The Call by Gavin Strawhan

Author:Gavin Strawhan [Gavin Strawhan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin NZ
Published: 2024-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

18

KLOE DOES EXACTLY WHAT SHYLA told her to. She drives. Her eyes are wide and wild, she’s in a murky tunnel, heading for the light. She’s on autopilot. She’s lost contact with air traffic control. Maybe she stops at red lights, maybe she doesn’t. Eventually she becomes aware she is on the motorway heading south. She’s got half a tank of petrol and maybe two hundred bucks on her card. Part of her wants to take the next exit home, but she knows that would only put herself and Shyla in danger. Less than an hour ago she was resigned to dying; now, more than anything, she wants to live, and being alive means she really needs a smoke.

She fumbles in her bag for her tobacco. There is the arse-tearing blare of a horn as a massive SUV passes on the outer lane and she overcorrects, nearly flipping the unstable people-mover into the emergency stopping lane. A semi blasts an air horn at her as it weaves past. She pulls to a halt, grasps the steering wheel tightly and screams.

A few moments later a patrol car passes, the brake lights briefly flicker, and Kloe feels relief pass through her like a gentle breeze. Getting busted would take the decision out of her hands. She’ll tell them about Honey, tell them what she did, accept her fate. But the cops must’ve changed their minds, or had better things to do, and the patrol car keeps going.

She is frantically searching through her bag for a lighter that isn’t there when she realises what else is missing: her phone. Fuck! FUCK! She sees it sitting on the table and Marty picking it up and putting it in his pocket with a look of what? Resignation? Pity?

Her brain jumps to a parallel what if world where Jason never hit her, where she never called that pigshit. She pictures herself at the kitchen window, peeling spuds. She’s watching the kids on the trampoline. She loves them fiercely, this much she knows, even if everything else is fucked up. And she knows that Renata will take care of them, and Shyla too, and they’re safer without their mother. But then she realises something else. Her sister must have known about Keg and Marty coming for her. The order had to have come from Hammer, and there was no way in the world he wouldn’t have told Renata. Kloe feels warm, sticky tears on her face.

Thinking about her kids helps Kloe focus. A few minutes later she pulls back onto the motorway and continues for a few kilometres before taking an off-ramp, turning around and merging onto the motorway north. She doesn’t really know why, except that the North was where they were from, her people — at least that’s what Renata told her.

She pulls into a service station in Wellsford, and it hurts like hell to put her weight on her ankle. The relief and humiliation of being saved by her daughter threaten to undermine her all over again.

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