Distress Signals

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  ‘Not until the day you came to the prison.’

  ‘Yes, well. After you were found guilty I thought there was little point in keeping any more secrets then. You didn’t suspect before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘I didn’t really think about it.’

  ‘But the darkness . . . Did you not wonder where it came from?’

  Romain shrugged. ‘I thought it was inside of everyone.’

  ‘Have you hurt anyone else?’

  ‘There’s been some fights. I worked in a bar for a long time, people get drunk, say stupid things. But aside from that, no. I haven’t . . . I haven’t killed anyone else.’

  ‘But you came back to work here . . . Why?’

  ‘Because no one came for me after Sanne. Nothing happened at all. It was almost like it had never happened. So if the darkness comes . . .’ Romain looked away. ‘This is a safe place for me to be.’

  ‘Don’t you want to resist it though? Don’t you want to be good?’

  Romain shrugged. ‘It’s not about what I want.’

  ‘Tanner,’ she said. ‘Did any of it work?’

  ‘I thought it did, at first. But over time I realised that I could do what he told me, act like he showed me, and yet underneath I was still the same. He couldn’t test that, couldn’t see what was inside of me. He couldn’t see into my head. He just thought he could.’

  ‘You were faking.’

  ‘Basically, yes.’

  ‘Tell me one more thing.’ Corinne took as deep a breath as she could manage. ‘When you murdered Bastian, do you remember how it felt?’

  ‘Why do you want to know that?’

  ‘I just do.’

  ‘It felt . . . It felt good, Mama. Like I’d been sitting in the same position for a really long time and I’d just got up and stretched. Like all this stuff had been building up inside of me and then someone opened a vent.’

  ‘It was a relief, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is there something building up inside of you now?’

  ‘No,’ Romain said.

  Corinne didn’t believe him.

  ‘Well, Romi.’ She put a hand on his arm. They hadn’t touched since he was a boy of eleven; she would take the opportunity now, while she could. ‘The past is over. There’s little future left. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. My decisions weren’t your responsibility. You were just a child. I shouldn’t have blamed you. I should’ve tried harder with you, tried to love you. For a long time I told myself that I couldn’t love you because of what you were, but maybe, if I had loved you, I could’ve changed who you became. But by God, Romi, didn’t you make it so damn difficult.’

  Next to her, Romain nodded silently.

  ‘I know, Mama, and I’m sorry. So, what happens—’

  He stopped abruptly, looked down at the knife sticking out of his side, blinked in the light reflecting off the blade.

  Back up at Corinne, eyes wide in question. ‘Mama?’

  ‘I’m sorry for this too,’ she said. ‘But I have to do it.’ She pushed the knife in further. Blood pushed its way out of Romain’s lips and down his chin. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you into this world, Romi, so, before I leave it, I’m going to take you back out.’

  Corinne pushed the knife in further again, tried to twist it. Felt it meet resistance, like a bone.

  ‘I don’t care what happens to me,’ she said, ‘but I doubt anything will. There’s a reason I didn’t wait for you to go ashore on a day off, or finish your contract and travel somewhere else. I came aboard for the same reason you did. Because, out here, you can end someone else’s life and get away with it.’ Romain was still looking at her, but she didn’t think he was seeing her any more. His eyes were unfocused, glazed. ‘This, I’ve realised, is the only way. It always was. I just wish I’d done it sooner, before you took my family from me. Mikki. Jean. And that poor boy, Bastian. That girl, Sanne. The life that was inside of her.’

  She stood up and went to sit on Romain’s other side, the one that didn’t have a ten-inch butcher knife swiped from one of the restaurant kitchens sticking out of it, or a pool of wet, glossy blood sinking into the sheets.

  Then Corinne did something she didn’t think she’d ever done before and, now, would never have the chance to do again.

  She put an arm around her first-born son and pulled him close.

  And she waited for him to die.

  Adam

  I’d jumped before I’d decided that I was going to.

  Air whistled past my ears as I plummeted towards the sea, dark but for the panes of moonlight breaking into tiny shards on its surface. At first I seemed to be moving in slow-motion and the surface seemed miles below, then it was rushing up to meet me faster than my mind could follow.

  I had to find Peter. I had to save him.

  If I didn’t, he and I would be the same.

  A fragment of a memory from somewhere bobbed up: hitting water from this height is just like hitting concrete. I tried to straighten up, to grip the back of my thighs with my hands, but I was too late. I hit the water at an angle and every nerve ending I had was set ablaze with white-hot pain.

  I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them again, I was underwater.

  It was nowhere near as dark as I expected it to be. My shoes had come off and now, past my bare feet, there was a blackness. But above my head, just beneath the surface, it was brighter than it had appeared to be above. It was clear too. I could see no dirt or fish.

  But I couldn’t see Peter either.

  Was Sarah down here too? I thought about it: if he’d pushed her into the water late on the first night, where had the ship been? Miles and miles and miles away from here, surely. It would’ve only just left Barcelona. She might be in the same sea, but she was nowhere near me.

  All I wanted was to go back to her. Let her come back to me, as she was planning to.

  Now I knew for sure I’d never be able to.

  As I look up through the water, the hull of the Celebrate loomed to my right, the lights of the Oceanic and Atlantic decks twinkling, tinny music drifting down.

  I started to sink. Pressure began to build in my chest. I moved my arms to swim towards the surface and—

  Fuck.

  A hot poker of pain, deep inside my shoulder joint. I must have dislocated my shoulder with the force of the impact.

  My lungs felt as if they were about to burst. I had to take a breath.

  I moved my legs; they felt alright. I started kicking them, propelling myself slowly but surely to the surface, but I’d never been a strong swimmer and I went nowhere fast.

  I saw a familiar shape bobbing on the water: a lifebuoy. Someone must have thrown it in. Who? Had someone seen us? What had they seen? What if Peter was still alive? What would he tell the FBI when they came to question us? Would he still try to blame me? Would he tell them that I’d pushed him off?

  The bloody scarf was in his room but Megan was all over mine. He’d killed her on my balcony. I’d spent half the day with Megan, unwittingly building up a case against me, collecting witnesses for the prosecution.

  I needed to get out. I needed to survive.

  I needed to be sure I’d be around to tell them my side of the story.

  I started to kick faster, aiming for the lifebuoy, my lungs feeling like they were ripping, coming apart, the pain in my shoulder making me want to scream out, muscles burning with exhaustion—

  I burst through the surface.

  I opened my mouth to suck down as much oxygen as I possibly could, coughing and spluttering.

  Jesus Christ.

  I was alive. I was okay.

  Where was Peter?

  I was close enough to the lifebuoy to reach out and touch it but, when I gripp
ed it with my right arm and threw my left – hanging limp, the elbow at a disconcerting angle – over it, it started to flip. I realised it was only offering assistance, not rescue, and that even though I was already exhausted I’d have to keep my legs moving to keep my head above water.

  Looking at the lifebuoy now, up close, I saw that its colour was faded, its surface scratched and ripped. A chunk of seaweed was wrapped around its rope, and the rope itself was frayed and unfurling. No one had thrown it in. It had been here already, floating in the sea.

  No one had seen us.

  I looked around, turning. Scanning the surface in all directions. I saw nothing except the white foam of breaking waves.

  I heard it for the first time then, faint and in the distance:

  Whump. Whump. Whump.

  I knew the sound, I just couldn’t remember what made it.

  I saw something maybe fifteen or twenty feet beyond my left arm: a dark shape bobbing on the surface.

  Whump, whump, whump.

  The noise was getting louder.

  Watching the shape, I caught a glimpse of short brown hair. Hair I knew was a lighter colour when it wasn’t soaking wet. It was on a body floating facedown in the water.

  It was Peter.

  Peter is dead.

  I let out a sob.

  Peter was dead because I’d pushed him over because he’d killed Sarah because he’d loved his wife.

  Should I go and get him? Try to save him? Was it already too late?

  Would it do any good?

  Whump-whump-whump-whump-whump—

  A blinding glare so bright that for a second it seemed as if the sun had shot up into the sky. But the glare moved, and there was a dark shadow above it, and then blades spinning above that.

  A helicopter.

  That’s what the sound was. The FBI had come for me.

  No, wait. They couldn’t possibly have got here by now. I’d just gone in the water a minute or two ago. It must be the French coast guard, come from Nice to help look for Megan. Instead, they’d found me.

  Whump-whump-whump-whump-whump.

  It was directly above me now, the helicopter, blowing waves out from the centre of its whirlwind, splashing water up in my face. The sound was thunderous, tunnelling through my brain, pounding through my chest.

  I couldn’t see Peter’s body any more. It was drifting away and the spray was making it impossible to track its movement.

  I had to decide what to do.

  Should I let Peter go?

  Should I pretend I knew nothing?

  I could say that I fell. Or that I’d jumped. Grief had driven me to it.

  Grief? the FBI would ask. Grief over who?

  My girlfriend, I’ll tell them. Sarah, my girlfriend. She disappeared from this ship nearly two weeks ago. After she did, a man contacted me. I came to meet him in Barcelona. We boarded the ship. Yesterday we met Megan, the woman who was reported missing this morning.

  They’d know what to do.

  The helicopter’s beam had stopped on me. They could see me, they knew exactly where I was. A rope ladder was dropping down.

  But what about Peter? His body bobbed in the dark waters somewhere beyond the light. They hadn’t seen him yet.

  I felt the grip of a hand on my arm and turned to find myself face to face with a man in a wetsuit wearing a thick mask over his face. He was saying something to me. He looped an arm around my ribcage and I stopped having to kick, stopped having to stay above the water. Just as well, because I didn’t have the strength to any more.

  If I was going to attempt to save Peter, I had to tell them now.

  Or maybe not telling them was saving him – saving him from the things people would say, the things they would think. If I said nothing now, no one would ever know what he’d done. I could say he’d disappeared while we were on the ship, that I’d climbed into his cabin to look for him, but he’d been gone. There’d be no trial, no justice for Sarah or Megan, but what would it change if there was? They were gone, they weren’t coming back. The man responsible was floating, most likely dead, in the sea beside me.

  A red basket was being lowered on a rope.

  The man in the wetsuit shouted something at me, but I didn’t understand it, so he moved closer, shouted it again right into my ear:

  ‘Is there anybody else in the water?’

  I wouldn’t be like Peter. I could never be. I’d pushed him in a fit of anger but then I jumped in too. I’d been planning on saving him. I hadn’t meant to do what I’d done.

  But he had.

  He’d planned to kill Sarah. And Megan.

  ‘Did you see anybody else in the water? Did you go in alone?’

  We’d reached the basket and another man in a wetsuit. Together they lifted me up into it, securing me with clasps and grips.

  I was facing the night sky now, the stars swinging before me, back and forth. The sky seemed full of them.

  Sarah was gone for ever, I knew that now. Somehow, I would have to learn to live with that. To live without her. To move on. To pick up the dreams that had cost me so much. That had cost me her.

  I would have to learn to live with that.

  Did I believe there could be a way?

  ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear me?’

  I turned my head towards the man in the wetsuit and nodded.

  ‘Were you alone in the water? Did you see anyone else?’

  Whump-whump-whump-whump-whump.

  Above me, the helicopter’s blades spun. The pain in my shoulder was unbearable. I started to shake.

  Where is she?

  Now I knew, and knowing was enough.

  It would have to be.

  ‘No,’ I said finally. ‘It was only me. There was no one else.’

  The man in the wetsuit nodded.

  The basket began to rise.

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  Adam

  We arranged to meet in a bar in Gatwick’s South Terminal. I had a couple of hours to kill before my afternoon flight to Los Angeles, and Becky had said it wouldn’t take her long to drive out from the city.

  I got there first and took a seat facing the doors. When she arrived, I recognised her straightaway. She looked just like she had in her Facebook pictures – short and soft with dark eyes and caramel skin – only here in the flesh, solemn and nervous instead of happy and smiling.

  She was bundled up in a heavy wool coat, scarf and gloves. As she peeled the various layers off her person, we talked about the bitter January cold and how lucky I was to not be trying to fly out a couple of days before, when the runway had been snowed in. We ordered coffees and joked awkwardly about how awful they were. I asked Becky about her job, and explained why I was travelling to LA.

  ‘To take meetings,’ I said, ‘which I was really excited about until I found out that that’s basically all anyone does out there, all the time, and rarely does anything come out of it. Still, they’re flying me out there and putting me up in a hotel, and the sun will be shining, so . . .’

  ‘And how are you?’

  So many things were different now, in this After life. That question was one of them. Before, it was just good manners. A polite enquiry. A flippant ‘Fine, thanks. And you?’ was all that was expected in return. But now people actually wanted to know how I was.

  ‘Well, I’m seeing someone,’ I said. When I saw a flicker of surprise cross Becky’s face, I added, ‘A therapist, I mean. Once a week.’

  ‘Is it helping?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought it would be more . . . prescriptive, I suppose? Like he’d tell you what to do, how to cope. But he just sits there and listens.’

  ‘Back when I was in college,’ Becky said, ‘my older brother died. Suicide.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘People d
idn’t know what to say, so they’d just go with variations of time heals all wounds. Everyone kept telling me that the longer I waited, the less it would hurt.’

  I nodded in recognition. I’d been hearing that a lot lately, with the occasional ‘At least you’re still young . . .’ thrown in too. I wondered sometimes if these supposed well-wishers could hear themselves speak.

  ‘They were all wrong,’ Becky said. ‘It’s fifteen years ago now, nearly, and it feels just like it did the day we found him. But the thing is, it does get . . . Not better exactly, but easier. Even though it hurts just as much. A grief counsellor at my uni said it’s like, when it first happens, you fall into a hole of grief. You can’t do anything. You don’t want to do anything. All you can do is focus on the next five minutes, or the next hour, or just today. Then, over time, you’ll suddenly find that, while you were pulling yourself through time in these little increments, you’ve also managed to climb out. The hole is still there – it always will be – but you learn to live around it. You can. You will.’

  ‘Yes. Well.’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’s just gone eleven. She should be here by now, right?’

  Becky didn’t call me on my blatant subject changing.

  ‘I’ll call her,’ she said instead, picking up her phone. There was a pause while the call connected. ‘We’re here,’ she said into the receiver. ‘Where are you? . . . Okay. Well, we’re upstairs in the Wetherspoon’s. The stairs by Marks & Spencer. Do you know where . . . Okay. See you in a sec.’ She ended the call and looked at me. ‘She just got off the train. She’ll be here in a minute or two.’

  I took a deep breath in, let it out slowly.

  ‘It’ll be okay.’ Becky put a hand on my hand. ‘You’ll be okay.’

  ‘What am I going to say to her?’

  ‘Trust me when I tell you that she’s more afraid about what she’s going to say to you.’