Louder Than Words Read online

  He looks like a sleeping prince in a fairy tale, but there is no princess left to kiss him awake.

  And his chest rises and falls, rises and falls, and he sleeps on and on . . .

  I watch the hands of the clock move round, from one to two to three . . .

  And then as the hand creeps round to four, I know . . . I know with utter certainty, no revelation was ever clearer than this . . . I know what will wake him.

  It is as if every moment of failure of my life coalesces into this to make it all worthwhile, to claw us back from the precipice. I don’t have nerves. Me, who has been afraid of everything. The complete assurance that this is what my silence has been for saves me from that.

  I know.

  Andrea said the pressure of expectation stops me. There is no expectation here. No one to see me. No one to hear me except the one person who matters.

  She would say, I think, that the pressure is too great. And she’d be right – I have never felt more pressure to do this than I do now.

  But she’d be wrong as well. Because I need to do this so badly, I cannot fail. I will not fail.

  I take my brother’s hand in mine. My voice is rusty with disuse and I don’t even recognise it as my own, but it works. I say, ‘Silas . . . Silas, it’s me, Rafi.’

  For a long, long moment there is nothing, and then he opens his eyes.

  II

  We are in the cemetery. I sit on a bench while Silas stands in front of the gravestone. Josie stands beside him and he has hold of her hand for comfort.

  Lara’s family gave her a beautiful headstone with a carved angel on it – I think it looks a little like her. I forgive her for what she did now, for she made sure my brother could come back to us and she lost herself to do that. I didn’t know she had that in her. Silas is less surprised. It was the Lara she wanted to be, he said, and he told us what happened inside the factory:

  Lara ran through the warehouse, yelling Silas’s name until she heard him call back in return. He was heading towards her, coughing and choking from the smoke. Around him, piles of clothing were aflame.

  ‘This way! This way!’ She grabbed his arm. ‘I didn’t know, you have to believe me. It wasn’t me. We have to get out!’

  Silas nodded, pushing her forward. ‘Go!’

  She ran back towards the door, with him following. The fire was spreading fast. They had seconds and no more.

  Then Lara caught her foot on something and sprawled headlong on the floor. Her chin cracked against the concrete. Silas hauled her up. She got her balance again, blinking as the smoke got thicker, and she lost sight of the exit. Silas lit up the way with the torch on his phone.

  ‘Go, go, I’m following you,’ she spluttered.

  He held the light up so she could see and they stumbled on again.

  They could see the door now, see the smoke pouring out of it into the fresh air. The flames were right behind them, all around them, ahead, licking so close. They leaped over them from space to space as they ran.

  Silas hurdled one last heap of burning debris on the floor and he was out – he was safe. Lara had done it – she’d got him out.

  He turned to see her make the jump herself. As she gathered herself, something with scorching flames fell from above . . . he saw her felled, pinned to the ground beneath burning debris. He lurched up from his knees to get her – he had to get to her – and then the place exploded.

  I wonder if she did love him a little after all.

  We spend a lot of time together, the three of us, now Silas is well again. I can even talk a bit sometimes. Josie has dragged me back to see Andrea and she’s delighted with how I’m doing. So is someone else: I managed to say ‘Mum’ last week. I spoke to my mother for the first time in ten years, and she cried and hugged me and said it was the sweetest sound she had ever heard. We still don’t understand each other, but Silas says sometimes you don’t need to understand to love. Josie says he might be right about that.

  They’re talking as they stand looking at Lara’s grave.

  ‘When I look back at everything, some of the stuff she believed in, some of the stuff I came to believe in, it was right, you know,’ Silas says. ‘Just because they went about it wrong doesn’t make the heart of it any less right.’

  ‘So what do you want to do about that?’

  He shrugs. ‘Rethink my plans. Maybe do some volunteering abroad like she talked about doing. Get my degree and try to use it to help people. Give back, not consume.’

  Josie nods. ‘You should follow your heart. It’ll lead you the right way in the end.’

  He reaches forward and brushes the headstone with a finger. ‘I feel like there’s nothing left of me to love anyone again the way I loved her. It’s in there, buried with her.’

  ‘Love isn’t a well that dries up,’ Josie answers. ‘You can never run out of it. But you can feel too bruised and lost to try again for a long time. I think that’s where you are now.’

  Silas studies the ground at the foot of the grave. ‘I could lose someone important in the time it takes me to heal, couldn’t I?’

  ‘No. If someone is that important, they’ll wait.’

  And I see him shift and stand a step closer to her, and see the barely perceptible squeeze of his fingers on hers.

  Above us, an oak tree sheds some yellowing leaves to carpet the path and herald autumn. There’s a briskness to the breeze and a faint chill in the air that tells me the season of renewal is coming, where the land makes itself over again from fallen leaves and fruits and buried things, to lie fallow through the winter and be strong again for spring.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As ever, thanks to my agent, Ariella Feiner, for looking after me, especially this year in what has been a transformational twelve months. Thanks to my editor, Stella Paskins, for shaping the raw material into a real book, and for all at Egmont involved in getting the books out there, especially Jenny Hayes.

  The book would not have been possible without technical advice, so for Silas’s wizardry with a computer, my grateful thanks go to AndyB of the Enemy Boat Spotted (EBS) community. Additional thanks to Garry Griffiths for advice on a police matter, and to Paul for helping with my eleventh hour plot holes again.

  Finally, thanks to my family. To my mum for reading the first half and telling me it wasn’t dreadful at all, because I can tell if she’s lying and she wasn’t. To Paul, for keeping everything together in a few months of very tight timeline to get the book finished. To Joshua, for understanding when I was busy. And to Orlaith, for sleeping like an angel so I could get the book written at all. It has been a very special year for us and I am so lucky to have all of you.

  Also by Laura Jarratt

  Skin Deep

  By Any Other Name

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  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  RAFAELA

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  RAFAELA AGAIN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Back series promotional page

  About the Publisher

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  RAFAELA

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  RAFAELA AGAIN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Back series promotional page

  About the Publisher