- CHAPTER 28 -
It’s terrifying how long the hours can feel when you have no clock, no means of telling the time, and no way of knowing if anyone will come for you.
I lay for a long time, staring at the bunk above me, running over the conversation in my head and trying to work out if I’d just made the worst mistake of my life.
I’d gambled on establishing some kind of bond with the girl, forcing her to face up to what she was doing—and it was starting to look like I’d failed.
The hours dragged on and still no one came. My hunger grew more and more distracting. I wished I hadn’t given her back the book, there was nothing in the cabin I could distract myself with. I began to think about solitary confinement—how prisoners went slowly crazy, heard voices, begged for release.
At least the girl had left the electricity on, although I wasn’t sure it was an act of mercy—she had been so furious when she left the room she’d probably have switched it off just to punish me. More likely she’d just forgotten. But that small fact—the idea that I could choose my environment even in such a minor way—helped.
I showered again and licked the dried croissant jam off the plate. I lay on the bed and shut my eyes, and tried to remember things—the layout of the house I grew up in. The plot of Little Women. The color of Jude’s—
But no. I pushed that away. I couldn’t think of Judah. Not here. It would break me.
In the end—more as a way of taking charge of the situation than because I really thought it would help—I turned out the light and lay, staring into the blackness, trying to sleep.
I’m not sure if I did sleep. I dozed, I guess. Hours passed, or seemed to. No one came, but at some point in the long darkness, I was jerked awake and sat up, my pulse spiking, trying to fathom what was different. A noise? A presence in the dark?
My heart was thumping as I slipped out of bed and felt my way by touch to the door, but when I flicked on the light nothing was different. The cabin was empty. The tiny en suite as bare as ever. I held my breath, listening, but there were no footsteps in the corridor outside, no voices or movements. Not a sound disturbed the quiet.
And then I realized. The quiet. That was what had woken me. The engine had stopped.
I tried to count the days on my fingers, and although I couldn’t be sure, I was fairly certain it must now be Friday the twenty-fifth. And that meant that the ship had arrived at its last port, Bergen, where we were due to disembark and catch planes back to London. The passengers would be leaving.
And then I’d be alone.
The thought brought panic rushing through my veins. I don’t know why—maybe it was the idea that they were so close—sleeping, most likely, just a few feet above my head and yet there was nothing, nothing I could do to make them hear. And soon they would pack their cases and leave, and I would be alone in a boat-shaped coffin.
The thought was too much to bear. Without thinking, I grabbed the bowl that had held yesterday’s breakfast and banged it against the ceiling as hard as I could.
“Help!” I screamed. “Can anyone hear me? I’m trapped, please, please help!”
I stopped, panting, listening, hoping desperately that with the sound of the engine no longer masking my cries, someone might hear.
There was no answering thump, no muffled shout filtering back through the floors. But I heard a sound. It was a metallic grinding, as if something was scraping the outside of the hull.
Had someone heard? I held my breath, trying to still my thumping heart, beating so loud it threatened to drown out the faint sounds from outside the ship. Was someone coming?
The grinding came again. . . . I felt the ship’s side shudder, and I realized suddenly what it was. The gangway was being lowered. The passengers were disembarking.
“Help me!” I screamed, and I banged again, only now I was noticing the way the plastic ceiling deadened and absorbed the sound.
“Help me! It’s me, Lo. I’m here! I’m on the boat!”
No answer, just the breath tearing in my throat, my blood in my ears.
“Anyone? Please! Please help!”
I put my hands to the wall, feeling the thumps against the gangway being transmitted down through the hull and into my hands. The impact of goods trolleys . . . and luggage . . . and departing feet.
I could feel all this. But I could not hear it. I was deep below the water—and they were up above, where any faint vibrations that I could make with my plastic bowl would be drowned out by the sound of the wind and the screech of the gulls and the voices of their fellow passengers.
I let the bowl fall from my hands to the floor, where it bounced and rolled across the thin carpet, and then I dropped to the bed, and I crouched there, my arms wrapped around my head, my head pressed into my knees, and I began to weep, great choking tears of fear and desperation.