Читать книгу No Escape - Lucy Clarke - Страница 10

Lana paces through her apartment, her fingers buried deep in the pockets of her dress. The painting she was working on is drying, unfinished. On a normal day, she would be getting ready for work by this time. But she can’t even think about going into the gallery and making coffees for customers. She can’t think of anything but The Blue.

She knows that the Maritime Rescue Centre, which will be dealing with the rescue of the crew, is only 30 kilometres away – she passes the sign for it each month when she goes to the art supplies wholesaler for her boss. She grabs her mobile and searches the Internet for the number.

When she finds it, she sits on the edge of her bed and makes the call. It takes several minutes to be connected to anyone associated with the rescue of The Blue. Eventually she is transferred to Paul Carter, the Operations Coordinator, who has a broad New Zealand accent and tells her that they are not at liberty to give out any details.

‘Look,’ she says, banging the heel of her hand against the wooden bed frame, making a dull thud. ‘Just tell me if Kitty Berry was on board. She’s British. She’s got no family out here. I can get in touch with them.’

Lana doesn’t know where the authority in her tone has sprung from, but she knows she will not be ending this call until she has an answer.

After a moment she hears the sigh of someone acquiescing. ‘Okay, give me a minute.’

As she waits, she bites the edge of her thumbnail, her skin tasting faintly of turpentine. She finds herself thinking of the first time she met Kitty. They were eleven years old and the summer term had just begun. Lana was grateful for the warmer weather because it meant that at lunchtimes she could sit alone in a sunny corner of the playing fields, and didn’t need to stand around in the courtyard trying to make herself look invisible. She’d take out her exercise book and fill the back pages with wild shapes – swirls of smoke, twisting currents of water, clouds that billowed and bloomed from the pages.

She had seen Kitty around – they lived in the same street and took the same bus to school – but they’d never spoken. Kitty styled her glossy dark hair in a high ponytail, pulling thin wisps of it loose around her temples. She was often followed around by a loud group of boys who wore their backpacks so low that they bounced against their bony arses.

Lana had been sitting cross-legged, watching a feathery seed from a dandelion drifting towards her on a whisper of breeze. She was mesmerized as it turned through the air, daylight catching in its white softness. She wondered what it would feel like to be that weightless. She reached a hand up into the air and caught it gently in the palm of her hand, imagining its tickle against her skin. Then she closed her eyes and made a wish. She wasn’t sure that you were meant to wish on dandelions, but she’d done it anyway.

When she opened her eyes, she carefully unfurled her fingers and – for a moment – it rested right there on the centre of her palm, as if she had tamed it. A few seconds later it lifted off, carried upwards on a current of air.

‘What you doing?’ Kitty was standing nearby, her school bag hanging off one shoulder.

‘Making a wish,’ she said. She felt her cheeks flush, cross that she’d not thought of something better than the truth.

‘What did you wish?’

‘You can’t tell people, otherwise they don’t come true.’

Kitty shrugged. Then she bent down and plucked a dandelion from the long grass near the fence line and held it up to her lips. ‘You can tell the time by blowing a dandelion. Watch.’ She blew with short puffs of air, making the seeds whirl. By her sixth puff there was only one seed remaining. Kitty adjusted her puffs so they became gentle, until her twelfth one – when she blew with all her might, sending the remaining seed dancing into the sky.

‘That was twelve.’ She pushed her wrist in front of Lana to reveal her purple watch. ‘Twelve o’clock. See?’

Lana laughed.

Kitty’s brow dipped. ‘What? It’s true.’

‘All right.’

They were both silent and Lana wished she hadn’t laughed, thinking Kitty was going to leave now. But after a minute or so, Kitty said, ‘So why d’you always sit on your own?’

Lana watched a ladybird crawl up a blade of grass near her feet, making the blade tremble and bend. ‘I dunno. Why are you on your own?’

‘I’m not. I’m talking to you.’ Kitty shook her head a little, making her high ponytail swing. Lana wondered whether Kitty was wearing mascara as her eyelashes looked so dark and long. Lana had her father’s eyelashes – auburn and short – as well as his amber hair. But her long, straight nose and olive skin came from her mother. People often remarked upon Lana’s unusual colouring, and she liked telling them, My father’s a redhead, but my mother was Greek.

‘Anyway, I’m looking for daffodils,’ Kitty announced.

‘How come?’

‘It’s my mum’s birthday today.’ Kitty looked at her from the corners of her eyes, then added, ‘She’s dead though.’

Lana stared back. With their gazes pinned to each other, she found herself saying, ‘Mine, too.’

If Kitty had been surprised, she hadn’t shown it. ‘My mum died when I was seven. Cancer. How old were you?’

‘Three.’

Lana told Kitty about the car accident. Even though she hadn’t been with her mother, the events of the day felt imprinted on her as if she’d lived through every frame. It was a Thursday morning; her mother was driving to the supermarket when a lorry hurtling along in the other direction had braked hard to avoid a car that pulled out in front of it. The lorry began jackknifing across the road. Tons of metal swung into Lana’s mother’s Renault 5, killing her on impact.

When other people heard what had happened to Lana’s mother, their expressions filled with pity and they spoke to her in a soft, special voice. But not Kitty. She listened with her head tilted to one side, her eyes locked on Lana.

After a moment Kitty said, ‘My mum died in a hospice. On her own. My dad was sitting in our car, smoking, and I was trying to find somewhere to change a pound coin so I could get a drink from the vending machine. When I came back to her ward, a bed sheet was pulled over her face.’

The two girls eyed one another in silence. Then Lana stood, picked up her bag and said, ‘Come on. I’ll show you where the best daffodils are.’

*

From the other end of the phone line Lana hears the man speak, the receiver pressed close to his mouth. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Kitty Berry is on the crew list.’

Lana’s heart clenches tight as a fist, her eyes squeezing shut.

So Kitty has still been on the yacht after all these months. After everything that had happened, Lana wonders if Kitty could still enjoy lying back in the hammock, watching the shooting stars blaze across the sky as they’d once done together.

She runs the heel of her hand back and forth across her forehead. ‘What happened out there? How did the yacht get into trouble?’

‘I’m not able to disclose any information just yet,’ Paul Carter says.

Lana grits her teeth with frustration. ‘Have you found her? Found any of them?’

There is a pause in which she hears the man clearing his throat. ‘I’m sorry. The entire crew is missing.’

*

Lana puts down the phone and remains sitting on the edge of the bed. It is almost impossible to picture The Blue somewhere out there in these waters. Sunk.

There was a life raft, she knows. It was stored in a canister at the stern, which she’d sometimes lean against, her legs stretched out in the sun. She wonders when the raft was last checked, and whether the grab bag was properly stocked, too.

She can picture the yacht easily – the teak deck warm beneath the soles of her feet; the white mainsail billowing with wind; the light slosh and draw of waves against the hull as the yacht turns lazily on its anchor. But she cannot bring to mind that same yacht struggling in the ocean as water washes on board, creeping down the hatch into the saloon where they all used to sit together for dinner. She cannot picture the sea steadily rising up over the floor, enveloping the lockers and cupboards stocked with food, blankets, torches and ropes, then creeping higher, bleeding over the photos pinned to the saloon wall and flooding the shelves of well-thumbed books. She cannot imagine the crew wading through salt water, while sodden charts, packets of food, loose clothes and toiletries float around them.

A yacht like that just doesn’t sink. It was built to handle the open ocean, rough seas. What the hell happened?

Lana raises herself to her feet and crosses the room to the window.

For months Lana tried her best to distance herself from the yacht and crew. She closed a door of her mind because behind it lay a beautiful, bright pain – and even opening it a crack seared. In some ways, she’s succeeded. She made a fresh start here in New Zealand, yet there are moments – if she catches sight of the swoop of a sail on the horizon, or hears a wave breaking onto the shore – then The Blue sails back into her thoughts. Sometimes all it takes to remember is a shopkeeper’s lilting accent, which sends Denny spiralling into her mind, or the sight of two friends walking with their heads pressed together, making her miss Kitty with a deep ache.

Now that she has heard this news, it feels as though each of the memories she has hidden away is unwinding, link by link, like an anchor chain dragging her downwards. She feels the weight of each memory pulling her deeper: thick fingers gripped around the pale skin of a throat; Shell’s tear-stricken face as she stepped forward at the bow to speak; dark waves lashing at the deck as the rigging shrieked in the wind; Kitty’s hollow-eyed gaze as she raised her hand into the air; the deep-red bloom of blood that stained the deck.

Back then, if Lana had known everything she does now, she wonders whether she’d ever have set foot on The Blue.