Page 36

Entering Skentel’s harbour is perilous. Accurate positioning is everything. Waves break heaviest in shallow water. With their bow pointed shorewards, they risk being swamped from the stern. They’ll need to surf in on a wave, but if they go too early it’ll break right on top of them. Go too late and it’ll roll beneath their hull, leaving them at the mercy of the next one.
As Jake lines up their approach, the gap in the breakwater reveals itself. There, shining more brightly than she’s ever seen it, is Skentel’s quay. Golden light blazes from the Drift Net’s windows. On the flagstones outside stand an ambulance and two police cars, emergency lights strobing. Silhouetted along the waterfront is a packed row of onlookers.
Lucy’s grateful for their interest, but she cringes at the prospect of facing them. The coastguard helicopter will have flown to the North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple. All she wants is to put her arms around her children and sleep. She’s been on this boat too long. The hospital’s still forty minutes away by car.
‘Get ready!’ Jake shouts, opening the throttle.
She twists around, sees a wall of rising black glass. Already, the crest is high above them, spray blowing off it like smoke. The stern lifts.Huntsman’s Daughterbegins to accelerate.
And then Lucy sees that Jake’s judged it all wrong, that he’s gone far too early. They rise faster, sliding up thewave’s face until their bow is almost vertical beneath them. Lucy slams against the hatchway. The air is punched from her lungs. Her ribs feel like they’ve sheared off inside her but she can’t scream, can’t even draw breath to try. The lights of the quay dance like fireflies. Lucy’s head lolls forwards. Her face cracks against the bulkhead.
With the wave about to break,Huntsman’s Daughterrockets down its face. Lucy sees they’ll either be flipped into folding surf or catapulted into the stone quay.
And then it does break. The lights on the quay go dark. Her world is enveloped in sound. Water in her nose, in her mouth. A huge pressure on her spine, forcing her against the bulkhead. The yacht gathers more speed, shaking like a locomotive on warped rails. She feels it rolling to starboard. Closes her eyes for the impact.
The water’s so cold, the pressure so intense, that Lucy can no longer think. Beneath her,Huntsman’s Daughtertwists back to port. The bow rises, the thunder recedes. A deluge of black water fizzes from the deck – and suddenly they’re surfing, arrow-straight, towards the jewelled lights of the quay.
Jake spins the wheel to starboard. The boat turns hard, slipping around the pier head into the harbour’s calmer waters. For the first time in hours, Lucy can plant her feet securely, can hear something other than wind and crashing sea.
She glances at Jake. Smiles through her tears. Despite her betrayal, she didn’t kill him – her hands are clean of the act, if not the thought.
‘Can you take over?’ he asks, tipping out the mooring buoys. ‘I’ll jump on the radio. See if I can get an update.’
Lucy just wants to hug the bulkhead until they’re safelytied up, but she unfolds her frozen limbs and shuffles across the cockpit as he opens the hatch.
A slot’s been reserved forHuntsman’s Daughteron the floating dock. Already, people are waiting there to help. She reverses thrust as the yacht swings around, throwing the stern line to an outstretched pair of hands. Someone leaps on to the bow and tosses a line to more volunteers. The boat bumps the dock. Lucy barely has enough energy to climb on to the side deck, but she manages, just about, teeth clenched from the effort.
Hands reach for her. She’s lifted off the yacht. ‘Jake,’ she mutters, glancing over her shoulder. Wrong to leave him without a word of thanks. But the hands pulling her to the quay are irresistible.
Something white shines in her eyes. Only as Lucy draws closer does she identify it: the light of a television camera trained on her face. A smudge of purple reveals the journalist from the high street.
Faces begin to resolve. Lucy sees people she knows, people she doesn’t. In their expressions she finds no joy, no satisfaction that the sea has been beaten. Perhaps, like her, they’ve reached the end of their strength.
Despite her exhaustion, her brain can’t quit. It dredges up another of Daniel’s stories: how in Ireland, centuries ago, survivors of shipwrecks were thought to bring bad luck. All too often they were murdered on the beaches where they washed up, by locals fearful of the sea’s vengeance.
But that can’t be the thinking behind these haunted faces. The pain in Lucy’s side is joined by another in her gut. A twisting premonition that this nightmare is continuing to build.
She glances at the lifeboat station. The Tamar-class is back in its cradle. Did all its volunteers return safely? She thinks of Craig Clements, Jake’s relief coxswain. Volunteers like Alec Paul and Patrick O’Hare. People with loved ones of their own.
But when Lucy examines these faces crowding close, she knows this is something different. Suddenly, she can’t control her breathing. Earlier, she couldn’t draw air into her lungs. Now, she can’t expel it.
Her diaphragm spasms. There’s a sound in her throat –uh-uh-uh-uh– she can’t stop. When her feet touch the quay, the crowd draws back – as if she’s dangerous somehow, contagious. She hears the clacking of heels on flagstones.
From jagged silhouette, Noemie materializes. Lucy sees her friend’s eyes. The sound in her throat climbs in pitch.
Jake’s voice, behind her: ‘Lucy! Lucy, wait up!’
She turns, sees him leap to the dock. His eyes hold the same horror she glimpsed in Noemie’s.
Lucy is caught between them: her friend; her old lover. Her lungs can maintain the pressure no longer. She hears herself scream, just once, a fleeting pressure-whistle of sound.
Noemie hurries forward, arms outstretched.
‘No,’ Lucy moans. Whatever her friend is offering, she doesn’t want it. The white light of the TV camera swells – as if it’s gorging on her fear, growing fat.
Noemie’s arms are around her. Others are touching her too. No longer is she to be reviled, it seems, but comforted.
Here comes that scream again. Her mouth can’t contain it. There’s a buzzing inside her head. A jar of honey beeshas been tipped into her skull. The light from the TV camera merges with those on the quay: white and gold, green and red, a riot of carnival colour.