Down to Earth. Melanie Rose

phone – I’m sure I dialled the right number.’

      ‘Yes, you probably did.’

      Raising my eyes to his, I asked the questions that had been foremost on my mind all evening, ‘But why? I can’t believe what you said about six and a half years having passed, so what’s happened to everyone? How come the airfield was deserted, my car gone and a newspaper in the pub said it was October 2008?’

      ‘Do you remember anything, anything at all about where you’ve been?’

      ‘I remember everything very clearly and I haven’t been anywhere. That’s why this is all so confusing. I remember the early morning call from Graham saying the jump was going ahead, the drive down to Kent, the exercises and the briefing, the parachute jump … you telling me I’d regret it if I didn’t go through with it, I remember every detail.’

      He reached out and ran a finger over the material of my jumpsuit as if not really believing I was actually wearing it. ‘So you have no memory of anything in between?’

      ‘There has been no “in between”. It was only this morning you were teaching me my rolling fall! I didn’t want to jump, remember? But I did it and it was all so beautiful once I had got over the terror of falling. You were right, I did love it. Then that strange wind hit me and when I landed it was dark and everyone had gone.’

      Matt’s eyebrows shot up and he looked sceptical, yet I had the uncanny feeling that he knew more than he was letting on.

      ‘Maybe Kevin has been right all along,’ he murmured with a smile.

      ‘Kevin? Oh, so he does exist then?’ I countered, thinking he was mocking me. ‘I was beginning to think my whole life had been some sort of weird dream and I’d imagined him and my job and my family and friends.’

      ‘No, but something has happened to you and if you don’t remember what, then I don’t know what to think any more than you do.’ He opened his door. ‘Look, come into the house and I’ll get you a cup of coffee.’

      I followed him into a brightly lit, very modern but rather messy looking kitchen. Hovering awkwardly by the door, I watched warily as he filled a see-through plastic kettle and switched it on.

      ‘You look exactly as you did when I last saw you,’ he said, shaking his head in obvious disbelief as he pulled out a stool for me at a breakfast bar. ‘It’s unbelievable.’

      ‘Well, you only saw me this morning.’ I was getting a bit fed up with the look of amazement on his face. I slid onto the stool, wrinkling my brow as I took in every detail of his appearance. ‘You look different though,’ I commented wearily. ‘Maybe it’s the hair cut, but you look – I don’t know – a bit older.’

      ‘That’s because I am.’ He turned to face me with that penetrating gaze of his. Taking the seat next to me, he rubbed his palms on the knees of his jeans. ‘Look, Michaela, I don’t want to frighten you, but after you parachuted out of that plane back in April 2002, you simply vanished without trace. You really have been missing all this time: it was as if you’d been completely wiped off the face of the earth.’

      ‘Stop it!’ I got to my feet again, and began pacing up and down, my jump-boots clattering across the quarry-tiled flooring. Eventually I stopped and turned to face him. ‘How can you expect me to believe that?’

      He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But whether you believe it or not your disappearance changed a lot of lives, includ -ing mine. I was the last one to see you; I was the one who told you when and where to jump. The mystery of your disappearance has haunted me ever since. At one point the police even had me down as a suspect for your possible murder.’

      ‘But I didn’t vanish,’ I protested faintly, the anger ebbing away as quickly as it had come. ‘I’ve been here all along.’

      He went to the counter and spooned instant coffee into mugs. I watched as he poured the hot water into the mugs and added milk.

      ‘When you didn’t land on the airfield we scoured the surrounding fields and woods for you.’ He brought the mugs over to the breakfast bar and took a seat. Somewhat begrudg-ingly I took one of the steaming mugs as he went on. ‘We assumed you’d somehow gone off course and landed outside the airfield, but there was no sign of you anywhere. After several hours of fruitless searching we called the police who widened the hunt to farmland, people’s back gardens, sheds and outhouses but you were nowhere to be found. The search went on for months with door-to-door questioning and television appeals, but there were no leads. It was if you’d just vanished into thin air. Your parents refused to give up on you long after the police had put your case on the back burner. They had leaflets made and circulated them in the area. That was six long years ago, Michaela. After a year or so everyone except your parents – and Kevin and I – believed you would never be seen again.’

      I tried lifting the coffee mug to my lips but my hands were shaking so much I could barely hold it. Resting it back down on the counter I gripped my head in my hands and closed my eyes.

      ‘You must remember something about where you’ve been?’ he pressed again.

      ‘I told you,’ my voice came out muffled between my elbows and from under my long hair. ‘I remember everything very clearly. Today is 15th April. It’s 2002 …’

      He reached over to the back of the counter and pulled a folded newspaper towards me. Scanning the date in the top corner I closed my eyes again and groaned.

      ‘It can’t be … it just can’t.’

      Because this newspaper also proclaimed that today was Monday 20th October, and it was definitely 2008.

Chapter Six

      ‘Wait here.’ Matt left the room, returning a moment later with a large envelope filled with piles of posters, leaflets and newspaper cuttings. Tilting my head to one side, I watched as he sifted through them.

      The first reports had apparently made front-page headlines; ‘Girl vanishes in parachute jump’, and ‘Missing girl in charity jump mystery’, then, ‘Missing jump-girl’s parents in TV plea’, ‘Police quiz instructor in parachute puzzle’, and finally, ‘Michaela – abducted by aliens?’

      I read each article with a growing sense of unease. My fingers lingered on a black and white picture of my parents in which they looked haggard and distressed. What must they have been through if what Matt was saying was true?

      ‘I’ve got to try ringing Calum and my parents again.’ I struggled to my feet and stood swaying dangerously. My ears were ringing with a horrible high-pitched buzzing sound and I felt nauseous again.

      The floor, which had seemed so solid only a moment before, tipped towards me and I would have gone down hard if Matt hadn’t grabbed me and helped me down gently onto the cold floor. My hand hurt where the small cut had grazed against the kitchen tiles.

      Matt crouched down so his head was only inches from mine. ‘What have you done to your hand?’

      ‘I caught it on the door of the plane as we were climbing in before the jump,’ I told him.

      He fell very still. ‘I remember you doing that,’ he murmured, so quietly that I thought he was talking to himself. ‘But it can’t be the same injury … not after all this time.’

      ‘What’s happened to me?’ I asked faintly as I stared down at the laces of my boots.

      ‘That,’ he said firmly, ‘is what I intend to find out.’

      I decided not to try ringing anyone again that evening. If even half of what Matt had told me was true, then after six and a half years, one more night wasn’t going to hurt. I asked him about driving me home to Calum or even to Ingrid’s house, but he repeated that it would probably be more sensible if I were to tackle picking