocolate fudge cake made with local clotted cream and…
“…our famous Victoria sandwich.” The woman behind the counter gave Brian a concerned but friendly frown as he zoned back in.
“What? Oh, sorry. What was the first one again?”
“Carrot cake,” she repeated. “Tell you what.” She walked around to his side of the counter and took his arm. “Have it on the house. Let’s get you sat down, my love.” She steered him over to where Kelsey was sitting, seemingly oblivious to Brian’s funny turn, or, in fact, any of the events that had brought it on.
The woman gently pushed him into a chair, making sure he was steady and not going to fall off before she went to get the drinks and slices of carrot cake. By the time she returned, he’d worked through some of the jumble of confusion and, realising there was little he could do about any of it, calmed down sufficiently to ask whether she had seen the cameraman, sound engineer and runner.
“I’m sorry, love, I haven’t seen anyone,” she explained in the kind of voice one uses when a small child asks for a cup of orange squash for their imaginary friend. Understandable, as he and Kelsey had arrived at the café with no-one else, after which he’d come over all funny. The woman shoved one of the plates of carrot cake directly in front of him and went back to the table by the counter, where she must’ve been sitting when they came in. She picked up a pair of knitting needles, from which dangled a long, stripy scarf that trailed dangerously across the tiled floor. Nobody needs a scarf that long, thought Brian, although he surmised she probably just kept knitting and knitting when the café was quiet, so its purpose was simply to pass the time and not with anyone’s neck-warming needs in mind.
Kelsey had taken to filing her nails, occasionally pausing to sip her tea, peel off a few crumbs of the carrot cake with the little plastic fork, or deal with her perpetually vibrating phone, which travelled halfway across the table every time she received a message. She’d barely uttered a word since they arrived; in fact, she’d said three words, unrepeatable in polite company, conveying her dismay at the carrot cake, though she was sort of eating it anyway.
So, it was only Brian who was worried about the missing crew, and even he was starting to wonder if he had concocted them as part of some odd fantasy, where he was the driver for a roving news team and the girl across the table was a reporter. Now he came to think on it, she didn’t look much like a reporter, more a malnourished, slightly shorter than average supermodel, with pouting painted lips, exaggerated eyelashes and angular, high cheekbones. No wonder she balked at the thought of eating a whole slice of cake, which was very nice, as it turned out, and Brian had long finished his.
Kelsey noticed him staring at her plate and pushed it towards him. “Have it. Don’t know why you thought I’d want it anyway.”
He was about to ask if she was sure, but then thought better of it and instead, opened his mouth to explain he hadn’t ordered it for her—even though she looked like she could do with a bit of cake—then thought better of that, too.
***
In Kelsey’s defence, her moodiness was nothing to do with lack of nutrition, and she did eat sometimes. It had been a disappointment not to get past five foot five in heels, but on TV, with the aid of a box, no-one knew. She’d always wanted to be a model, with weathergirl featuring second on her list. Having done a stint as weathergirl, and realising it wasn’t quite as glamorous as she’d envisaged, she’d settled on her third choice of reporter and didn’t much like that, either. She still had her hopes. One day, a big story will make me famous, but not here in this hellhole. The locals down by the fish and chip shop had hinted at a story much bigger than she thought possible, but they wouldn’t tell her without an assurance that she and the crew got on it right away. She made the call to her boss. Do the chicken story, she was told. That bloody woman, sitting in her comfy leather chair, back in the office, warm and dry. She wasn’t the one going off to interview Mr. Smythe and his stupid talking chicken. Speaking of which…
“When are we going to try and find that farm again?”
***
Brian was so immersed in the experience of eating his second slice of carrot cake it took him a moment to realise she was talking to him.
“Erm, well, we don’t have a crew anymore, so it might be a bit of a problem.”
“Hadn’t thought of that. Where d’you think they’ve got to?”
“How the hell should I know?” Brian snapped but immediately softened. “Sorry, Kels.” She shot him a warning glance. “I’m having a problem getting my head round all of this.”
“All of what?” she asked.
Innocent enough, he supposed, given that she’d been off in her own little world the whole time he had been driving in circles. His ex-wife’s accusation that he was far too reasonable was proving true again. Patiently, he took a deep breath and started at the beginning.
“First, we arrive at a roundabout that has only one entrance and exit and they’re one and the same road. Now, I know you didn’t quite appreciate how odd that was at the time, so let me explain it to you. What kind of road planner builds a roundabout that is a dead end?”
“A sadistic one?”
Brian was becoming adept at ignoring her, but she was joking, trying to make light. He managed a quick smile. “Next, we go back the way we came, except that it no longer looks anything like the way we came, and all the road signs have mysteriously disappeared.”
“Except for the one to the caves.”
“Except for that one, yes.” He was starting to get worked up again. “So now, we’re here, at the caves, where half the car park has fallen into the sea, and look at these people. I mean, look at them! Just sitting there, as if nothing is to do. The whole café could tumble over the edge at any second, and they’re acting like everything is normal, when it isn’t. Added to which, we didn’t stop anywhere, and yet somehow, the lads managed to get out of the back of the van and disappear off the face of the Earth without us noticing.” Brian’s temples pulsed from frustration and failure to take in breath during his monologue, but it was worth it, because, at last, Kelsey seemed to be taking notice.
“Ah. I see what you mean, but you do need to calm down, you know. You’ll do yourself an injury.”
“Are you not even slightly worried about all of this?”
“Of course I am, now you’ve explained. But what can we do?”
That was not the response he’d expected from the young woman who got all het up over not being able to find her lipstick. She was all rational and in control, while he was ranting and hyperventilating like a claustrophobic stuck in a lift.
“Tell you what,” Kelsey suggested, “I’ll go and speak to that woman over there and see if she knows anything.”
Brian was too tired and confused to explain that he had already asked if she’d seen the crew, which she hadn’t, so he watched without intervening as Kelsey approached the table where the woman was still knitting, happily humming away to herself. The current stripe was a vivid purple with black flecks, which was striking against the crimson stripe below it.
***
“Hi,” Kelsey said brightly, casting her eye along the length of the scarf and up to the plump-cheeked face at the top. “I wonder if you can help me. I’m a reporter, and my colleague and I have lost our crew.” She didn’t know what else to say, because however she tried to word it, it sounded ridiculous, although by Brian’s account, they literally just vanished into thin air. But the woman nodded encouragingly, so Kelsey continued. “The thing is, they were in the back of our van with the doors shut, and we don’t think—or, at least, my colleague says—there’s no way they could’ve fallen out. And also, we’re, um, lost and…”
“Need some directions to get out of town?” the woman finished.
“Yeah.” Kelsey scratched the side of her head, giggled and blinked a few times before turning her eyes towards the floor. She stared at the dancing ball of wool, like a kitten preparing to pounce. The woman picked up the ball and speared it with her knitting needles. She placed it on the table and chuckled.
“What you need,” she said knowingly, “is a bowl of my homemade soup and a soft bread roll. That’ll get you—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but how exactly are bread and soup going to help?”
The woman continued, undaunted. “A bowl of my homemade soup and a soft bread roll whilst you wait for Professor Jericho. He’ll be here any minute and will have the answers to all your questions.”
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