Lime and Soda ✓

twenty-seven - revive

I have never heard a sound of such anguish, of such pure fear and desperation, as Astrid makes at that moment. She throws back her head and howls as if her world has ended, but her cries are broken by a figure moving on the ground at the edge of the cliff. As my eyes adjust, as the pounding in my chest slows, I realise it's two figures, not one, and they're wrestling.

Astrid gives another wail and hurls herself at them, separates Ross from his saviour and begins pummelling every inch of him she can reach.

'You – complete – idiot – Ross – Penrith -' come her words through stutters and chokes as the tears stream uncontrollably down her face, as she punches his stomach, his chest, while he lies immobile on the ground, his arms held up to protect his face from her blows. 'What were you thinking? Why are you with these people? What -'

Her words fail her and she pulls him to her, wrapping her arms around him so they're both lying in the dirt at the edge of the cliff, entangled in each other, as the heavens open and the rain comes down.

A hand finds its way into mine and I let out a breath I didn't realise I was holding.

'You okay?' is Jay's first question, and when I turn to him he appears blurred. I hold my hand up to my cheek and it comes away wet, and when I try to speak, to answer his question, all that comes out of my mouth is a huge sob.

'Hey,' he says, wrapping his arms around me, sheltering me from the wind, pulling me so close I think we've moulded ourselves together forever, 'Hey.' He doesn't say anything else. He just holds me until the sobs racking my body have slowed and stopped, until I look up and realise that we are the only four left on the windy clifftop, that the others have all left, leaving nothing behind but broken beer bottles and cigarette ends scattered across the muddy path.

Ross and Astrid sit on the path, their arms around each other. Astrid is inconsolable – her crying has turned into breathing that gets faster and faster until she's hyperventilating, and Jay has to sit down next to her and get her to control her breathing. He tries to pull her away from Ross to drape his jacket around her shoulders, but she clings to him as though he'll disappear into thin air if she takes her hands off him.

Ross sits there, looking bemused and rubbing Astrid's back as though he doesn't really know where he is. I can tell he's still completely wasted and doesn't know that he almost just fell off a cliff.

'We need to get them home,' says Jay, who seems the only one out of the four of us who is functioning. 'You get Astrid, I'll take Ross.'

But I can't. The same shock that has overcome Astrid is coursing its way through my veins, so that I can barely walk and several times I stumble and nearly fall, consumed with the thought of what I nearly saw, of Ross silhouetted against the inky sky, his arms spread open. The thing that haunts me the most is the look of peace, of contentment, of happiness almost, on his face. I've never seen him look like that before.

I'm weighed down by Astrid as we navigate the cliff path. Jay has Ross hauled over his shoulder, and I see his eyes, gleaming in the dark, half-closed, and wonder if he's even conscious.

In the end Jay heaves Astrid's arm over one shoulder and Ross' over the other, but I can see the strain on his face, and wave at him to stop. He doesn't hear me when I shout because the wind and the rain is so loud, and every word I say gets snatched away as it leaves my mouth.

'We can't carry on like this,' I say, and take Astrid's hand. 'Astrid! You need to walk by yourself otherwise we're not going to get home.'

Astrid nods; she's white and shaking and stumbles over every uneven patch, every rock in the path, as though she has no control over where to put her feet. I grab her hand, knot her fingers into mine, and she clings to Ross with her other hand so that we become a human chain, navigating the puddles, the jutting outcrops of rock, as the rain hurls itself into our faces, soaking us from the inside out, and we struggle to see in the complete blackness that cloaks the cliff-top.