Journey's End

Ivan steered the beautifully smooth Mercedes E220 between the close kerbs of the single-track lane that led to the Long House, slowing for speed bumps and potholes, mindful of the fine machine’s low profile tyres and lean ground clearance. The car seemed to get smoother and quieter every mile he drove it. Right now, it was a few minutes after seven thirty in the evening. The early July Solway sun shone golden from a clear blue sky. The six-hour drive from south-west London had been the easiest he could remember in more than thirty years on this same run. As a rule, motorway traffic delivered the very definition of stress. By contrast, this car was from another universe. It purred along on cruise control, the radar driving for him, backing off power every time traffic ahead got too close. Driving the B-roads after the motorway, the Mercedes cornered like a tramcar, four boots flat and foursquare to the asphalt, her poise and grace pure poetry in the hands of a cautious, yet adventurous and rather experienced driver, too modest to describe himself as any more than average.

The car was way too expensive, of course. Renting it for a fortnight had set Ivan back half a month’s salary. He hadn’t told Dana how much it had cost. She had set her heart on a Mercedes for this trip, so that’s what he had come back with. When the car hire salesman sat him in the front right seat, Ivan had been instantly seduced by the E-Class with its Starship Enterprise super-wide LED dashboard, dual touchscreen environment, full width sun roof with automatic shade, all-round cameras and ostentatiously puissant power unit. Passing a large rig on the B5304 at the bottom of the Sebergham dip, he’d been blown away by the 220’s breathtaking kick-in-the-back acceleration. Like powering through a portal into another universe. Ivan was Han Solo, making the jump to hyperspace, as the Merc blasted into the right lane, warping away from the lumbering truck as if it were in reverse. The straight stretch ahead was perhaps a tad shorter than Ivan would have risked in an inferior car. He knew the E-Class started at around sixty thousand sterling to buy; his daily hire rate felt cheap at the price.

The exhilaration of the fast overtake fading, Ivan’s mind settled back into the moment. Life suddenly seemed decidedly ordinary. The trees and farms slipped quietly by. Since they’d left London, Dana had slept most of the way, stirring only to adjust the car’s legendary air con and infinitely variable seat posture. Ivan, fixated on staying in lane and following the sat nav with its A4 sized dash map and head-up display reflected in the windscreen, hadn’t really been aware of her, except intermittently, like when they’d stopped for a coffee and a toastie at Beaconsfield Services on the M40. He thought he recalled Dana telling him off for hesitating while parking the long Mercedes in a narrow space. She’d warned him he was going to hit the car next to them as he reversed in, although the rear camera had indicated otherwise. That exchange had faded, and he was only dimly aware of her now as she stretched and yawned in the leather recesses of the front passenger seat.

Tired and thankful to have reached journey’s end, Ivan brought the car to a halt outside the upstairs apartment, at the foot of the exterior staircase. Muttering to Dana that he had to go up and get the keys from the key box, not surprised that his road-weary wife didn’t answer, he scampered up the steps and spun the dials to the four-digit number he’d memorised from the confirmation email. He was a bit worried by how long it took him, even though they’d stayed here before and he ought to have remembered how the secure box worked. He was sure they had been here before. It felt familiar. Not at all strange, not even slightly. It was like coming home. Numbers aligned, he grappled with the sturdy steel casing. His fingers seemed slow, like delayed action. Kind of remote, as in a laggy virtual reality game. At last, he found the small plastic trigger, and the box fell open, yielding the cold metal of the front door key into his hand.

A few minutes of grunting and mauling, and the suitcases were at the top of the staircase. The permanent residents whom Ivan remembered were already out in force, ostensibly walking dogs or dropping bags of rubbish into dustbins, in truth enjoying a jolly good gawp at the new arrivals. Unloading done, Ivan swung the Merc around onto the flat’s designated parking space in the courtyard. As he shut off the engine, he realised he hadn’t seen Dana get out and go up, but the front passenger seat was nonetheless empty.

The old geezer with his dog at the gateway looked positively cheated of the chance to wag his finger at a holiday visitor who didn’t know where he ought to park and therefore needed putting in his place. The dog, at last able to begin his walk, made brief eye contact with Ivan, who felt mutual thanks were exchanged. The old man, Ivan noticed, seemed to have lost interest in him, almost as if Ivan were invisible. Nowt so queer as folk, he thought, especially in north Cumbria.

Ivan locked the car and carried the last bag up the outside stairs. He found the whole upstairs flat suffused with golden light, the seaward-facing windows all wide open. It was seven forty-eight pm and the effect was exquisite. The westering sun blared golden yellow across six miles of Solway Firth, straight in through the apartment’s gaping windows. In the sitting room, Ivan thought he glimpsed Dana reclining on one of the two window ledges, but the sun’s glare hurt his eyes when he tried to have a proper look. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen her clearly since they’d left the car park outside the London hotel. Just a stirring, shifting presence, reclining in the heated leather passenger seat, as the Mercedes whooshed softly through the motorway miles.

Finding himself at the northern end of the sitting room, Ivan stood before the unlatched uPVC window and revelled in the summer evening’s radiance. What time would it go dark here? The daylight had no business being this bright at such a time of the evening. He pulled the casement further inward, leaving the window aperture completely unobstructed, and marvelled at the richness of the blue, red and gold sunset. The Long House was renowned for its exposed location, at the very top of a wide beach on the Solway’s southern coast, subject to the capricious mercy of tides and gales. Reaching for his phone, Ivan captured the moment at 1:1, then on 0.5 wide, and at last on 3x zoom. Pleased with the results, he placed his hands on the window sill and leaned out to look northward along the building. Centuries before, the Long House had been the local mariners’ tavern, boats mooring alongside the quay while their crews slaked their thirsts, hosted by the redoubtable landlord, known as Father Crackenthorp. Now, that old stone quay was replaced by a concrete sea wall, reinforced by a banked revetment of granite boulders, thoughtfully placed there by Allerdale Borough Council. The bare, black arc of protective rocks extended well north of the house, around the curve of the coast, toward the marshes of Bowness-on-Solway.

Ivan turned his head southward and there was Dana, her beautiful head poking out from the apartment’s southern sea-facing window. Without hesitation, Ivan clicked and captured the moment, as Dana posed, arms wide, tilting exaggeratedly outward from the window ledge. Her perfect white teeth bared in a grinning smile, she raised her iPhone. Ivan inclined his head into his customary photo pose. Dana waved in acknowledgment and pocketed her phone.

Retreating into the calm, ultra-white warmth of the living room, Ivan heard his phone ping. Checking, he saw two shared images. The first was a view northward from the window where Dana had been sitting, just a few seconds before. The outside house wall remained blank, nothing interrupting the cream whitewashed pebbledash. But there was something else. Someone else, to be more accurate. On the rocks at the head of the beach, to the north of the Long House, sat a man, gazing stilly over the water toward Dumfries, perhaps lost in thought, maybe just watching the sunset. Ivan guessed the man was about his own age, the tell-tale white of his hair just visible below the scarlet Lacoste baseball cap. Wait, how the hell could he know it was a Lacoste cap, at that distance? Ivan admitted to himself that he didn’t know. He couldn’t know. It just looked like a Lacoste cap. Ivan had several such caps, including the red one he had worn for today’s northward drive, as well as his blue, black and white ones.

Throwing his phone onto the sofa and making back toward the still-open window, Ivan turned his head again to the north. The man in the red cap was gone. The rocks sat grey and empty in the summer sun’s dying glow. Ivan swung his gaze back southward. For a moment, the setting sun’s amber rays blinded him. He blinked and refocused on the southern window. For a second, he thought he saw Dana, lounging there on the window ledge, left knee drawn up, hands clasped around her shin, smiling towards him. He was sure he saw her. But then he realised something else was wrong. Very wrong.

Ivan fell back again into the carpeted room, scrabbling for his phone. Yes, there was the photo Dana had sent him. The mysterious red-capped, white-haired figure was sitting on the rocks, gazing across to Scotland, unaware of Dana and Ivan’s presence.

But that was it. In the photo Dana had taken as he’d leaned out, Ivan wasn’t there. The apartment’s north window gaped open, black and empty. No-one was visible at the window. Yet, Ivan remembered Dana taking the photo, just a few minutes before. He had stuck his head out, in an exaggerated pose. She had taken his picture. So why wasn’t he in it? And who was the weirdo who’d been sitting out there on the rocks, wearing Ivan’s red Lacoste cap and dark blue Zara jacket?

“Dana!” Ivan’s yell rattled the casements and echoed down the empty hallways of the Long House. “Dana!” He blundered from room to room, pushing aside dusty, dated furniture that shouldn’t be there, hadn’t been there when they’d arrived, just a few minutes before. “Dana!”

Nothing. Just bare floorboards, dusty windows. Ivan felt himself floating, not walking. Like he was rocking an Oculus headset, surfing nauseously around a VR world.

“Dana!” Just echoing reverb. No response. Threadbare carpets in place of the luxurious pile he remembered. Creaking floorboards. Instead of uPVC double glazing, dirty old wood-framed sash windows. Not only dusty, the bright apartment seemed to be getting dimmer. “Dana! DANA!”

Ivan lurched out through the door, down the stairs, charging randomly, along the leeward side of the building, northward, headlong, onto the exposed rocks. "DANA!"

Under cloud at the roadside, his back turned against the cold, windy drizzle, Sergeant Stuart Dornier spoke into his radio with clipped, matter-of-fact precision. “Patrol 4762, FATAC, B5302 Sebergham, two deceased at scene, white adult male driver and white adult female front seat passenger, Mercedes E220d, index number FX22UTH, head-on collision with tractor trailer unit correctly exiting road bridge, ambulance and pathologist required, evidence indicates car driver at fault, documents recovered at scene identify deceased white adult male Ivan Edward Bertrand; deceased white adult female Dana Mortlake Brazenor, other recovered documentation indicates vehicle was en route to holiday apartment on Solway coast. Witness statements put time of collision around 18:50. Scene secured evidence photography in progress, expect road reopened approximately one hour, meanwhile recommend divert Sebergham traffic via Sowerby Row and Curthwaite. Patrol 4762 out.”