Down to Earth. Melanie Rose
laugh and tell me not to be so silly – I was fit and well and had never really been missing at all.
Listening carefully for sounds on the stairs, I decided the safest course of action was to get up and dressed, pretending to Matt that I was still suckered in to his strange fantasy world, and make a break for it as soon as an opportunity arose. Swinging my legs out of the bed, I rested my bare feet on a luxurious wool rug before crossing the polished oak flooring to the bathroom.
Locking the door securely behind me, I spent several minutes in the shower, washing away the grime of the previous day before wrapping myself in a large black towel and padding my way back out into the bedroom.
Matt was standing in the middle of the room with a mug of tea in his hand. I gave a small squeal of fright and nearly dropped the towel. Grabbing it just in time I hung on to it tightly, staring at him with wide eyes. He grinned appreciatively when he saw me.
‘Making yourself at home, I see.’
I felt the blood drain from my face and willed myself to sound normal. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
He crossed to the bed and placed the mug on the bedside table. ‘I’m glad you’re already up. I was going to wake you. There’s someone downstairs I think you might like to see.’
‘Really? I didn’t think anyone knew I was here?’ I sat on the edge of the bed and sipped at the hot tea. ‘Thank you for this, it’s just what I needed.’
‘I took the liberty of calling Kevin.’
‘Kevin?’ I was genuinely surprised. If Matt had gone to all this trouble to lure me here, why would he have called someone I knew? Particularly someone who had been in the plane with me before I had been drugged and possibly kidnapped? It didn’t make sense. ‘You mentioned Kevin last night, but I honestly don’t know him that well. He’s only been at the company a few weeks and he keeps pretty much to himself.’
I watched him over the rim of the mug, wondering. Matt couldn’t have concocted such an elaborate plan alone, he’d have needed help. Was it possible Kevin was involved too? Matt could have planted the boy at Wayfarer’s Insurance company where we worked, to make sure he was with me during the charity parachute jump. A memory of the spotty nineteen-year-old lad shyly handing me a cup of coffee in the mess room half an hour or so before take-off planted itself in my mind. That would have been about the right sort of timing for a drug to kick in. Looking down into the mug in my hand now, I almost choked.
‘Six years ago Kevin might have been something of a loner, but we’re good friends now,’ Matt was saying. ‘He’s got some wacky ideas, but he’s a good guy at heart – and he has an amazing way with computers and technology.’
I handed the mug back to him with the tea half drunk and offered a strained smile.
He grinned at me. ‘But I’ll let him tell you all about it. Come down when you’re dressed and join us for breakfast.’
When he’d gone I tried to remember every detail of the previous day. I recalled thinking how grey and drawn Kevin had looked – not that I could imagine him ever having a ruddy complexion with his pale freckly skin and reddish hair, but I’d put that down to nerves about the forthcoming jump and his hopeless infatuation with Ingrid. Had the pair of them invented some weird alternative reality for me?
Keeping a wary eye on the door, I slid open the top drawer of Matt’s bedside cabinet. At first glance there didn’t seem to be any clues hidden amongst the few personal bits and pieces, but then I noticed an envelope-sized piece of shiny white card in the corner looking tantalisingly up at me. Hearing nothing outside, I reached quickly in and drew the object out, turning it over in my hand.
A black and white photo of me smiled back at me. My chest tightened immediately and my breath caught in my throat. It was a copy of the snap Calum had taken the week before; the one that I imagined had been used on the posters I’d seen in the pub. With shaking hands I hastily put the offending article back into the drawer, sliding it tightly closed as if sealing the photo back into its place might lessen the impact of what it suggested.
I realised I couldn’t sit there forever, I needed Matt and Kevin to think I was going along with their plan – whatever that was.
Eyeing the blue jumpsuit with distaste I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and T-shirt, realising I had little option but to put them back on. It was either that or go downstairs looking like a temptress in a dolphin T-shirt. I shuddered at the thought of how easily the scenario they’d invented had had me jumping into the parachute instructor’s bed.
‘Idiot,’ I mumbled to myself under my breath. As an afterthought I stepped back into the jumpsuit, wriggled it over my jeans and zipped it up to my neck.
Once dressed, I crept downstairs to find Matt standing with his back to me poring over a sheaf of papers at the kitchen counter, while a stocky man of about my own age sat at the breakfast bar, hunched over a fried breakfast. My gaze passed over him and rested on the back of Matt’s head. I noticed the way his hair curled against his neck, just touching his shoulders, then tore my eyes reluctantly away, reminding myself that he was part of all this … whatever this was. And Calum was at home probably anxiously awaiting my return.
Switching my attention to the man, who definitely wasn’t the Kevin I remembered, I watched as he scooped egg yolk onto the fried bread and forked it into his mouth with un -disguised relish. He had the same reddish, curly hair as Kevin had had and the same pale face, sharp nose and freckles, but there the similarity ended.
Inching further into the room I stood awkwardly, not really knowing what to say. Shifting from one foot to the other, I managed what I hoped was a reasonably bright sounding, ‘Hi.’
I couldn’t have elicited a more dramatic reaction if I’d pulled the pin on a hand grenade and rolled it into the middle of the room. The man passing as Kevin looked up and stared at me. For a couple of seconds his eyes fixed on mine and then, as if in slow motion he dropped his fork onto the plate with a clatter, splattering drops of egg yolk onto the work top. He shot to his feet, eyes and mouth gaping and backed away from me as if expecting me to explode into a thousand tiny pieces.
Kevin stood there, ready for flight, his eyes squinting shortsightedly as though he ought to be wearing spectacles. He seemed to be taking in every minute detail of my appearance; my face, hair, the jumpsuit, right down to my bare feet. Eventually he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and swallowed hard. ‘Michaela? Is it really you?’
He was a good actor – I had to give him that. His reaction had shocked me almost as much as I had seemed to surprise him. Having recoiled several steps when he’d leapt up, I held my ground near the foot of the stairs and returned his scrutiny, taking in his features and comparing them with the Kevin I knew. There was a little fleshy padding on his face and chin, which seemed to round off a narrow angular jaw. The extra weight on his face and body made him look altogether chunkier and more solid. This was a pretty good impression of what a scrawny teenager might look like as a mid-twenty-something who hadn’t taken very good care of himself.
Clever.
Kevin approached slowly, his eyes taking on a gleam of excitement. ‘It is you, isn’t it? But where have you been? What did they do to you? Have you been kept in some sort of stasis? How did you get away?’
I glanced towards Matt and it was then that I saw what was written on the top of the pile of papers he’d had spread out in front of him. They looked like printouts from computer websites and the words that caught my eye, making my stomach churn afresh, were, ‘Unexplained Abductions’ and ‘People who have disappeared’.
I sincerely hoped that Matt and Kevin were not going to try and convince me that I’d been abducted by aliens.
Kevin was still staring at me with a look of wonder on his face.
‘I