Distress Signals

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  My Sarah might be gone for ever, if what Rose said was true. Now every evening and weekend and birthday and fortnight’s holiday and special occasion was stretching out in front of me, empty and cold and dark. A drowning depth of loneliness. An endless abyss.

  I’d been with Sarah so long that I could barely remember what it felt like to live without her. I didn’t know if I could. I didn’t want to have to try.

  But then: her and a faceless him, together in a hotel room.

  My phone buzzed in my hand. Jack, calling again. I put my phone on silent, slipped it into my pocket and got out of the car.

  I typed the entry code into the keypad for our block and waited for the electronic click sound that signalled success. I pushed the door open, blinked in the dim light of the lobby and, after a second, noticed that there was something in our cubbyhole.

  We didn’t have locked letterboxes, only open shelves in the foyer. One for each apartment. We rarely received anything that wasn’t a slim white bill or a thick brown packet covered in Amazon logos, so the fact that there was now a small padded manila packet waiting for me immediately got my attention.

  When had I last checked the post?

  I couldn’t remember. Maybe Monday, when I’d got back from the talk at UCC. If even then.

  I pulled the packet out, turned it over in my hands.

  French stamps. Postmarked Nice, France, two days before. Tuesday 12th August. A sticker with a tracking number and the word priorité. Addressed to me in handwriting I didn’t recognise.

  The packet itself was about the size of a slim paperback book, but I could feel something smaller than that through the paper. Something thin and hard, free to slide around inside.

  There was a pull-tab on the flap. I tore it open, pulled one side of the packet towards me so I could look inside.

  And saw the wine-coloured cover of an EU passport.

  Slowly, I extracted it from the envelope using just my fingertips. The passport had a harp on the front, above the word pás. It was an Irish one.

  I turned it over, opened it to the photo page.

  The image shook in front of me – because, I realised, my hands were shaking.

  I let the empty packet flutter to the ground so I could take hold of the passport with two hands.

  By my right hand: Sarah’s face.

  By my left: a note in her handwriting.

  A sticky note, like a Post-It but white, square, with some kind of blue logo at the top. Two small wavy lines, centred.

  I didn’t recognise it at the time. I don’t think that, at this point, I’d ever seen that logo before.

  Underneath it, three handwritten words.

  Well, two words and an initial.

  I’M SORRY—S.

  I stared, disbelieving.

  And then I learned what weak at the knees really meant.

  Part Two

  LOST AT SEA

  Corinne

  The cabin attendants’ pre-shift meeting was held every morning at seven-thirty in the crew bar.

  Fifty or more cabin attendants assembled, all in uniform (a navy and white dress with white tights for the ladies, navy trousers and a white T-shirt for the men, white soft-soled shoes for everyone), all chatting in various languages, all saying different versions of essentially the same thing, which was that they were not looking forward to work today. It was Changeover, when the couple of thousand ­passengers on board would leave the ship to make way for the couple of thousand new passengers who’d start streaming onto it this afternoon. This meant check-out cleans, which were considerably more work than stay-overs, and with boarding starting at two they’d have to do them in double-quick time.

  But Corinne kind of liked the extra pressure. It would mean there’d be less time to think.

  The crew bar had only closed a few hours ago; the air still stank of stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer. As Corinne picked her way through the crowd, she felt the soles of her shoes stick to the linoleum.

  ‘Changeover day, guys,’ Michael, one of the accommodation supervisors, called out from the front of the room. He always spoke in English, the working language of the ship.

  A hush fell.

  ‘Everyone’s favourite, I know,’ he continued. ‘Now’ – he glanced down at his clipboard – ‘we have a few issues today. The aft B ­elevator bank is only going as far as twelve. We are still having an issue with the air conditioning on six – I hear it’s blowing warm so probably best to leave it in the Off position. Laundry had a breakdown with one of the ironing machines so we’re a little short on the double sheet with the piping.’ A groan rippled through the room. ‘Guys, come on. We can manage. And finally, whoever has the junior suites on eleven come see me – you’ve won a protein spill kit!’

  There was a smattering of applause, but it was sarcastic. ‘Protein spill’ was Blue Wave speak for a bodily fluid that was no longer in a body. Nine times out of ten, this meant vomit. The other time, the cabin attendant was liable to threaten to quit on the spot.

  Corinne collected her electronic master key and then headed for the forward service elevators. They’d take her to her charges: a cluster of exterior deluxe cabins built back-to-back near the bow on Deck 10.

  Most attendants had cabins lined up one after another in a row, which meant walking to one end of them and then slowly working your way back. If towards the end of your row you encountered a DND – a Do Not Disturb sign – you’d have to walk the length of your section twice, going back to the DND later in the day. Corinne much preferred her tight loop of cabins and, better yet, they were right by a landing, the hidden area off the guest corridor where attendants’ carts and supplies were stored and where the service elevators stopped.

  She was lucky, in that regard. She mightn’t have managed otherwise. Every little thing made a difference, these days.

  Corinne collected her cart now: a plastic storage unit on wheels that was as high as her chest. Every day it seemed to get heavier, becoming harder and harder for her to push. She used her own key to open the small storage closet where the vacuums were kept, picking the one with the white stripe of corrector fluid across the handle that she knew worked for sure. Michael had promised a delivery of brand-new ones would be waiting for them at port today, but Corinne would believe it when she saw it. Supplies of everything were always limited.

  After a deep breath, Corinne hoisted the vacuum onto the hook at the side of the cart. She paused a moment to recover from the exertion and then slowly pushed the cart as far as the first cabin on her list, Deluxe Superior #1001.

  She rapped on its door, two firm knocks. Waited a moment or two, listening for signs of life on the other side. There was nothing. Confident the cabin was empty, she pulled her master key from the elastic cord clipped to her waistband and unlocked the door with a swipe.

  As per regulations, Corinne turned to pull her cart across the door behind her. This was so other crew members and passengers would know she was inside.

  Her eyes flicked to the strip of black plastic on the side of her cart, the letters raised on it in white.

  DUPONT, CORINNE

  It was only the size of a nail file, at most, but to Corinne, it might as well have been a giant neon flashing sign. There were thousands of people aboard the Celebrate. What were the chances that not one of them would recognise the name? Everything was on the Internet these days, and then there were those documentaries, replayed and repeated on cable channels all over the world, all of the time. It was only luck that she hadn’t been identified so far. How much longer would her luck last?

  Time was running out for her in more ways than one.

  She turned and went into the cabin, and her heart sank.

  There was rubbish everywhere. Empty water bottles overflowing in the bin, discarded shopping bags lying on the floor, the remnants of what may have been a ja
m doughnut walked into and across the Celebrate’s carpeting. The sheets hung off the bed, one of the pillows was out on the balcony and every single towel, amenity and toilet roll in the bathroom had been used. The occupants hadn’t even bothered to flush the toilet before they’d left.

  Seeing this and knowing how much energy she was going to have to find to clean it, a wave of exhaustion swept over Corinne. The strength went out of her legs. Putting a hand on the wall for support, she gently lowered herself into a sitting position at the end of one of the beds.

  She just needed a minute.

  One minute, and then she’d get going.

  Corinne hadn’t had any breakfast, which she realised now had been a mistake. But eating no longer appealed to her and so she regularly forgot to do it. She couldn’t even recall what having an appetite felt like. When she looked at food now, she just saw an inanimate object, like a book or a piece of furniture.

  But still, she knew she had to eat. She had to stay strong for as long as it took.

  She glanced around the room, searching for a forgotten chocolate bar or a fizzy drink. Guests often left unopened food like that behind.

  Slowly and carefully, Corinne bent down to look under the bed.

  There was something under there, but it wasn’t a forgotten sugary snack.

  What is that?

  With her foot, she nudged it out from under the bed so she could reach down and pick it up.

  It was a photograph, the back of it facing up. Small and almost square, with white borders around black. A Polaroid.

  Hadn’t they stopped making those?

  She straightened back up, turned the photo over—

  Corinne couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing.

  She blinked, looked again.

  It was a family portrait, its subjects arranged by descending height in front of a fireplace: a young husband and wife and two small boys. There was a baby in the mother’s arms.

  It had been taken on a Christmas morning, many years ago.

  She knew this because she remembered it being taken.

  Corinne was sitting on the edge of a bed in Deluxe Superior #1001, one of more than a thousand cabins on the Celebrate, holding a photograph of her younger self.

  How is this possible?

  Her hands began to shake. She knew how it was possible.

  There was only one way.

  He was here. This was confirmation. He was here, and now he knew that she was too.

  That evening, there was no sign of Lydia in the crew mess.

  Adam

  The next morning – Friday – Jack, Maureen and I met at Angelsea Street to file a missing persons report.

  ‘Angelsea Street’ meant Cork’s Garda headquarters, even though the city council offices, district court and a host of businesses all shared the same address. It was a site I passed often but I’d never been inside. Garda HQ was an imposing grey block sat on a corner, its design all symmetry and no-nonsense. I imagined the architect’s front elevation sketch wasn’t too unlike the houses you drew in crayon or built in Lego as a kid: a large rectangle with one big door in the middle and neat, evenly spaced rows of square windows on either side. An Gardaí, their headquarters warned, didn’t have time for frivolous aesthetics. They had crimes to solve. Criminals to catch.

  We waited in reception, an indulgence of stone flooring slabs and natural light made possible by an atrium well hidden behind the no-nonsense façade. It was eerily quiet in there, like a cathedral. TV and movies, it turned out, were a pathetically ineffectual primer for what police stations were actually like.

  Jack left Maureen with me while he went to the reception desk. A male Garda who looked like he still got asked for ID at the off-licence stood behind it, flipping idly through a tabloid newspaper. He didn’t look up as Jack approached, although he must have known he was there. But Jack, dressed for an Early Bird Special and a night in the bingo hall – a plaid shirt, shorts, socks and sandals – had shuffled up to the desk and, now that he’d got to it, was taking a second to smooth down the wisps of steel-grey hair he liked to comb over his spreading bald spot. If I didn’t know better, I’d have guessed he was there to get a passport form stamped. That’s probably what the Garda thought too.

  ‘Good morning,’ Jack said. ‘I’m here to—’ He faltered. ‘My daughter is missing.’

  Missing.

  The word echoed around the chamber.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Maureen said beside me. Her hand was on my right arm, squeezing it, leaning on it. Unlike her husband, her appearance had seemingly dropped right off her list of priorities. Her hair – blonde like Sarah’s at the ends, grey at the roots – looked uncombed, and without her usual make-up her eyes were small and sunken, the skin around them hanging slack, in folds. She had an old cardigan thrown over her shoulders that, up close, smelled faintly of something medicinal.

  I didn’t want to think about what I looked like, not having slept much or shaved, and still in yesterday’s clothes.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, on auto-pilot. ‘It’s okay.’

  I’d spent the night thinking, among other things, about what a strange concept a missing person was. At least the adult version of it. You could be fine, perfectly okay, happy even, but just because a selection of other people didn’t know your current location, you were a cause for concern, potentially for the police.

  Wasn’t that odd? Wasn’t that like saying that it was against the law to leave us?

  Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it made perfect sense. Maybe I just hadn’t slept for longer than thirty minutes at a time in the last thirty-six hours.

  The cherub-faced Garda came out from behind his desk and ushered the three of us into a conference room one floor up.

  Sunlight was streaming in its windows, slowly cooking the space. A wall of stale hot air hit us the moment we crossed the threshold. Garda Cherub hurriedly pushed open the windows and dropped the blinds down halfway, leaving a waist-high sunbeam to illuminate currents of swirling dust. We took three seats on the same side of the large table, the only side in the shade. We were offered water from the dispenser in the corner, which came served in translucent plastic cups that caved and bent under our fingertips.

  These are the kinds of details you remember when you don’t want to remember the rest.

  Someone would be with us shortly, Garda Cherub promised. Then he left us there for half an hour.

  Sweat began to pool in the small of my back and in my armpits, gluing my T-shirt to my skin. The water from the dispenser tasted lukewarm. We didn’t speak much while we waited, although Maur­een did pray. I could hear the clink of the rosary beads moving through her fingers, hitting against the edge of the table from time to time.

  At one point, Jack got up and started to pace.

  I kept my phone on the table in front of me, in case Sarah called or texted. The charger for it was in my pocket, in case the battery started to drain. Rose and Moorsey were back at our apartment, in case Sarah showed up there.

  The door opened abruptly and a female Garda entered the room, carrying a sheaf of documents and smiling brightly at us as if we were there to talk to her about booking a sun holiday.

  ‘Garda Cusack,’ she said, reaching across to shake hands with each of us in turn. Her palm was damp. She took a seat on the opposite side of the table, facing us, blinking in the glare of the sun. ‘Hot day out there today, isn’t it? And there was me thinking that downpour last night would break the heat.’ She pulled a small leather notebook from a pocket and flipped it open to a clean page. A retractable pen was stuck inside it. She picked it up, clicked it, saw that she’d disappeared the nib and clicked it again. ‘So. I’m told that you want to file a missing persons report?’

  Cusack was my age, I guessed. She looked less like a guard than she did someone wearing a Garda uniform on a dare. Her hair was yellow-blond
e and pulled into a half-arsed attempt at a ponytail, leaving wayward strands of it hanging limply around her face. She tucked one behind her ear now. Cusack was heavyset or at least appeared to be in her shapeless Garda blues: navy wool trousers, cornflower short-sleeved shirt with epaulettes, a chunky black leather belt with various pouches hanging off it. Her cheeks were bright pink and a thin sheen of sweat glistened at her temples.

  ‘Our daughter is missing,’ Jack said. He’d sat down. ‘We think she might be in some trouble. We called our local station yesterday and they told us, if we hadn’t heard from her by this morning, we should come here first thing and make a report.’

  ‘We have pictures,’ Maureen said suddenly. ‘I brought some.’ She started rooting in her handbag. ‘You’ll need those, won’t you?’

  I had the passport, note and the envelope they’d come in stored carefully in a clear Ziploc bag. I took it from my jeans pocket now and slid it across the tabletop towards Cusack.

  ‘This came yesterday.’ It was surprising to me how steady and normal my voice sounded when, underneath it, anxiety was running amok through every vein. ‘It was delivered to our home. It’s ­Sarah’s. There’s a note inside, in her handwriting. But the handwriting on the envelope isn’t hers. And she’s not in France, she’s in Spain. She’s supposed to be, anyway. Barcelona. She flew there last Sunday. ­Possibly with . . . With . . .’ I glanced at Maureen and Jack. ‘A friend.’

  There was a beat of silence while Cusack just looked at us, moving from face to face in turn.

  Then:

  ‘Why don’t we start at the beginning?’ She held the clicky pen over her notebook. ‘What’s Sarah’s last name?’

  ‘O’Connell,’ we said in unison.

  Cusack directed her next question to Jack.

  ‘And she’s how old?’

  ‘Twenty-nine,’ he answered. ‘She’ll be thirty in November. The eighteenth.’

  ‘Can I have your first names?’

  ‘I’m Jack, and this is my wife Maureen.’