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He swallows. ‘She was thinking of you. Right at the end. It was the last thing she said. “Tell Mum I love her.”’
Lucy stares, can’t speak. Daniel’s words are a wrecking ball. She closes her eyes and an image comes back to her: dawn, three summers ago, down on Penleith Beach. A violet sky above a milk sea; no wind, no waves, just gulls and guillemots to break the silence; and, lying prone on the sand, the gleaming black mass of a pilot whale.
Lucy and Billie are there for their regular pre-dawn jog. Now, instead, they’re caught up in something extraordinary. They approach the animal in silence, anxious not to cause more stress. Billie strips off her hoodie. She soaks it in seawater and carefully sponges the whale’s flanks. Lucy digs out her phone and calls everyone she knows, urging them to bring buckets and towels – anything to keep the whale alive while the tide creeps back in.
Help takes time to appear. For a while it’s just the three of them: Lucy, Billie, the whale.
‘Will it die?’ the girl asks.
‘It might,’ Lucy tells her. ‘On land, a whale this size can get crushed by its own weight. All we can do is keep it hydrated and hope the tide comes in fast enough.’
‘And pray?’
‘If you’d like to.’
‘Do you think that stuff works?’
‘A lot of people do.’
‘What about you?’
Lucy scrunches up her face. For fourteen years, she’sdanced around this subject. ‘I’ve generally believed the best way of achieving something is to work hard for it.’
‘And if it dies, what do you think happens then? Where do you think it goes?’
‘If it dies, its body will break down. Tiny pieces of it will go on to make new animals, new life.’
‘But what about its spirit?’ Billie asks. She presses her cheek to the whale’s skin. ‘What about its soul?’
‘I’m not sure whales have souls.’
‘What about humans? Do you thinkwehave a soul? Do you think a part ofuscarries on after we die?’
At the time, Lucy had favoured honesty. If only she’d lied. If only she’d told Billie something to offer comfort. ‘I believe we have one life. One opportunity to make the best of ourselves we can.’
‘So you don’t think anything comes after? That there’s a God? Or a heaven?’
‘No,’ Lucy had admitted. ‘I don’t.’
In Billie’s last moments, did that conversation run through her head? Unforgivable if it did. Worse, Lucy’s not even sure she still believes what she told her daughter. Because now, in the cruellest of ironies, she’s starting to question her lack of faith. Billie removed from theworldshe can just about understand. But Billie gone completely – her entire essence extinguished? Suddenly that’s very hard to accept.
Arching her spine, Lucy snaps back to the present. Across the table, Daniel watches her with naked concern.
‘Don’t,’ he says softly. ‘I know what you’re doing, and it doesn’t help.’
‘If I’d—’
‘No. This isn’t your fault. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. Ihad a chance to stop it and I didn’t. And now I’m stuck in here, asking you to take this on alone.’
‘We had a good life.’
‘We had afantasticlife. We gavethema fantastic life too.’ A tear spills down his cheek. ‘You remember the time we sailed them to Norway? That cod Billie caught? Nearly tore her arm off, but she landed it and we all stuffed ourselves silly. What about the trip to Nazaré? Fin making friends with the porpoise. It swam alongside us for days.’
She nods, clutches herself.
Daniel closes his eyes, opens them. ‘All that matters now is Fin. And whether we can save him from this.’
‘You matter,’ she whispers. ‘Please don’t forget it. Are you safe in here? If the other prisoners think—’