by Victoria Fox
Sketch was in shock. Disasters on this scale just didn’t happen. Not to people like them. Not to Kevin. Kevin, his boy wonder, his protégé, his surrogate son …
‘This is your fault!’ Joan was bawling. ‘You made him go!’
Kevin’s puck face danced in front of his eyes. The last time they had seen him.
‘Joanie—’
‘How could you do it?’ She was frantic. ‘I said to him at the airport, I said, Kevin, baby, are you sure you want to go through with this? And he said you were on his back about it, and what choice did he have? You made him go!’
Sketch grabbed her wrists as she thrashed and writhed. Joan was manic.
‘Now look what’s happened! My prince is dead!’
‘Kevin isn’t dead, do you hear me? Kevin isn’t dead.’ Sketch calmed her sufficiently to proffer a glass of water, but Joan slapped it away, causing it to jettison across a priceless Spanish suede futon he had picked out for Christmas. She launched the tumbler after it, smashing it against a trophy showcase.
‘We have to remain calm,’ Sketch said.
‘Calm?’ Joan’s face was a twisted mask. ‘Don’t you see what’s staring us in the face? They’re gone! They’re drowned!’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘I don’t care what the news says—they’re lying to us; it’s all lies!’
Sketch drew her close. Joan’s strength sapped out of her and she collapsed.
‘We don’t know the facts,’ he said. ‘They’re doing everything they can.’
‘I want my baby!’ Joan sobbed. ‘I want my baby back!’
‘I know you do—but, Joanie, this will all be over in a matter of hours. They’ll bring Kevin home; you’ll see. Right now he’s probably in a lifeboat someplace, catching a suntan! He’ll tell us everything when he gets here—and he’ll need you to be strong for him, OK? He’ll need you to look after him.’
Joan pulled back, sodden with grief, her red eyes wide.
‘You swear?’ she gulped. ‘You promise?’
‘It’s an ocean,’ Sketch said, with a damn sight more confidence than he felt, ‘and some freaking islands. How hard can it be?’
Noah Lawson hadn’t seen Orlando Silvers since he was seventeen.
Physically, Angela’s brother was as he remembered—the thick black hair, the richly tanned skin, the regal features and the air of riches untold—but never had Orlando been associated with this kind of fear. Unshaven and hollow-eyed, he paced the kitchen in the Boston house Noah had last set foot in nine years ago.
Noah remembered being here, upstairs, in her bedroom: the scent of the evening, her hand in his, her smile and her kiss, how it had felt to look deep into her eyes. He could not accept she was gone.
‘I came to tell you I’m going. Angela’s still alive.’
Orlando shook his head. ‘It’s useless,’ he said emptily. ‘They’re already looking.’
‘Not fast enough.’
‘You think you stand a better chance?’
‘I’m not letting her go.’
Noah had done that once. On a porch in Boston almost a decade ago, guilt in his heart and cash in his hand, and he was damned if he was doing it again.
‘Quit playing the hero, Lawson. What’s Angela to you anyway?’
‘You know. She always said you knew. About us.’
Orlando looked up. ‘It didn’t take a genius to figure it out,’ he said. ‘Only time she seemed happy was after she saw you—same as when we were teenagers. She had me down as the enemy. She never realised I was her friend.’
‘I would die for her,’ said Noah.
‘So would I. She was my little sister.’
Orlando thought of the bodies and for a second he could not breathe. Angela wasn’t the only person that had mattered to him on that jet.
Not just Angela.
Eve. Stupid, stubborn, brilliant, exasperating, maddening Eve; Eve who refused to tell him the secrets of her heart but it didn’t matter, she didn’t need to, he could already see them, he could feel them, he knew it when they lay together, pretending it was nothing but sex, he knew it when he touched her beating blood and with it the fire in her soul, if only she would let him in …
The last words they had spoken had been in anger.
He could not let that be it.
‘Whatever you thought in the old days,’ said Noah, ‘I never stopped loving Angela. I’m not going to stand by and watch this get held up by a load of suits and bureaucrats. It’s still open. Nothing’s been found. Nothing’s confirmed.’
Orlando tried to push it away, but each time it sprang to the surface.
Eve …
My child …
‘Where will you start?’ he asked.
‘The islands,’ said Noah. ‘There are thousands of rocks out there.’
‘What makes you think they came down on land?’
‘What makes you think they didn’t?’
‘And if you do find them?’ Orlando dared allow himself the possibility. ‘And what if they’re …?’ He didn’t need to finish.
‘I’d rather know,’ said Noah. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
39
Szolsvár Castle, Gemenc Forest, Hungary
‘Here we are, Mr Cane.’
Janika brought his lunch in on a tray. ‘It’s your favourite—salmon sandwiches and pickled cucumber.’ She smiled, setting down the platter, and clasped her hands. ‘After all, we’re celebrating!’
So why didn’t her boss look happier?
Voldan was seated in his wheelchair at the head of the dining room’s grand mahogany table. His eyes flitted across the luncheon. In the adjacent Great Hall, news screens blared their perpetual memorial. ‘Where is the mayonnaise?’ he demanded.
‘Oh!’ Janika was crushed at the omission. ‘My mistake, Mr Cane.’
She cursed herself as she shot off to the scullery. Lemon and tarragon cream was his preference. How could she have forgotten? Every distress Mr Cane suffered wounded her deeply. She was here to look after him, and look after him she must.
Moments later she was back, bearing a silver pot.
‘Do you need anything else?’
His thumb was twitching. Janika knew how to read the signs. Mr Cane’s thumb only twitched like that when there was something on his mind.
He would tell her in his own time.
‘Feed me,’ he droned.
Janika adored mealtimes. It gave her a sense of power, to be the mother figure that brought fresh worms to the nest. Voldan parted his lips. Onto his tongue she placed the succulent chunks, sweet and salty pickles and the crustless squares of rye with their light spread of butter. She dabbed spots from the corners of his mouth.
The cordial he had requested was cloudy and sweet, and she offered it to him through a straw, watching as his poor, damaged skin closed meekly around it.
‘Did you like that?’ She smiled tenderly.
He indicated he had finished with a pursed, shut-tight mouth.
‘Something troubles you,’ Janika pressed. ‘Tell me what it is.’
Voldan’s eyes were fixed on the opposite wall. On it hung a portrait of his wife, her arm around a young Grigori. Two greyhounds nestled at their feet, and in the background the Gemenc Forest spread wide. Of course the likeness was imagined, she had never lived to see her son take his first steps, and had been drawn from Voldan’s brief: how Grigori’s mother might have looked, how she would have tended to and cared for her son, and, best of all, Grigori’s unfettered joy at her company.
‘Fetch me the telephone,’ Voldan bleated. ‘Now.’
Janika darted off, her footsteps echoing around the cavernous chamber.
Voldan traced circles on the arm of the wheelchair.
The maggot had come for him.
It had crawled beneath his skin while he slept, burrowing deep and planting its seed of doubt. Each hour it buried further, digging a thin black hole in his heart.
Grigori’s ghost had visite
d. Voldan had woken in the middle of the night.
They live on, his son had told him. Our mission has failed.
Strapped helpless to his bed, Voldan had longed to reach out and touch him. That beautiful face he had tried to conjure so many times. The cheeks he had kissed tears from when Grigori was a boy. He longed to hold his son. He longed to ask why Grigori had never come to him for help. He would have done anything.
Our mission has failed …
No stammer. In death, Grigori had been spared.
Doubt emaciated Voldan, rotting him like an apple on the winter ground.
It could not be—and yet the possibility, however faint, gnawed.
Janika wheeled in the walnut desk, empty apart from the handsome telephone at its centre. She lifted the receiver and dialled the number. The line rang.
Voldan spoke into it. Minutes later, he was finished.
His instructions had been heard.
Instantly, he felt revived. Grigori’s work would yet be completed.
His eyes rested greedily on Janika, who had learned a long time ago not to ask questions. The maid’s mousy hair was scragged back in a ponytail: a silent clue that she was eager to perform. Voldan had no sensation down there any longer, but it excited him to watch. Janika understood what he wanted. She wanted it, too.
Wordlessly, she trundled his chair back from the table.
Unzipping his trousers, she knelt.
Watching her was like watching a porno, a situation removed, unfolding in a time and place with which Voldan would never be engaged.
His brain registered arousal yet he had no feeling to go with it.
He tried to imagine the warmth of her tongue, remember what it felt like to grow against the back of a woman’s throat, but it was no good. Those days were gone.
Still, the ritual fascinated him. Janika took pleasure in the task, her moans becoming louder and her breasts smothering his knees, until seconds later she shuddered and cried, burying her face in his lap as her back shook and spasmed.
It was over.
Voldan fixed his eyes through the dining room door and into the Great Hall, where the crash reports continued their grisly eulogy.
In a way, they had both met their climax.
40
Day 2
Morning came.
Angela woke at dawn, sand in her hair and beneath her fingernails. The sweep of beach was as idyllic as it had appeared from up on the granite rock, under other circumstances a private slice of paradise: the clear, turquoise lagoon and the yawning ocean a seamless blue. The expanse was unchanged, the horizon still empty.
She had dreamed of him. At home in Boston, sixteen again, the day Angela had discovered the ring he put through her door, and slipped it on, a perfect fit.
‘Why d’you wear that thing for?’ Dino had asked.
‘It’s personal.’
‘So’s your marriage.’
Behind her, a wall of leaves whispered.
The beach was separated from the jungle by an abundance of palms. Their shafts were thick and coarse, rising to bulbous knots that were sprung with hair, and stalks that gave way to bursts of brilliant lime-green fronds. The leaves were wide, strong and stiff, a foot long and tapered at their ends to a dry, sharp point.
She found Eve alone further down the beach. Her clothes were grimy and her legs were bare. She looked like she hadn’t slept.
‘Were you telling the truth yesterday?’ said Angela.
Eve blinked. ‘About what?’
‘What you said to me in the plane.’ Angela sat down. ‘I knew before that, too. You’re pregnant.’
Eve turned on her. Where the rest of the group was dazed and stumbling, like drawings from a shipwreck, Eve was sharp. Switched on. ‘Don’t say it again.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘This is my business. Only mine. I don’t have to justify it to anyone.’
‘I’m not asking you to.’
‘I don’t want anyone else to know.’
‘They’ll find out sooner or later.’
‘Everyone here just cares about themselves. We’re nothing to each other. Let’s keep it that way.’
‘I don’t feel like that.’
‘I’ll remind them to saint you when we get home.’
Against the other woman’s resolve, Angela found she could express the fear she had been keeping in check.
‘We don’t know if we’re going home,’ she said.
‘We are. They’ll come.’
‘They might not.’
‘They will.’
‘Are you scared?’
‘No.’
The sea washed in. The sun blazed down. The skyline gave them nothing.
‘I thought I’d lost him,’ said Eve, after a moment. She didn’t look at Angela directly. ‘I feel it’s a boy. I don’t know why. Just a feeling.’
Angela waited. ‘Who’s the father?’
‘Nobody important.’
‘Someone from England?’
‘One of those things … A stupid thing.’
‘But not a mistake.’
‘Maybe a mistake.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus.’ Angela exhaled. ‘Poor guy must be going out of his mind.’
‘Oh, he made his position perfectly clear,’ said Eve. ‘I was always on my own.’
‘I’m sorry. That’s hard.’
But Eve was quick to qualify, as if she’d said something she hadn’t really meant. ‘It wasn’t like that. It’s how I wanted it.’
The women squinted through the rising light. A bank of clouds was gathered on the horizon, shot through with pink and yellow. It could almost be beautiful.
‘You know what I think?’ said Angela.
‘What?’
‘I think your baby made it for a reason. I think we all did.’
‘If it makes you feel better.’
‘I’m guessing you’re not the sentimental type.’
Eve threw her a short glance. ‘Anyway, if you’re so sure, what’s the big reason? Why did we survive?’
But Angela didn’t know. Not yet.
‘I’ll tell you once I’ve figured that out.’
She called a meeting. It was an effort to drag everyone together, literally and figuratively, resigned as some of the group were to gazing out at the ocean, as if by sheer force of will they could prompt a rescue to appear.
The sun shone down from an endless arc. Where the sand banked against the palms was a raised stone slab. Angela stepped onto it.
‘Today we split up,’ she said. ‘Kevin and Mitch, you return to the hold. Bring back everything you can. Water. Food. Supplies. All that’s left of the luggage.’ She nodded to Jacob. ‘Anything we can use to help him—lotions, moisturisers, sun creams …’
‘A bit late for that, isn’t it?’ Tawny snorted. ‘A shame he wasn’t wearing SPF when he caught fire!’ She regretted it instantly. The rest of the group stared at her in appalled silence—even Kevin, whom she sensed was her safest ally.
But at the possibility of reclaiming their possessions, the mood lifted slightly. Kevin was thinking about his pills. Celeste was thinking about her soap. Tawny was thinking about her Gucci shades, her cherry-red FrenchFifty bikini, and, oh, her Chantecaille make-up bag, which after yesterday’s swamp ordeal was top on her list of priorities. Only a pity she couldn’t plug in her beloved straighteners.
Kevin asked: ‘What about the bodies?’ He and Celeste had located the first officer late last night: he, too, had perished. ‘It’s rank. They stink.’
‘We’ve got to get rid of them,’ agreed Celeste.
‘Well duh,’ said Tawny bitchily. ‘Anything helpful to add?’
‘How?’ Angela asked. Celeste was right, and the sooner the better: they didn’t want to attract animals. She scanned the faces looking up at her and offered herself:
‘I’ll do it.’
Celeste raised her hand. ‘
I’ll help.’
Tawny rolled her eyes. The friction between these two had been instant. Angela had noticed the way the model clocked Celeste back at Jakarta, a swift glance up and down, as if assessing the competition. Of course Tawny was the more gorgeous, it went without saying—but where Tawny’s beauty was enhanced by elaborate make-up and the finishing school of styling tongs, Celeste’s look thrived on the opposite. Of all the assembled here today, the Italian, it had to be said, shone out as the prettiest. Her white skin and brown eyes were fragile and appealing. She oozed culture, sophistication and intelligence. Tawny couldn’t stand it.
‘We should put them out to sea,’ said Eve. ‘Keep them down with rocks. We’ll need to build a raft—logs, something we can use as rope …’
Kevin pulled a face. ‘Won’t they wash back in?’
‘How about a pyre?’ Celeste suggested.
Tawny shot her a nasty look. ‘A what?’
‘A funeral pyre—we set fire to them and send them out that way.’
‘Don’t you think we’ve set fire to enough?’ Tawny lowered her voice, as if Jacob had lost not just his sight but also the ability to hear when other people were talking about him. She made a point by taking his hand, managing to contain her revulsion at his injuries. Yesterday she wouldn’t even have contemplated such a move—she could hardly imagine hitting downtown New York with a guy on her arm holding a white stick. Hopefully Jacob would be back to normal soon, and hopefully he would stop being blind as well, because if she was going to channel shipwreck chic (and if anyone could pull it off, Tawny could), then there had to be at least one hot guy around to witness it.
‘Same problem,’ said Angela. ‘Unless we get right out into the ocean.’
