AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Florence blinks at me sadly. I hate that look. It makes me feel like a three-legged dog or an ageing polar bear rocking from side to side in a zoo.
‘It happened a long time ago,’ I say, wanting to change the subject.
‘And it doesn’t define you,’ she adds.
‘Not as much as people like to think.’
‘Where is your brother now?’
‘In a secure psychiatric hospital.’
‘Do you ever visit him?’
‘Twice a month.’
She seems intrigued, but for the right reasons.
Florence has retrieved a notebook from the pannier of her motorbike. The front cover artwork is Monet’s Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge. She opens the notebook and clicks the button on a ballpoint pen.
‘I write everything down,’ she explains. ‘Have done since university.’
‘So, it’s not a legal thing.’
‘More a remembering thing.’
‘How did you get the text messages?’ I ask.
‘I work for an organisation called Migrant Rescue. We provide information to people who are trying to cross the Channel. Tides. Weather. Currents. Shipping lanes.’
‘You facilitate unauthorised crossings?’
‘No. It’s not like that. These people are going to make the journey anyway. They’re desperate. They’ve left their homes, families, friends, histories. They’ve travelled thousands of miles and now they’re this close.’ She holds up her thumb and forefinger, as if showing me the distance. ‘We are making the journey safer.’
‘Is that what happened today?’
Florence narrows her eyes and sets her jaw defiantly.
‘Migrant Rescue saves lives. People used to argue against needle exchange programmes for drug addicts, claiming they encouraged junkies to inject themselves. Instead, they made drug use safer and cleaner and kept addicts alive until they could turn their lives around. We’re doing the same thing. Keeping people safe.’
‘I pulled bodies out of the water today. Women and children. If they had stayed home . . . or in France—’
‘Their boat was rammed.’
‘How did you get the messages?’
Florence sighs. ‘For the past month I’ve been corresponding with a young woman from Sudan, a university student studying in Nottingham. Her brother texted her from the beach in Calais two nights ago, saying he was on his way.’
‘He sent the messages?’
Florence nods.
‘Is he the survivor?’
‘I don’t think so. He’s older. Twenty-four.’
I ask to see her phone again. This time she shows me earlier texts sent from Calais. One of them includes a photograph of three young men, arm in arm, who are sitting on stone steps above the sand.
‘That’s Jaden,’ says Florence. ‘It was taken ten days ago in Calais.’
