The wrong turn

“I told you! You’ve taken the wrong turn.” I moaned, trying to get maps working on my phone. 

“Calm down will ya. It’s a quicker route.” Greg replied. “And it’s more scenic. Look, a sheep! Baaaah”, he bleated out the window.

“I have no idea where we are, and I’m starting to feel anxious” I was getting hotter at the thought of being lost in the arse end of nowhere. I took off my jumper and wound the window down, grabbing my water bottle in the side of door.

“I think you’re overreacting. That therapist Linda woman is getting in your head” he said. “You just sit back and be the little passenger princess that you are.” He squeezed my thigh.

Another belittling dig. Another dig at me going to therapy. Another dig at me not having a driving license. Though I’m pretty sure he secretly liked it. Me having no license meant I was completely under his control, everywhere we went. He was the man. He drove. Even if it was his mum’s old car that was undeniably crap. Some old red thing that was crumby and had a lingering smell of cigarettes no matter how many pine-scented air fresheners dangled from the rear-view mirror.

I turned the radio on to bring some calm and Lily Allen Fuck You came blaring down the speakers. How apt.

“Jesus! Turn it down will ya”, he shouted over Lily’s voice.

 Fuck you
Fuck you very, very much

I couldn’t help but give a little smile.

I turned it down ever so slightly and stuck my head out the window, breathing in the fresh air and soaking up the vast green landscape and rolling hills.

We were heading to The Lakes for our annual summer camping trip. When it was our first trip together, four years ago, we’d been so excited. We’d bought new hiking boots, waterproofs, head torches, and metal packed lunchboxes that Greg insisted on getting for jam sandwiches. At first I thought was endearing, but now all I think is who the fuck eats jam sandwiches at 40 years old?

 I’d been dreading this trip since the beginning of the year. Greg and I had been drifting apart for months, he irritated me and everything he said felt misogynistic and belittling. Even his breathing sometimes annoyed me. But I felt too sad for him – for us – to not go ahead with the trip. I told myself I’d see this one through and then when we got home, I’d end things.  

 “OK I think we’re here” Greg announced, squinting up at the road ahead.

“We can’t be. There isn’t anything around for miles.” I said leaning forward, pulling at my seatbelt for a better look. “I thought you’d booked us a proper camping pitch. With other campers. And showers. And…toilets!”

He stopped the car. “Look, I’ll be honest, I think I took a wrong turn back then..”

“I tol—” I interjected

“No you told me to take a right and I did” he interrupted.

“Greg, I said take a right, then a sharp left, which you missed. And now we’re lost and you’re expecting to me to pitch up in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

“It’ll be fine. We can wild camp like they do on Celebrity Trials, Tantrums and Tarpaulin.”

“This isn’t a bloody reality show, Greg”

A chill went down my back, and I could feel the air getting colder. A thick grey cloud slowly moved in on us and it felt like it was going to piss it down any minute.

“Fuck it, it looks like it’s going to rain, let’s just get the tent up and then tomorrow we find the actual campsite” I reasoned.

“That’s my girl!”

He slapped my arsed. I rolled my eyes.

We’d just finished setting up when the heavens opened. I wrapped a fleece blanket around my shoulders, feeling the chill of the air fill the tent. I got my phone out of my bag, nothing like a bit of doom-scrolling to pass the time.

“Fuck sakes” I muttered under my breath. No signal and my battery was on five percent.

“Do you have a battery pack?” I asked.

“I thought you were bringing it?”

“No you said you were packing it. I left it on charge and said ‘don’t forget it’”

“I thought you were packing it because you were charging it”

“Ughhhh forget it” I flopped back on the airbed, chucking my phone to one side.

I woke up to the sound of Greg unzipping the tent. He was on his way back in.

I sat up, “what time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “Just after six. You crashed almost instantly. Here I was thinking we were going to have a fun night and there you were…asleep”

Unbelievable. He was having a go at me for falling asleep.

“Right, well. Shall we start packing up to find that campsite?” I asked, trying to stay level-headed.

“We can. But there’s one slight problem.”

“What now?” Stay level-headed I told myself.

“The car’s stuck.”

“What do you mean, ‘the car’s stuck’?”

“It’s stuck.” He scratched his head. “In the mud. Well… in a muddy ditch.”

I flopped back onto the mattress, pulled my pillow over my face and screamed into it.

“Why do you always have to be so dramatic?” He huffed. “We’ll go for a walk, find a local pub or something, charge our phones and get some help. It doesn’t have to be a big ordeal.”

I stayed silent. I was done with arguing. I wanted to go home, and this was the only way.

We gathered our bags, pulled on our boots and set off. The rain had eased off but the air felt thick and heavy dark clouds hung above us. Typical British summer weather.

We’d been walking uphill for about an hour and it felt like we were getting further away from civilisation. There wasn’t a single signpost, footpath, or cow to suggest at anything else around us.

“Do you actually know which way we’re going?” I panted.

He stopped in his tracks and turned around. “What do you mean by ‘actually’? Do you always have to be so negative?”

He really knew how to wind me up.

“Well, we have no phones and you’re using an A-Z map. Which, by the way, is for the motorway. So forgive me for questioning if you know what you’re fucking doing”

“What? What is it? You’ve been nagging me about every single fucking thing since we left the house and I’m done in. Just spit it out. What is it you want?”

We were stood on the edge of a peak looming over the countryside. If we hadn’t been arguing this would be the perfect spot to stop and have some lunch, take some pictures together, I’d be snuggling into his armpit and we’d post it on Instagram and everyone would think ‘aww so cute!’ But I had a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn’t want to be there. I hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place.

“I wanted you to listen to me when I was giving directions. I want you to listen to me full stop. I wanted you to have packed the battery pack. I wanted you to have been prepared for this” I waved my arms around “I wanted you to have known where our campsite was. I want you to respect me.” I blurted.

“This again! You act like you have it so rough. Look around! You could have it so much worse” He edged towards me and I took a step back. “What—you think I’m going to hit you? Don’t be stupid, I’ve never laid a finger on you.”

He was right, he hadn’t.

Then the rest seemed to happen in slow motion. He turned on his heel to walk away and a piece of slate must’ve slipped under his boot. Before I knew it, he was over the edge of the peak. I screamed but nothing seemed to come out. There was a deafening ringing in my ears. He hadn’t even seemed to make a sound when he fell. I looked over the edge and he was just there, all mangled at the bottom of the peak. He looked like…a stunt dummy. And the rest was a blur.

“So he slipped on a piece of slate?” DI Rogers asked.

“Or a rock or something, I don’t know” I wept looking into my hands.

The white lights of the interrogation room were too bright and I felt like if I looked up, DI Rogers and DI Cummings would be able to see right through me.

“No, of course. But he must’ve been stood extremely close to the edge for him to just…slip” DI Cummings scrutizined.

“He was. I mean, I don’t know. We were arguing, we weren’t thinking. We were both unknowingly close to the edge, I guess.”

“Right. And you didn’t call for help straight away because you were lost and without battery on your phone?” It was DI Rogers again.

He had a long, slim face and incredibly long nose, like he could sniff out the truth.  There was nothing warm about him. He was cold and stern. If he had kids he was probably the strict parent.

“Yeah. It took me another hour or so to find a pub. I…I don’t know it was a blur. I remember screaming telling Greg I was going to get help and I’d be right back. But I knew. I knew he wasn’t…alive.” I whimpered, reaching for a tissue.

DI Rogers slid the box towards me and held it just out of my reach so that I had to look up and look him in the eye. I quickly leant over and grabbed a tissue, blowing my nose and diverting my gaze away from his eyes that observed my every move.

He then glanced at DI cummings and gave her a slight nod.

“OK Miss Collins. That concludes our interview, the time is one thirty-four A.M.” DI Cummings switched off the recorder and picked up her file, straightening the papers before closing it. “You’re free to go. Try and get some sleep. And once again, sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you” I shook their hands and quickly turned on my heel. Get me the hell out of here.

I made my way out of the police station, heat rising in my neck and face in case they changed their mind and decided to lock me up forever. When I left I kept walking until I was out of sight, I stopped at a bus stop and sat down, taking deep breaths to calm my nerves – inhale, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, exhale, two, three, four.

The night bus pulled in, it wasn’t mine but I got on anyway, trying to put as much distance between myself and the police station as possible.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I eventually got home after two hours, having taken two night buses and then walked the rest of the way. It was almost four A.M. I was full of adrenaline, but my body ached. My calves were twitching and my shoulders felt twisted after sitting on a variety of shoddy plastic chairs in the police station for the last seven hours.

I popped two paracetamol and two melatonin gummies and plonked myself on the couch. I reached for the remote and flicked through the channels. There was nothing on TV except teleshopping and reruns of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. I left teleshopping run in the background and closed my eyes.

I needed to forget the last 24 hours. I needed to forget everything that happened. I needed the couch to swallow me whole. I felt myself sink deeper into the couch, the cushions and pillows burying me, drowning me. And then I couldn’t breathe. I was fighting for my life, I was suffocating. The air was hot and thick until it was just my breath, I was panting and running out of oxygen. I was trying to scream and kick but my body felt heavy and paralysed. My eyes were wide open but everything was black. A deep and heavy weight pushed down on my chest, like someone was sitting on me, pinning me down. I kept trying to scream but no sound was coming out. No one could hear me. And then I was falling, falling off the edge of the peak. No I wasn’t falling, I’d been pushed. Greg had pushed me. But now he was falling. And it was me who’d pushed him. I’d pushed him. Everything went red and I was stood looking down on his mangled body amongst the rocks.