Chapter 75
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex,
North Sea
Martha gathered his dirty laundry. Valérie
hadn’t asked her to do that; she did it because it was a pleasure
to do something for him. Because she felt closer to him than any of
the others. She connected with him in a way she was sure no one
else did; the others merely followed him but she actually cared for
him - brought him meals and water. To do this as well . . . to take
what few clothes he had to the ladies up on the top deck doing
laundry duty and see that they were properly soaked and scrubbed,
it was a small gesture really. After all, his time was stretched so
thin now between the prayer meetings and giving instruction to the
newcomers, explaining his message. He had precious little time for
such banal things as seeing to his own comforts.
Just like Jenny used to be, she mused, always
hurrying from one task to the next, worn down with the endless
attrition of having to attend to a million different things.
She felt a soft stab of guilt for her friend.
Why didn’t I see that coming? That nervous
breakdown? That’s what it was, wasn’t it? A breakdown?
Jenny had just walked into their prayer meeting
like that and fired a gun at him, point blank. Like some kind of
automaton, no expression on her face at all. No anger. Just the
empty, set, expression of someone who knows exactly what’s coming
next. It wasn’t the scarring that made her look so unlike the Jenny
she knew, it was those dead eyes. She thought she knew Jenny; never
would have thought in a million years that she could do something
like that out of spite because . . . what? Because they’d decided
to vote someone else as the leader?
Crazy.
That wasn’t like Jenny. Not like her at all.
How many times had she heard Jenny moan about being
the boss? How many times had she half-seriously suggested walking
away from the responsibility and letting someone else have a go at
doing better? The carping from every quarter, the bitching, the
complaining, trying to keep everyone happy? It wore her out. She
never imagined Jenny would do what she did because . . . simply
because she got voted out?
A breakdown, that’s what it was, she decided. The
accumulation of stress, the grief from losing Hannah, endless worry
about her kids - and God knows, Martha knew what that felt like.
There wasn’t a morning she didn’t wake up with a prayer on her lips
for Nathan’s safe home-coming or didn’t send herself to sleep at
night muttering the very same prayer.
Martha scooped up Latoc’s shirt from the tangle of
blankets, quilts and cushions on the floor of his quarters.
Jenny, though . . . Martha had always thought Jenny
was stronger than that. Stronger than anyone else. Indestructible.
Not the type to just snap like that.
I thought I knew her.
Four and a half years she and Nathan had been
living here. Joined them, in fact, not long after they’d set up on
the rigs. She and her boy, and about a dozen others, had been
amongst the first to cross her path; making their way north along
an abandoned road from London, clattering along on the back of a
horse-drawn cart, and there she’d been standing in the middle of
the road, almost as if she’d been waiting all the time for them. As
if she’d known they were coming.
Why not join us? We’ve found somewhere
completely safe.
She owed her so much.
Martha bent down again to scoop up more of
Valérie’s things. The dark blue khaki trousers he seemed to wear
all of the time - all pockets. Some shorts he wore as underwear,
thick woollen socks carelessly balled and inside-out on his bed. It
was no different, she decided somewhat nostalgically, to going
around Nathan’s messy old bedroom, back in the good old days;
untangling his scuzzy smalls from the game controller cables
stretched across his unmade bed. Maybe that’s why she enjoyed doing
this. It felt like she was back then . . . back in another
time.
Something fell out of the swaddle of clothes she
was holding under her arm onto Valérie’s bedding. She looked down
at it.
A loop of hair; a thick tress of curly blonde hair,
curled and tied up with a faded pink ribbon. She reached down and
picked it up, spreading the soft loop of hair between her thumb and
forefinger.
Oh . . . my . . .
She could have told anyone who that hair belonged
to, even without looking at the ribbon. She’d run a brush through
it often enough, trimmed it, plaited it, pulled it into cornrows,
pulled it back into a ponytail Lord knows how many times.
Hannah’s.
Seeing it there, nestling amongst Valérie Latoc’s
bedding, caught her by surprise; it stole a breath from her mouth.
The lock of hair had dropped out of his blue trousers. Out of his
one-of-many pockets.
A question arrived unannounced, unsolicited and
very much unwelcomed.
Why was that in his pocket, Martha?
She looked at the bundle of clothes under her arm.
And before she realised she was doing it, she had placed them down
and was pulling his blue trousers from the pile.
That’s the one. It came out of those. Now, why
was it in his pocket?
For a moment she held them at arm’s length; tatty
blue army-style trousers, patched and mended several times. The
kind of thing men do - pick a favourite item of clothing and hang
onto it for dear life, nursing worn holes and unthreading seams,
unable to toss them away. She held it at arm’s length not because
they smelled of stale body odour - they did, an accumulation of a
week - but because . . .
Because, God help me . . . please no . . .
because I might find something else.
Something that had no reason to be there.
Her hand drifted slowly towards a hip pocket lumpy
with something inside.
What are you doing?
She answered that aloud, and dishonestly. ‘I’m jus’
emptyin’ the pockets is all. Can’t wash them with full pockets,
right?’ she muttered. How many times had she had to do that with
Nathan’s school trousers? Finding endless screwed-up balls of
paper; ‘pass-it-around’ notes on exercise book paper, dog-eared
Yu-Gi-Oh cards, shredding tissues stiff with dried snot.
Her fingers unbuttoned the pocket flap and curled
inside. She realised her hand was trembling as she did so. A hand
wanting to find nothing more than a sweaty old bandanna or a
handkerchief.
She looked down at the lock of Hannah’s hair on the
bed and realised with an unsettling lurch in her chest that they’d
condemned and killed a man on finding something less. They’d killed
Walter because of a solitary gym shoe on his boat. Because they
were so absolutely certain what finding that on his boat meant.
Because there were those who’d been absolutely certain Walter was
guilty even before they’d bothered to look for anything.
Then her fingers touched something soft inside.
Material. Cotton. She felt her heart flutter and flip in her chest.
She closed her eyes as she pulled it out, praying it was a just a
forgotten strip of bandage or a spare sock; praying it was only
that one lock of blonde hair that she needed to find a way to
explain away in her mind; to conjure up an acceptable reason for it
being there.
She opened her eyes and stared at the small garment
that dangled from her fingers.
‘Oh, dear God, no,’ she whispered.
A pair of sky-blue child’s underpants with a
constellation of five dark spots of dried blood on the white
elasticated waistband.
Oh, God . . . no. Not him.