‘Why don’t you leave him? He doesn’t treat you right. You know how I feel about you. I’ll wait for you. I mean it. However long it takes.’
Reality check. I laughed nervously. I was flattered of course, given that he was younger than me and had most of the yacht racing girls swooning at his feet, but I loved Daniel and he was my husband. This was just a wind-up, because I was mad at him. It didn’t mean anything. I could never hurt him, never betray him. Before Jason could say anything else, Cookie appeared.
‘Well hello, you two water babies,’ he joked to diffuse the situation, putting his arm around Jason and pulling him away from me. He flashed me a warning look and shoved a beer into Jason’s hand.
‘There are clean towels in the bathroom, Grace, and Tina has put some dry clothes out for you to borrow. She reckons you’re about the same size.’
‘Ok, thanks,’ I mumbled, feeling suddenly foolish and unable to meet his eye, as I ambled off in the direction of the bathroom.
And that was that. Nothing had happened, but I could not deny I had briefly wanted it to, caught up in the moment. I wondered whether adulterous thoughts and intentions could actually count as cheating. I decided not.
Jason finished the season with us but then went sailing on another boat the following year, citing a clash of personalities as the reason for the change.
It was all such a long time ago. Another life. Another me.
I gave Daniel a withering look and reiterated my original point.
‘As I said, it was just a stupid kiss to wind you up because you were being a twat with me. And it was years ago. Why the hell would you bring that up now? Hardly comparable to your years of scheming and lying. Please don’t try to make out that we were both somehow equally to blame in all this because nothing could be further from the truth. It’s bullshit and you know it. I’m going below now. I’m freezing.’
‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry,’ he apologised, no doubt not meaning a word of it. ‘I just wanted you to see how easily things can get out of hand.’
‘But things don’t just ‘get out of hand’ though, do they? You made conscious decisions over and over again to pick up women on the internet to cheat on me with.’
‘I really am sorry you know,’ he continued, thoughtfully. ‘I guess you never know what you have until you lose it.’
‘More bullshit. You knew exactly what you had. You just never believed for a moment you would actually lose it.’
I had to get away from him then, so I made it clear the pointless conversation was over and disappeared into the cabin. A huge sadness enveloped me again and I felt suddenly crushed under the weight of it. A thousand ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’ were racing through my thoughts, as I imagined a different life. Maybe I would have been happy with Jason. I knew he was married now, with three beautiful daughters. A different decision all those years ago and that could have been me. As I reflected on my own life, I was devastated by the thought that I had wasted most of it, blundering from one disaster to the next, making wrong decision after wrong decision.
I abruptly pushed all thoughts of the past to the back of my mind, where they belonged. I refused to allow myself to dwell on things like that. One thing I knew with absolute certainty was that regret was a wasted emotion, and one that had the potential to destroy all chance of future happiness if it was allowed free rein.
Alone in the cabin, I kept my boots and outer layer of waterproofs on, in case I was needed on deck, and tried to lose myself in a book. How dare he bring all that stuff up and make out that I was somehow a guilty party! My thoughts turned yet again to poor Julia. Everyone said Daniel had messed with her head until she practically went mad by all accounts. I had no intention of going down that route, but I totally understood how it had happened.
I looked at the chart plotter periodically and alternated with Daniel to keep watch on deck. The wind had picked up a little, but it remained on our stern and we were eating up the miles. By nightfall, we were passing Lizard Point and heading into the open waters of the southern Irish Sea. I had taken it upon myself to make all drinks and food on the trip, determined not to give Daniel any opportunity to drug me or poison me. Not that food involved anything more than cup-a-soups and pot noodles, given the feeble, two-burner, meth stove the boat was equipped with. She was a race boat through and through and had been built for speed, not comfort, with no unnecessary weight allowed on board to slow her down. I made sure I slipped Daniel the odd Amitriptyline in his coffee, from my emergency supply, just to take the edge off his reactions and make me feel safer.
Memories of happier times were all around me. I would miss the boat and the camaraderie of the crew, but those days were behind me. There was no way I could fund a race yacht on my own, so no matter how much I resented it, she had to go, leaving yet another gaping hole in my future.
I volunteered to do the first proper watch as darkness fell, Daniel feeling understandably drowsy. We checked the chart plotter and agreed to stay on the same course for the next few hours, but we would almost certainly need to gybe at some point, as the wind was swinging around. I settled into as comfortable a position as possible, given the absence of any cushions and focused on fascinating pastimes such as counting the stars and scanning the horizon for any other lights.
So far Daniel had not made any attempt to shove me over the side, stab me, throttle me or bludgeon me to death and I was beginning to wonder if I was being overly paranoid, as I watched him disappear down below to sleep. He even seemed to be mindful of my safety with his parting shot:
‘Shout if you need me or if the wind changes direction any more. And make sure you stay clipped on.’
‘Obviously,’ I replied sarcastically, showing him my lifeline. I thought of the Fastnet Race of 1979, when five yachts sank, twenty-four crews abandoned ship and fifteen souls were lost. So many lessons about safety had been learned from that tragedy. I looked at the chart plotter, churning out a constant stream of information for me and wondered what it must have been like for the sailors in that race, without recourse to any of the sophisticated navigational equipment we now benefit from. What unspeakable terror must they have endured that night, knowing they were at the mercy of Nature at its most vicious, cruel and uncompromising?
I looked around me at the waves rising and falling rhythmically in the darkness, with nothing to do except think. I imagined falling into the water and watching, helpless, as the boat sailed away from me and disappeared. People said drowning was a peaceful death and you saw your whole life flash before you as you drifted into oblivion. I didn’t believe that for a moment. I knew for certain that I would be fighting until my very last breath, fighting to stay alive, despite the searing pain that the water entering my lungs would undoubtedly cause.
The loud squelch noise from the VHF snapped me back into reality as the weather forecast began and my dark thoughts vanished.
Daniel’s face appeared in the companionway after the agreed three hours.
‘How’s it going?’
‘The wind’s dropped a bit, but we’re still making good headway and you can catch some good waves to surf down if you want to steer.’
He clipped his lifeline to the jackstay before climbing up on deck and stretching.
‘I need a pee,’ he announced, as he made his way clumsily to the back of the boat, bracing himself against the rear guard rails and holding onto the taut lifeline and the backstay for balance.
Maybe if he’d just kept his treacherous mouth shut for once, I might have changed my mind and things might have ended differently, but he had to push it. He yawned and picked up the thread from an earlier conversation.
‘I meant what I said about wanting you to meet my kids you know. You’d love them. I’ve already started teaching Aaron to sail and he’s a natural. He’d have loved this trip. You always wanted kids so badly…it’d be like a ready-made family for you, without the pain of childbirth. Don’t close any doors, Grace, that’s all I’m saying.’
/> He just loved to twist the knife. Sadistic and cruel to the end. Couldn’t help himself. I knew at that moment he would always be there, lurking in the background, drawing me back in and looking for an opportunity to torture me, just like he did with Julia. Making me fear for my life one moment and telling me he loved me the next. Mind games, which had already driven one woman to an early grave. I would not allow him to do the same to me.
In the end, it was easy.
The wind was coming from behind us over the starboard quarter of the boat. Without warning I altered course, bearing away sharply and setting in motion the chain of events that would ultimately set me free. The boom, with the full weight of the wind now on the wrong side of the mainsail, sliced across the boat with ferocious speed and slammed out on the other side in a crash gybe. I knew exactly what would happen and braced myself with my foot as the boat rounded up sharply into the wind, sails flapping and rigging shuddering violently.
Behind me, I heard a frantic scrabbling, a thud and a startled shout as the boat heeled over at an alarmingly steep angle. Daniel, totally unprepared, found himself thrown off balance down to the leeward side and then, to his horror, dumped unceremoniously into the water. The lifeline pulled tautly and he must have believed for a moment, as he was dragged coughing and spluttering through the water behind the boat, that I would soon be desperately trying to help him scramble back aboard.
That was never going to happen.
I stared steadfastly ahead, ignoring what was going on behind me and concentrating on getting the boat back under control. Priorities. Leaning forward, I released the jib sheet and pulled it in on the new side. I took hold of the wheel and adjusted my course until the wind began to fill the sails.
I refused to look behind.
Don’t look back. You’re not going that way.
The words on the card Neil and Gwen had sent me when the shit first hit the fan all those months ago.
Sound advice.
I switched on the autohelm to steer the boat for me and moved forward as if in a trance to release the mainsail halyard, then up to the mast to pull the sail down, securing it against the boom with sail ties and thanking God it was only the small delivery main. It was no mean feat on my own, but I persevered and the boat would be much easier to handle under jib alone, now that it was just me.
Only then did I steal a furtive glance behind me, peering into the darkness.
Nothing but the relentless march of the waves, rising and falling.
Daniel was gone.
It was as if he never really existed.
Lost at sea. A fitting end.
I felt a strange sense of calm wash over me, as I concentrated on the one thing I now had full control over, sailing the boat to safety. I looked up and saw the sky, covered in a myriad of stars, with the full moon lighting a pathway on the water. It was beautiful.
I did not kill Daniel.
I am not a cold-blooded murderer.
I simply made a split-second decision to provide Fate with the opportunity to dole out her own form of justice and restore the natural order of things: Good prevailing over Evil, Right over Wrong.
In a fleeting moment of benevolence, I hoped I had been wrong in my theories about drowning. About the pain at least. I imagined Daniel’s confusion, as he watched his only hope of salvation sailing away from him into the night, the little white stern light growing dimmer and dimmer. The point at which he realised the inevitability of his fate must have come quickly I decided, and I told myself that, if his life really had flashed before him at the end, at least his final moments would have been entertaining. I hoped for the sake of his soul that he felt some remorse as he was finally forced to confront his own mortality and give himself up to the eternity of the sea.
I stared at the rear guard rail wires trailing behind in the water and reached down to pull them back into the boat. The two sets of taut wires, stretched horizontally across the stern of the boat, were there to help prevent anyone falling overboard. They were normally secured with shackles, which were then wrapped in insulation tape to ensure the pins could not work loose and fall out.
I felt in my jacket pocket and pulled out the pins I had removed earlier, before taping back over the fixings. The treacherous arrangement had appeared normal, as I knew it would, but there had been no chance at all of it holding under any real pressure, certainly not the pressure of a ninety-eight kilo, six foot two man lurching against it. I thought of Daniel, clutching frantically at anything that might give him a firm handhold in the crash gybe. I imagined his utter disbelief as the guard rails went loose in his hands, leaving the back of the boat completely open and exposed.
I tossed the pins into the water and secured the guard rails properly this time with new shackles and several wrappings of PVC tape. In fact, I went all around the boat, replacing the tape everywhere, so it all looked the same. I turned my attention to the jackstays, the long pieces of webbing stretched along the length of the deck from front to back on both sides so that the crew could clip their lifelines on and move around the deck freely, safely attached to the boat at all times. At least, that was the idea. I saw Daniel’s face in my mind’s eye, the relief as his lifeline held fast, changing to incredulity and fear as it came loose from the webbing straps and he was left floundering.
Poor Daniel.
How could he ever have suspected what would happen?
I made sure the jackstays were secured properly, in the same way as the guard rails, before attaching my own lifeline to them. It would be plain silly to risk falling overboard myself.
Finally, I felt in my other pocket and fished out the automatic inflation canister that belonged in the lifejacket I had handed Daniel to wear when we set off. He was never one for checking the safety equipment. At least I had given him a life jacket. And there was always the option of blowing it up manually, which would have bought him a bit of time, although probably not much in all likelihood. As I understood it, the chances of surviving longer than about half an hour in the water were slim, due to the low temperatures, even though we were in the middle of one of the warmest summers for years. I consigned the canister to the murky depths of the Irish Sea to join the shackle pins, confident in the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing to suggest this was anything other than a tragic freak accident.
Three hours later I checked the plotter and saw that I had covered about twenty-five miles. It was time.
I threw the yellow lifebuoy over the side of the boat into the water, then pressed the MOB button on the plotter, setting a loud alarm off. I switched on the engine and furled the jib to make life easier for myself as I began to circle randomly as if trying to recover the lifebuoy. The chart plotter would be checked and it was important for them to see I had at least attempted to search for Daniel. I put the engine into neutral, to remain in more or less the same area.
There was just one more thing I needed to do.
I stood on the deck behind the wheel, keeping a watchful eye out for any other vessels. I picked up the VHF transmitter and took a deep breath, steeling myself, before making the channel 16 call that no sailor ever wants to have to make.
‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is yacht Mistress, Mistress, Mistress. Man overboard, urgent assistance required, over.’
There was a brief pause and the squelch crackled, then came the reply. Calm. Assured. On my side. Someone else was in charge now. All I had to do was comply and follow instructions.
I was confident I had injected just the right amount of hysteria into my voice as I gave the details of my position and of the person who had fallen overboard.
But of course, that wasn’t going to be much use to anyone.
*******
Several hours later I was on dry land once again, sipping the hot chocolate laced with rum that Brandon, the harbourmaster of Cork, had given me. I huddled on a chair in his office upstairs, my feet tucked under me, pulling the blanket tighter around me. Everyone was being so kind to me.
/> They all mistook my indifference for shock and I was more than happy to let them.
A full SAR operation had been launched to try to rescue Daniel initially, but latterly the focus had changed to recovering Daniel’s body.
Still, they had found nothing.
Twenty-four hours later, they regretted to inform me that they had been forced to call off the search, as there was no longer any chance of him being found alive.
It was over.
Questions were asked of course. Lots of them. A man had died at the end of the day. Reports had to be filed, there had to be an inquest and reasonable conclusions had to be drawn, given the lack of a body.
I told the truth. At least, my version of it.
He came up on deck for his turn on watch and went to the back of the boat for a pee. Yes, he was wearing a life jacket and yes, he attached his lifeline to the jackstay. Or at least…I thought he did. I couldn’t be sure. I was steering the boat when a rogue wave caught me off guard and made me lose my balance. We only veered off course for a moment, but it was enough to cause a crash gybe and that must have been when Daniel fell over the back of the boat (loud gulp). I didn’t realise at first. I was too busy trying to look after myself and get the boat back under control. I still don’t understand how it could have happened. He was an experienced sailor. By the time I regained my balance and looked around, he was gone. Vanished. Not a sign of him anywhere (tears). I can only assume his lifeline mustn’t have been attached properly. I know for sure he was wearing a lifejacket – I gave it to him myself. Even if there was a problem and it didn’t inflate, he could always have blown it up manually. He would have known that. Unless maybe he banged his head and knocked himself out….
Of course, I tried to search for him, but manoeuvring a boat like that on my own was not easy. Oh God, poor Daniel (accept offer of tissues).
Twenty Years a Stranger (The Stranger Series Book 1) Page 36