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.