‘What reason might the complainant have to accuse you of doing so?’
Jamie swallowed hard. ‘I can only think it’s embarrassment. After all, it wasn’t the most dignified thing.’ He shuddered, like it pained him to be so unchivalrous. God, he was good. ‘But I think it’s clear from her performance in the witness box that she has convinced herself she’s telling the truth. That’s the worst part of it; she’s a victim, but not of me. I had hoped that by now she would have got the help she so obviously needs.’
Chapter 20
KIT
18 March 2015
The Princess Celeste’s ballroom has all the atmosphere of a striplit shopping centre. At the opening health-and-safety talk, a rep from the tour company has a passenger list, ticking off each name when the corresponding badge is collected. By the time Richard and I get there, all but a handful of the badges have been given out.
The first lecturer takes the stage, and I identify the source of the disembodied voice I’d heard over the tannoy. Professor Jeff Drake lectured me for three years at Oxford. He will film and narrate the eclipse as it happens, and perform what he calls a ‘post-mortem’ on the return journey. I’ve got one ear on him as I creep to the back of the ballroom, where the passenger list is left unattended on the welcome table; it takes me seconds to scroll down and eliminate Beth. Then, mindful of Laura’s new identity theory, I find a vantage point halfway down the ballroom and methodically scan every female – not as time-consuming as it sounds; men outnumber women by about two to one here, and young women are scarcer still – until I can be sure that they aren’t her. I have been as thorough as I can.
Beth is not on the ship.
There’s still a chance she’s on land. If I were going to look for her, find her before she can find me, my greatest chance would be in that bar. During the shadow, there will be thousands of tourists scattered across dozens of hills. We won’t even know our own vantage point until the morning of the eclipse, when the scouts go out to assess the cloud cover on the island. But for the next twenty hours, until we dock in Tórshavn Harbour, there will be no confrontation with my past.
I think I deserve another drink.
I catch Jeff Drake at the bar. He remembers me at once; ‘Christopher!’ he says (thanks to my name tag, my full name is already beginning to prick my ears the way Kit does at home). His voice kicks me back through the corridors of time and into his rooms overlooking the Isis. I half expect to look down and see the battered Adidas Gazelles I used to wear.
‘I often wonder what became of you,’ he says, when we have finished telling each other what a small world it is. ‘Academe’s loss must have been industry’s gain.’ It is a long time since I felt shame when I told anyone what I do for a living now, but when I do, he is gracious and interested; if anything, he is disappointingly undisappointed in my failure to complete my doctorate. But Jeff is as famous for his diplomacy as he is for his intellect. When our conversation is interrupted by an elderly Canadian lady earnestly asking the difference between a star and a planet, he speaks to her with the same respect he showed me when I was his student. My wasted potential is a stone in my throat, and I wash it down with red wine.
Richard has fallen into conversation with a party of astronomers from Wales and it’s soon established that there are some serious eclipse chasers here. Tansy, a vast, ruddy woman about my mum’s age, threatens to show us her lucky underwear. ‘Never been clouded out with my lucky knickers on!’ she says, topping up my glass.
‘Still got it,’ I tell Richard under my breath. As notes of eclipses passim are compared, a pecking order naturally establishes itself. Richard takes a register of names and eclipses viewed on the back of a tour itinerary. Our undisputed master is a nonogenarian Californian man who has seen nineteen eclipses, but if you divide the number of eclipses by our ages (and I can’t resist the calculation) then I have seen by far the most eclipses relative to my years.
Wine just keeps appearing. The temperature in the bar rises and I peel off my Faroese sweater to reveal my Chile ’91 T-shirt underneath. The effect on Tansy is like Clark Kent ripping off his suit to reveal the Superman outfit beneath. ‘1991! You must have been a babe in arms.’