Page 57

“ ? ”

My husband and I stare at each other. We are both in shock. He looks pale and tired enough to shrivel into a husk. His hair is brushed and tidy, but long. His clothes are clean. He doesn’t look underweight or starved. There are books strewn everywhere and notepads he’s been scribbling in. There is a terrible smell coming from a bucket in the corner. I take all of this in, and I take in what it means, and I am raging, my heart is raging, but I don’t have much time.

“What are you doing here?” he demands. Thinks better of it. “Get me out, you have to get me out, please help me.”

I am nodding, peering around, trying to think. “He’ll be back any second.”

The fear that fills Hank’s face is telling enough. “Don’t let him know you’ve found me. Don’t let him know, and then sneak back and let me out.” He crosses the small space to me, grabbing my arms, and his grip is rough, tight, it frightens me. “They’ve been keeping me down here for weeks, they’re fucking crazy, he nearly killed me, , you have to help me.”

“I will,” I promise, trying to free myself from him. His eyes are frantic, darting, my god, what has he been through? He seems so small. “It’s okay,” I tell him. “I promise I’ll get you out of here. It’s why I came.”

“Go, quick,” he hisses. “Don’t let him know, and don’t trust him .”

I climb the ladder as fast as I can, lock the door, and run.

The tunnel seems darker than it has before. The splashing of my feet echoes in my ears.

What the fuck is going on? Why is he being held down there, what possible reason could there be to do that to someone, it doesn’t make sense, I can’t make it make sense.

There is movement ahead. My pulse stutters. Will Dom know what I’ve done? What I’ve seen? What will happen if he does? Will I end up in that room too?

Calm down. The shock of what I’ve seen is making my thoughts pinball, but I need to keep hold of reason. I must remain perfectly even-keeled as though I have seen nothing, and I need to buy myself time to think.

His footsteps arrive and we nearly collide in the dark. His hands are on my arms, my shoulders, there is tenderness there. Don’t trust him. “You okay?” Dom asks me, and the earth shifts off its axis. Everything he has ever said to me will need to be reevaluated in this new, ugly context. There are lies within him, and malice, and violence. At the very least he has kept a terrible thing from me, he has worked hard and elaborately to keep it from me.

“Forgot my scarf,” I say, and there is, I think, a survival instinct that is keeping my voice normal.

He puts his arm around my shoulder and we walk the rest of the way together. Outside, when the others are occupied, I vomit behind some rocks. The sky spins above. It happens again over the edge of the Zodiac.

Fen slows her boat and calls out to me. “Are you okay?”

“Seasick, I guess,” I call back.

At the lighthouse I tell them I need to lie down, I must have a bug. Dom makes me a cup of tea, gets me water and Advil, tucks me under the covers and kisses my forehead, it’s all very sweet and the whole time I am screaming at him silently to get away from me. They leave for another trip and I stare at the ceiling. I meant to think and plan. Instead I am blank. I can’t conjure a single thought that makes any sense, that has any true form.

I am so cold, I can’t stop shivering. I am only a body. A body that loves his. A body revolting against me now, because it wants his, wants never to be parted from his. It doesn’t care what he has done. I did not feel this way when Hank left. I did not feel an absence I could die from.

At some point Raff knocks on the door and pokes his head in. I am calmer now, so I gesture and he comes to sit on the bed. His heavily bandaged arm is back in the sling. He looks pale and in pain. Am I to fear these kids, too? They must know about Hank—Dom would need their help keeping him alive, which means they are complicit. The performance of it all is staggering, all that time I spent in the vault, so close to where my husband sat, and them pretending nothing was wrong. I find I can’t access any feelings to go with this knowledge. Just disbelief. These kids, who are so kind and warm, all three of them, locking a man in what amounts to a dungeon. Can you blame kids for the decision of a parent? Not Orly, surely. But Raff and Fen are pretty much adults themselves.

I can’t escape some of the blame either. I asked Dom straight why he had Hank’s passport and he said he just forgot to take it , and I believed him. The insanity of that is mind-blowing. My own stupidity, unbearable.

“You’re sick?” Raff asks me.

I nod. “Your arm’s bad.”

He shrugs. “I made it worse. Easy trade for their lives.”

The whales. They seem a lifetime ago.

I study his face as he peers out the window. “Are you scared?”

Raff doesn’t look at me. Just nods once. There will be no violin without a properly working hand.

“I need to ask you some things,” I say.

“Okay.”

I lick my lips, my whole mouth feels dry. “Your dad said Hank started to become unwell, at the end.”

Raff nods.

“Did Dom ever have to be violent with him?”

The boy goes very still.

“You can tell me,” I say. “Whatever it is, I’ll try to understand.”

Raff’s head tilts and he is studying me the way I am studying him. “You love my dad,” he says suddenly, like it is fact.

“No,” I croak. Because I can’t. Not now.

“So you know,” Raff goes on as though I have said nothing, “deep down, you know as well as we do, that everything Dom does is for his kids.”

The storm arrives. Mighty claps of thunder and a dazzling light show. The wind is wailing and as though swept in by it, Orly appears in my room. I pull back the covers for him and he scurries under. His warm little body is like a hot water bottle in the cold. “Where will all the animals go?” he asks me. “When the island’s gone?”

I think of Ari and Nikau and their egg. I think of King Brown and his harem of mother seals and their babies. I think of the thousands and thousands of penguins.

“They’ll find another,” I tell him. But we both know there is no island like this one.

As I hold Orly I think of how he stood at the air vent, talking to Hank. He knew. He has known all along that my husband is beneath the ground.

Still, I can’t bring myself to let him go.