Under and Over

Rachel Rigby

Description

Eleanor is a lucky woman, she’s got the perfect job, a handsome husband, and they are planning to buy a big house and start a family, or so she thinks.
After her wedding day her dream life falls apart. She leaves her home with Ryan and travels through the
Americas alone, seeking escape. The beautiful landscapes, amazing people and adventure she has along the way keep her together. But how long can she keep running from her life before she has to go back and face it?
Will she ever stop travelling, drinking, and sleeping with random strangers in order to avoid her heart ache? She's gone so far under can she possibly get over... ?

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris UK
• Date de parution: 16 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664118294
• Langue: English

Extrait

Under and Over
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rachel Rigby
 
Copyright © 2022 by Rachel Rigby.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6641-1830-0

eBook
978-1-6641-1829-4
 
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Rev. date: 02/14/2023
 
 
 
Xlibris
UK TFN: 0800 0148620 (Toll Free inside the UK)
UK Local: (02) 0369 56328 ([phone] from outside the UK)
www.Xlibrispublishing.co.uk
840335
Contents
Chapter 1Mexico
Chapter 2Modern Romance
Chapter 3No Prescription Necessary
Chapter 4The Men’s Loo
Chapter 5Monkeys and Ruins
Chapter 6The Engagement
Chapter 7Escape to the Rainforest
Chapter 8South Dakota
Chapter 9San Blas Islands
Chapter 10Hot Tub
Chapter 11Living with the Kuna Tribe
Chapter 12Wolves
Chapter 13White Christmas
Chapter 14Burning Down the House
Chapter 15Romancing the Stone
Chapter 16Wedding Jitters
Chapter 17Pigeons In Paradise
Chapter 18Nice Day for a White Wedding
Chapter 19Three’s a Crowd
Chapter 20Honeymoon On Hot Coals
Chapter 21Amazonian Adventures
Chapter 22Red Room
Chapter 23Jacaré
Chapter 24Make It Right
Chapter 25Lust and Loathing
Chapter 26Six reasons
Chapter 27Meanwhile, Back in Blighty...
Chapter 28Miami Vice
Chapter 29Voodoo Piss
Chapter 30Drug Smuggler
Chapter 31Brick Lane Bagels
Chapter 32Court Day
About The Author

Chapter 1 Mexico
Eleanor awakens face down in a sand dune. The sea looks blurry in the distance. Her eyes are burning and her mouth is filled with the bitter taste of blood and salt. She’s still drunk from the night before. She tries to get up but collapses in a heap, swept away in a flurry of sand to the bottom of the dune.
She groggily brushes herself down, limbs exposed in a thong bikini and a flimsy, torn cover up. Her bikini top has come untied and she can see it fluttering in the sand nearby.
Her red hair is matted and stuck to her head; wet with salt water, sweat, and what feels like blood. Eleanor lifts her hand to shield her eyes from the harsh sun and flinches at the sight of her naked ring finger, marked with a tan line where her wedding band used to be.
Reality cuts through the haze of alcohol and her heart sinks when she remembers the sorry state of her life, and the domestic mess she’s been running away from.
She can’t even bring herself to care what happened the previous night. Things couldn’t get much worse. “ Bring it on , keep the shit coming ,” she croaks into the harsh blue sky above her.
Blinking in the sun, she spots a rusty white caravan within crawling distance. It’s pitched on an island of green grass, like a shabby oasis among the dunes. She retrieves her bikini top and manages to slip it on, wincing with every movement.
Dragging herself up the caravan’s crumbling steps, she leans on the cracked chrome door handle and the door falls open easily. There’s a sink . Gratefully, she swallows water straight from the tap, then sinks down onto a brown fake leather sofa in the otherwise-bare living room. She’s longing for the alcohol to take her away again, but its numbing effects are wearing off.
A man appears at the doorway of the caravan, anger written all over his weather-beaten face.
“Who the hell are you?” He shouts in a Texan accent.
“My name’s Eleanor…sorry, I can’t remember much. I just woke up this morning on the sand dunes...” Eleanor struggles to find words that make sense. “I’ve got no bag, no nothing. I saw your place. I’ve been attacked. Can you take me to hospital?”
Eleanor starts to lean toward him but immediately slumps back on the sofa.
“Do I have a choice?” The man is older than she is, maybe in his fifties, with silver sideburns and a deeply-creased face.
“Fine, don’t help me then,” Eleanor says, trying to get up.
“I’ll take you to a private clinic, but that’s it. And you need some clothes on.” Her reluctant rescuer reaches out a grimy hand and helps Eleanor to her feet. He leaves for a minute and comes back with a T-shirt for her to throw on. In silence, they leave the caravan and walk the few steps to his red pick-up truck. Her head throbs and her whole body is starting to ache.
Wincing, she lets him help her into the passenger seat. He drives fast once they hit the dirt track. Sand and grit spew out behind the noisy engine, and she flinches at every bone-rattling bump in the road.
“Are you really taking me to the hospital?” Eleanor is slowly sobering up and becoming suspicious of this unshaven stranger. Maybe he was the one who attacked her last night?
She’s suddenly convinced of it. And equally convinced that she doesn’t even care if he’s a serial killer.
“Put me out of my misery, kill me if you want,” she says, looking at his dirty cowboy hat and his grubby hands at the wheel.
“Girl, you’re crazy. You’re the one that broke into my caravan. If I wanted to hurt you I wouldn’t be driving, would I?” His eyes stay fixed on the road and he clenches his jaw.
“I’m all on my own and I think I really am going crazy.” Eleanor’s voice is cracked, her throat still dry. Everything hurts.
“Mexico is no place to come alone. It’s no place to drink alone either.” He takes his gaze off the road long enough to give Eleanor the side eye.
She knows she must still reek of last night’s tequila and feels the judgement in his glance.
They hit another bump in the road and pain shoots through her face, but it’s followed by a wave of relief when she realises they’re pulling into the car park of the emergency room.
Speaking in Spanish, the American gruffly hands Eleanor over to the doctor and hops back in his van. She feels abandoned when he pulls away in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes. The doctor takes her to a private room and asks her to lie down on a clinical metal bed.
“You were drinking last night?” The doctor’s words sound more like a statement than a question, but Eleanor is so happy to hear him speak English that she doesn’t take offence.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed, I just need to know so we can make the right tests. I assume you don’t remember anything that happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you remember how you ended up robbed, beaten and on the sand dunes near Mike’s place?”
“No, sorry. I don’t.” Eleanor says sheepishly. She is aware that her behaviour might be more appropriate for a teenage girl than a woman in her thirties.
So, her caravan friend is Mike.
“I’m going to test your blood for Rohypnol”, the doctor is matter of fact. “We’ve had a few cases of spiked drinks recently.”
She’s still processing his words when he asks her which hotel she’s staying at.
“It’s the Oaxaca, but I have no money. Everything’s gone, even my phone.” Eleanor realises she’s crying.
“Do you have travel insurance?” Apparently unmoved, the doctor is efficiently cleaning her right eye even as tears drop slowly down her cheeks. She nods in between his cotton wool dabs. Slipping an antibiotic drip into her arm, he says: “we are also going to have to do some vaginal tests, to see if you were sexually assaulted. How about HIV or STDs, you got anything we should know about?”
“No.” Eleanor smarts at the bluntness of his words. She hadn’t thought about the possibility of an STD. But she doesn’t feel any pain to suggest she’s been sexually violated. Perhaps she should think herself lucky.
The doctor tells her he will have to report the incident to local police.
He’s so blase about the process, it makes Eleanor wonder just how many tourist victims come through these worn hospital doors. But she doesn’t have time to dwell on it: the drip releasing little drops of vital fluids into her vein soon lulls her into sleep.
Two Mexican policemen abruptly disrupt her weird dreams. They are standing over her, dressed as though they are part of the royal guard. They look absurd to her sleep-hazy mind, and she fails to stifle a giggle.
But they aren’t laughing. “Madam, we want to ask you about last night,” says the taller, darker of the pair in a thick Mexican accent.
“I took a tour that went to the Mitla tree, you know that giant huge tree…and finished with a tequila tasting. I did that, I remember because I was drinking Mescal at the tequila factory, thinking it was a lot better than the tequila I used to drink in college. Then the guide took me to some club… with his friends.” She’s rambling, and talking more to herself than to the policemen, trying to get things straight in her own head.
“Do you remember the name of the tour group, or the guide?”
“No, not really. It was Miras Travel or something…does that sound right? The guide was older. He knows reiki.” As soon as she said it, she internally chastised her brain for bringing up this apparently random fact.
“Sounds like Pedro at Miras,” the smaller policeman, whose moustache makes him look like so