Revelations

They had both left it too late to retrace their steps now.

 The melancholy old lighthouse was the only shelter for miles around and since the wind had harnessed its full force, cracking tree trunks along their path as though they were mere toothpicks, Kate and Robert had fled through its bowed red door. 

 ‘This wasn’t forecast!’ Robert bellowed.

Kate glanced sharply at her husband , her forearm hastily covering her nose and mouth. 

 ‘It wasn’t!’ He continued, his eyes looking up and down the blue, paint - chipped walls inside the lighthouse’s belly. 

 ‘We both know it said strong winds, Rob.’

 ‘Yes - strong winds can mean anything,’ he sighed,returning a look of annoyance her way. 

 ‘No: Strong winds, mean strong winds..’ came her muffled voice, her arm still resting under her nose. 

 Robert shook his head, moving towards the dubious - looking spiral staircase that prohibited climbers with a single, heavy chain buckled across its railings. 

 ‘It really stinks in here. Smells of piss; really old piss,’ Kate remarked, as she slipped her hood back and wiped away the mask of moist sea salt from her glowing cheeks.  

 ‘I can’t smell it,’ he shrugged.

 ‘Of course you can’t.’

 ‘I can’t! Jesus, if I say something I mean it Kate - I’m not saying it just to be different or awkward or whatever else you think I’m doing in your weird little headspace.’

 ‘Oh fuck off,’ Kate spat, deciding to wander to the tiny porthole window facing out to sea. She caught sight of a small spider with a bulbous back who had made its home there, probably thinking it had found somewhere safe for it to spin its wispy web. She felt instant pity for the poor thing.

 ‘Nice,’ Robert half - laughed. ‘That’s the third ‘fuck off’ this morning - actually, is it the fourth? I can’t remember.’ 

 ‘Fuck off - there you go. Make it a fifth.’ 

 The wind sounded as though it knew they were sheltering in the lighthouse and it had now set out to grab them both and scatter them out over the wild sea. 

 ‘Holy shit!’ Robert exclaimed, spontaneously lurching to the skewed red door to check that the rusted latch was secure enough . 

  Neither of them had ever heard anything like it. The rollercoaster pitch of the gail unnerved them, though neither would admit it. 

 Robert kept his fist clutching the latch as the door rattled and jerked violently. ‘Strong winds- more like hurricane force winds. Understatement of the year.’ 

 ‘How long do you think it’s going to last?’ Kate had turned from the window, longing to return to the safety of the hotel. 

 ‘Hopefully not long. Maybe it’s just a freak passing storm. We’ll be out of here within the hour I reckon,’ Robert said with a certainty that, for once, Kate secretly took comfort in. 

 ‘Course, we’ve got no signal,’ Kate announced, while holding her phone as high as she could, tiptoeing around the floor in an uncoordinated kind of dance. 

 ‘Nope,’ her husband confirmed in his usual matter of fact manner. ‘You won’t get any signal here Kate, even on a good day.’ 

‘Not even one bar - nothing,’ she continued, hoping in vain to see a line or two of signal appear on her screen. 

 ‘I don’t know if this door is going to hold. I reckon we should both sit against it. Just in case.’ 

 ‘I’m not sitting on that floor, Rob. It’s filthy!’

So he sat instantly, his back pushing against the rotting wood, his knees bent to push back at the relentless force from outside.

 ‘No time to be precious now Kate. Do you want to be blown to shit when this latch gives in. I’m fucking freezing already! Just come here and sit the fuck down would you?’ 

 It was as though the wind had heard the angst in Robert’s voice and decided it would listen in on their bickering. It hushed to a background hum in seconds. 

Biting her lip, giving in and dropping her phone back into her deep jacket pocket, Kate decided it could be a good idea, perhaps agreeing with him for the last time. Only because this time it mattered. He was right.

  She eased her body next to her husbands and squirmed as her bottom touched the ice -cold, dirty floor. A sudden, deep fatigue swept through her as she sat and the chill from the floor made it tremble.

  From where she sat, Kate could observe the seemingly endless rising spiral of the black iron staircase and wondered if she could climb it , right to the very top, to where the enormous light sat. It would no doubt be safer up there and there’d be no need to obsess about the flimsy red door - besides, she didn't care about the chain trying to block their way. 

 ‘You cold?’ Robert asked, pulling the toggles hanging from his hood. 

Kate nodded, noticing how blue her fingers had turned. The single diamond on her wedding ring finger looked disastrously dull in the dim light. 

 Her sombre observation was immediately forgotten as Robert slipped his arm around her shoulder, rubbing it with vigour to warm her skin beneath. Kate longed to rest her head on his chest, like she used to. Oh she longed to simply fall to sleep on his in thee nook

of his arm, like she used to. It sounded so simple. 

 The wind didn’t like the calm between them, so picked up speed, hurling itself faster and faster around the lighthouse, banging with all its might at the door. 

 ‘What about going upstairs?’ She shouted. 

 ‘ Nah, nah, not a good idea.’

  ‘Why not? Surely it would be safer? We wouldn’t have to worry about this bloody door flying open. We might even get a signal up there Rob,’ Kate begged, daring to look at him while in such close proximity to this man who’d become a stranger. His eyes gazed at the staircase. 

 ‘Nah. That chain’s there for a reason. God only knows how old those stairs are. It’s not worth the risk;can you imagine, getting all the way up there and the whole thing collapses underneath us. What then? Or it falls to pieces as we’re halfway up the fucking thing. That would be our luck, wouldn’t it?’ Kate knew all about their bad luck. 

A simultaneous sigh followed. She couldn’t calm her quivering body, despite feeling the warmth from her husband’s. The door behind them rattled on boisterously, the noise of the latch clattering in their ears. 

‘ Oh Jesus!’ Kate cried, beginning to sense a steady surge of fear seeping into her bones, mixing with the cold. 

  Robert leaned his head on hers and pulled her more tightly to him than he had done in years. His hand reached for hers and quickly he blew his warm breath onto it, trying to heat it up. 

 ‘It’s ok,’ he said certainly. ‘It’s going to pass. It won’t be long now.’ 

  Robert’s newfound tenderness was in fact a paradox to Kate. She could bask in it, yet the urge to reject it and call it poison was still there; this feeling lingered on the tip of her tongue. 

 ‘Is that rain? Shit, it’s raining now as well!’ He groaned. 

 Without thinking, he rested his lips on top of his wife’s hand. 

 The beastly wind thrust what seemed like rivers of water to the ground. 

 ‘My bum’s wet, it’s wet!’ Kate shrieked, as she watched in horror at the rainwater creeping in under the gap in the bottom of the door. 

  Robert felt it too. ‘Oh fuck! Let’s move! Let’s go!’ He jumped to his feet, pulling Kate up too. 

 ‘Sod that chain. Come on, let’s go up!’ He cried, hurling his legs as high as he could to get his body over the height of the horizontal hanging chain. 

 ‘Are you sure? What if they don’t hold - like you said! What if we do fall? Maybe we should go up one at a time?’ 

 The storm had become so loud that Robert had to guess what Kate was saying. 

 As he predicted, the latch gave way; the red door was no more, as a quick stream of water now seeped swiftly over the floor of the lighthouse. A blast of wind invading the doorway shunted Kate forward, into the chain and into her husband. His arms reached around her and lifted her over the barrier, so fast that the water stood no chance of covering her shoes. 

 Despite being winded, Kate still managed to scream with fright. 

 ‘What’s happening? What’s happening Robert!?’ 

 ‘We’re going up!’ He insisted, tugging sharply at her arm as he began to climb. 

 ‘Come on!’ he shouted, refusing to let go. 

  ‘Dear Jesus!’ was all she could say, over and over,hoping it might suffice as some sort of prayer. 

  They began their ascent, as cautiously as they could. 

 Kate couldn’t be sure but she thought she heard the staircase moan and creak under their weight. She wanted to know for sure but perhaps it was better not to. 

  Just focus on the step ahead, she told herself. Focus, focus. 

 ‘How many fucking steps!’ Robert wailed against the whirling, circling wind which had fully taken hold at the bottom end of the lighthouse.Up was the only way to go now. They were trapped. 

 Around and around they went, higher and higher. Kate knew that if the stairs gave way now, they would both die for certain. What an ending that would be, she thought, considering the conversation they’d had only hours before in the hotel room. Karma for both of them, she said to herself, for not trying harder; for not being kinder; for taking one another for granted. 

 ‘We’re nearly there Kate, nearly!’ she heard her husband say. For the shortest of moments, his voice brought out the glow of love she’d carried for him throughout all their married years. It had been a blessing and a curse. It was still. 

  At last, they had reached a sturdy platform. 

 Robert led her again by her hand, up another small set of steps, through a metal door and into the room at the top. The size of the disused lantern looming above them, made them gasp.Robert squealed the metallic door shut, grinding its bottom along grooves already made in the floor, because of its wonky disposition. 

  Finally, the brutal thrashing of the wind seemed less of a threat; muffled by the door and the thick glass dome surrounding them. 

‘Come here,’ Robert croaked, close to tears. ‘Come here.’ 

Kate turned into his open arms, forgetting to stop herself this time. 

‘Oh my god, what just happened?’ she laughed, reaching her arms as far around his waist as she could. ‘What the hell just happened?’ 

 Looking up, she realised Robert was crying - she had never seen him cry before - not even when they lost the baby. Embarrassed, he buried his head on her shoulder and sobbed into it, clutching the back of her coat as though his life depended on it. 

 ‘I’m sorry!’ he choked, the words echoing around the glass dome like a wicked, magical sprite. ‘I’m so fucking sorry!’ he sobbed.

 ‘Rob, Rob… I don’t know if I can ever…’ 

 ‘Please, please Kate. Please?’ 

 ‘You’re not thinking straight baby. It’s just this stupid place we’re in, trapped in a bloody lighthouse of all things. It’s shock or something,’ Kate retorted, almost wishing the stairs had given way beneath them. 

 The rain still lashed against the glass dome and she couldn’t make out a single thing through it; not even the Jurassic coastline. It was as if the channel wasn’t even there. Kate wondered if there were any boats in trouble as the sea was no doubt a mess. The sailing yachts would be in desperate trouble for certain, she thought. Kate was glad she couldn’t see them out there, thrashing about among enormous waves, sinking in front of her eyes. What she couldn’t see of course, couldn’t hurt her. She knew that now. 

 Robert’s crying had stopped yet he still leant his head beside hers. 

‘I’ll never betray you again, Kate. Never. For as long as I live. Never.’

Kate turned her gaze to his, and couldn’t believe those same brown eyes of his looked at another woman the way he looked at her in this sweet moment. She pulled away suddenly, knowing it would never stop. The haunting sense that Robert was a stranger and should be treated as such. 

‘Why Robert? Why?!’ Kate shrieked, turning away from his sad face. ‘I wouldn’t care if neither of us put another step outside this shelter. I wouldn’t give a shit if we had just been blown to pieces down there. In fact, why the hell did you save us? Why bother when you don’t even want me? Why weren’t you honest, why not save only yourself, because that's what you did, with her, wasn’t it?’ 

‘Kate, I love you!’ Robert howled, banging his fist against the metal door, his head still hanging in shame. 

‘Yes - yet you love yourself that little bit more and that’s not nearly enough for me.’

‘No one’s perfect!’ he protested, brushing his tears from his face before looking at her. 

‘Well, that’s as good as an excuse as any of the others you have spewed out at me,’ Kate scoffed, raging and reeling at her disappointment in him. 

‘I know less about you now than when I married you ten years ago Rob. That’s ten years of my life wasted. Ten years of my life has been a lie.’

Robert shook his head violently. ‘No, no!’  

‘When we get out of here, I want to go home. Then, I need you to pack your things and leave. I just realised I can’t have someone like you wasting anymore of my time. Imagine if I’d not found that letter in the case, just imagine. You’d have wasted another ten years with me none the wiser.’

‘You can’t say that. That’s not true.’ 

‘It is. You’re just unlucky you were found out.’

Kate and Robert spent the night and another whole morning at the top of the lighthouse, and barely another word was spoken. The glare from the sun finally beating through the glass above them was less welcome - much less than they had at first longed it would be. The staircase held its own as they descended, but the poor red door had not weathered the storm and had splintered into a thousand pieces. 

Despite surviving the deadly hurricane, neither of them smiled as they stepped out of the lighthouse onto safe, solid ground. Both knew they should feel grateful to be alive, yet neither felt that way.

Upon leaving the hotel, Kate reminded Robert: ‘You can’t change the past,’ handing her gold wedding band to him.

‘And now you’re deciding our future’, he replied, watching his wife step into an Uber without him.

‘No - you did that,’ she nodded and slammed the door before anymore words could be exchanged . The car pulled away, leaving Robert standing alone.

A brisk wind tilted his suitcase on its side - as he looked up, there were more black clouds moving in. Another storm was coming.

‘