AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He laughs again. ‘I know her fuckin’ name.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She died.’
I look for the lie, but it’s not there, and my heart breaks along a familiar fault-line.
‘They all died except you,’ he says. ‘I guess that makes you the lucky one.’
‘No,’ I whisper.
The scar on his neck catches the light from the wall lamp and looks boil-like and seething, as though a snake is uncoiling beneath his skin, trying to burrow its way out. He turns on his phone. Makes a call. Talks.
‘They’re here . . . No . . . They found me.’ Laughter. ‘They just walked into the bar . . . yeah, both of them . . . made it easy for us . . . Get the boat ready.’
He ends the call and picks up his whisky, taking a sip, looking at me over the rim of the glass. From somewhere nearby comes the abrupt thud of a door slamming and the sound of footsteps receding.
Angus yells, ‘Isla! Where’s my breakfast?’
She doesn’t respond. He curses and takes another crisp from the torn packet on the table.
‘You killed them?’ I say, wanting to claw out his eyes, picturing my fingers sinking into his sockets.
‘It was an accident.’
‘You should have opened the hatches.’
‘We were fighting a fire.’
‘We were trapped.’
‘You were already dead.’
‘Not all of us.’
Angus pauses and examines his empty glass. ‘Doesn’t matter any more.’
‘I think it does,’ says Cyrus. ‘I’d like to hear the story and I think Evie is owed.’
‘No, if anything she owes me,’ he says. ‘I could have left her to die with the others.’
He walks behind the bar and pours himself another drink. Swallowing. ‘How much do you remember?’
‘There was a fire,’ I say.
‘Yeah, well, we got that under control and then BOOM!’ He opens his cupped hands, indicating an explosion. ‘It breached the hull. I dragged Cam’s body out of the engine room and we tried to revive him, but it was too late. The pumps couldn’t cope with the water coming in. By the time we opened the hatches, well, it was a fucking mess down there, nothing but smoke and bodies floating in water. I told Finn to close it up, but he wanted to be sure. He jumped into the hold and began pressing his ear to chests and feeling for pulses. I said it was too late, but he kept looking, with water up to his thighs, in darkness, with me yelling, “Get the fuck out! We’re sinking”, but then he found you. Still breathing.
‘“Leave her”, I told him. Finn was holding you in his arms, lifting you up, begging me. The soft prick wasn’t going to leave you behind, so I lifted you out. Both my hands were burned, my face, I was in agony, but I saved your skinny arse.’ His face twists in disgust.
‘I told Finn to get out but he stayed down there, checking for more survivors. The stern was underwater. We’d launched the life-raft. The coastguard was coming. But he wouldn’t fucking listen. What was I supposed to do?’
‘Save people,’ says Cyrus.
‘How? The Arianna was lost, and we were a hundred miles from shore.’
‘You had life-rafts. Immersion suits.’
‘Not for everyone. And how was I going to explain someone like her to the coastguard?’ He points to me. ‘It was better if none of you survived and the Arianna was never found . . .’
