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Jake seizes her wrist. ‘Watch out for other boats!’ he shouts. ‘They could be close. We won’t spot them easily.’
In this sea, a collision would likely be fatal. Despite the danger, Lucy can’t do anything but stare at those steadily ascending figures. In the red light of the helicopter’s anti-collision beacon, water pours off them like blood.
Lucy sees no movement of their limbs, no signs of life. Both wear red immersion suits so similar it’s impossible to make any distinction. One of them, in a visored orange helmet, is clearly the winchman. The other figure’s face is obscured.
It can’t be Fin. Far too big to be her boy. But whether it’s Daniel or Billie or someone else entirely, Lucy cannot tell. So disjointed are her thoughts that for a while she forgets what she clutches to her chest.
Her paralysis shatters. Gasping, she lifts the binoculars,but before she can seek out her target, those figures reach the top of the winch. Lucy looks over the lenses just as the pair are pulled inside.
She’s panting now. Crying, too. Has she just seen a miracle? Or the very worst of endings? If the rescued figure is Billie, what of Fin? If the heart of that sinkhole released one child, could it conceivably be persuaded to release two?
She tears her gaze from the helicopter. The sea looks vengeful now, furious with its loss – a battlefield of ragged water rising all around. A wild thought strikes. Lucy’s free hand closes on her tether. Perhaps, if she casts herself into the water, she can trade her life for theirs.
But the sea doesn’t want her fealty. It isn’t sentient. Nothing beneath these waves, nor anything in this wind and rain, gives a damn for Daniel or Billie or Fin. Never has she believed in an omniscient creator. Never has she prayed to one. She might feel a compulsion now, but that’s all the more reason to resist. To plead for mercy from a God she’s previously denied would surely bring more trouble than good.
Overhead, the helicopter’s nosecone dips. The whistle of its turbines rises in pitch. It sounds, suddenly, like it’s struggling to stay aloft. Only a hundred feet of turbulent air separate it from the waves. If those rotor blades clip the water, it’ll flip and sink like a rock. Instead – slowly at first, quickly gathering speed – it flies overHuntsman’s Daughter, heading east.
Lucy watches it depart. Then she twists back to Jake. ‘What happened?’ she shouts. ‘Whowasthat? Who did they save?’
But Jake can’t answer her questions. The look he gives her is bleak.
‘Listen to me.’ His words are almost lost in an explosion of saltwater across the bow. ‘It’s getting worse out here. We can’t stay much longer. I’ll get on the radio, see what I can find out. But you’vegotto focus, Lucy. If one of these waves broadsides us …’
Jake doesn’t have to finish his sentence. She knows what’s at stake. ‘I’ve got this,’ she tells him. ‘I swear it.’
‘Keep us on this bearing. Stayvigilant. I’ll be as quick as I can.’
They swap places. Lucy takes the wheel. Jake waits for the shattering impact of another wave to dissipate, water pouring off the deck in white torrents. Then he opens the hatch and dives through.
Eastwards, the AgustaWestland vanishes inside a cloudbank. For a handful of seconds its anti-collision beacon is visible as a bloody smear inside the grey. Then that, too, disappears.
Finally, it’s just Lucy. No evidence of humanity. Just a patched fibreglass hull separating her from this savage and godless sea. A wind gust tilts them violently to starboard. She spins the wheel, too late to stop a wave broadsiding the boat. Water surges over the gunwales, so colossal in weight that she feels like she’s been struck by a car. Her feet lift from the deck. She crashes into the pushpit with an impact that makes her scream. The water keeps pressing. Only the safety line stands between her and the sea, but a few inches of nylon can’t resist such an all-consuming force. She feels the webbing vibrating, knows it’s going to snap, knows she’ll be driven into the water like a nail beneath a hammer. With the helicopter gone, with Jake belowdecks, she stands no chance of rescue.
When her scream runs out of breath, she seals her lipstight. The water keeps coming, so hard against her head that her eardrums feel as if they’re perforating. Her jaw is knocked open. Seawater presses into her throat. The deck bucks beneath her, tossing her to port.
Suddenly there’s air where before there was only water. An instant later Lucy slams against the wheel. Something snaps in her left side. A rib, she thinks. Possibly two. When she tries to breathe it’s agony.
The hatch opens. Jake staggers up the ladder. He takes one look and mouths an expletive. After scanning the sea for danger, he puts the boat on autopilot. He’s at her side moments later, cradling her head. ‘Are you hurt?’
She wants to reply, wants to assure him she’s OK. But her teeth are clattering uncontrollably. She can’t think, let alone speak.
‘I couldn’t get the coastguard,’ he tells her. ‘There’s too much activity on channel sixteen. But I raised another boat.’
He breathes deep. Lucy braces herself for what’s coming. She wants to cover her ears so she doesn’t hear. Cover his mouth so he can’t speak.
But then Jake does something unexpected. He flashes a white-toothed grin. ‘That coastguard chopper. Itfoundthem, Lucy. Billie, Daniel, Fin – I can’t quite believe it but it did. They’re alive, all three. Your family are all alive.’
4
The storm fades. No fury, no violence, no cold.
The deck turns statuesque beneath her, as if the boathas beached itself on sand. The roar of wind departs. The agony in her side dissipates.
Lucy searches Jake’s eyes for any sign of a lie. Because shecannotlet herself believe this, should it be untrue. If any of her family are still out here, she won’t abandon them, whatever the outcome or cost.
But Jake’s eyes harbour no deception, and when she gives herself a few seconds to think, she realizes there’s no reason they would. He’s dedicated his life, after all, to rescuing people from the sea.
Lucy recalls the red-suited figures rising into the helicopter. She thinks of Billie and in a beat she’s nineteen again, screaming her lungs out inside London’s University College Hospital. Never in her life did she expect pain like it, nor the existential jolt that follows when a wet and mewling mass is lowered to her chest.