Distress Signals
Page 33
‘Why?’
‘Because she thinks this is all her fault.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘She had to do what she did. The way Peter acted afterwards, everything that happened – it only proves that.’
‘That’s what I’ve been saying to her.’
‘Peter did this. No one else.’
‘I know.’ A pause. ‘And I hope you know that too, Adam.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Meaning . . . ?’
‘That email you sent me, right after you got back to Cork. It sounded like you were blaming yourself for Sarah being on that ship.’
‘It was my fault she was on that ship. If I’d been better to her, better for her, if I’d kept my promises, she wouldn’t have gone looking anywhere else. She wouldn’t have started something up with Ethan. And so, she wouldn’t have been on that ship.’
‘But Adam, you can’t—’
‘But what I’ve realised is that the ship wasn’t the problem. Sarah should’ve been able to get on it and get off it again in one piece. She should’ve been able to come home. It shouldn’t have been a dangerous thing to do. It was Peter who made it that way. It was Peter who did this. It doesn’t matter what the chain of events was that led up to him doing it. He could’ve stopped at any time. So I can’t blame myself. I won’t. And she shouldn’t either.’
‘Well,’ Becky said, ‘that was a good speech.’
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ I smiled. ‘Sometimes I even believe it myself.’
‘Regardless, I think it would mean a lot if you said that to her. That you don’t blame her. She’s been struggling, ever since it happened. She didn’t ever imagine for a second that he’d be . . . like he was. That he’d go to those lengths just to . . .’
I didn’t hear the rest of Becky’s sentence, because I was looking over her shoulder at the woman who’d just arrived in the bar.
She was standing in the doorway, her head turning to search the crowd. The long, glossy blonde hair was gone, replaced with a mousy-brown colour and cut clear off her shoulders. Gone too were the stylish, expensive clothes I’d seen her wearing in pictures; she was wearing jeans, trainers and a brightly coloured winter jacket, the kind skiers wear. A squishy-looking bundle was perched on her hip: a toddler so well insulated against the winter weather that his arms and legs stuck out at angles, like a starfish. Only his flushed face was visible. One mitten-covered hand was reaching for his mother’s hair while the other gripped a toy truck.
She saw Becky first, then her eyes came to rest on me.
I will admit it. I did feel, just for a second, a beat of resentment. What if she hadn’t stayed for as long as she did? What if she’d never married him? What if she and Becky had come up with a different escape plan? What if, after it became clear that he wasn’t going to stop until he found her, she’d contacted him somehow and told him the truth? Sarah would still be alive.
But then I caught myself. Corrected myself. She would never have had to do any of this if it weren’t for Peter. This was nobody’s fault but his.
She started walking towards us.
I pushed back my chair and stood up, just as Becky turned and saw her. She stood up too, hugging her friend and whispering something in her ear. I thought it might have been the same thing she’d said to me.
It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.
The toddler squealed.
‘Hello, Christopher!’ Becky said brightly. ‘Do you want to go for a little walk?’ She took him in her arms. ‘Come here and we’ll go for a little walk. Let Mummy talk to this nice man for a minute . . .’
Then we were alone.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I admitted.
She shook her head. ‘Neither do I.’
‘How about we start with the basics?’ I stuck out my hand. ‘I’m Adam. It’s good to finally meet you.’
‘I was surprised that you wanted to, after . . . Oh!’ She suddenly remembered my outstretched hand and grasped it. ‘It’s good to meet you too, Adam. It really is. I’m Estelle.’
Author’s Note
At the time of writing, maritime law is applied in the real world just as it is in this novel: cruise ship passengers sailing in international waters are subject to the authority of the country where the ship is registered, with the exception of citizens of the United States who fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI. Although thanks to a 1976 environmental agreement called the Barcelona Convention no part of the Mediterranean Sea is technically classed as international waters, in practice the nations bordering it still lose their jurisdictional claims and responsibilities twenty-four miles off their and their neighbours’ coasts. The riveting nature of this author’s note thus far is why in Distress Signals I took some artistic liberty and simplified the situation somewhat.
For more information on maritime law, real-world cruise ship crime and the fight for better passenger protection and improved safety for all at sea, visit: www.internationalcruisevictims.org
Acknowledgements
To my super-agent Jane Gregory and her team at Gregory & Company, my editor extraordinaire Sara O’Keeffe and everyone at Corvus/Atlantic, and the whole Gill Hess team here in Dublin: you are all lovely, talented, hardworking life-changers and I thank you for all you have done for me and for this book. Go team Distress Signals!
Special gin-laced thanks to Sheena Lambert and Hazel Gaynor for pushing me to get this show on the road and then keeping me sane during the journey, even while I was asking things like ‘How wine-y is that wine?’ at the BGEIBAs. (I told you I’d get that in.) Thanks to Niamh O’Connor, Patricia McVeigh and Cliona Lewis for their help with some of the crime and cruising details, and to Vanessa O’Loughlin of Writing.ie for her years of generous support, not just of me but of countless other Irish writers at all stages of their career. (I hope Sam Blake gets to collect on all the good karma now!) Thanks also to Ellen Brickley, Eva Heppel, Elizabeth R. Murray and Andrea Summers for all the encouragement that came in the form of coffee, cocktails and cheesecake. To all the writers, publishing professionals, booksellers, bloggers, tweeters and baristas I’ve got to know in the last few years: thank you. You are a very lovely bunch.
The seed that grew into the idea for Distress Signals was planted by ‘Lost at Sea’, an article by Jon Ronson which first appeared in the Guardian Weekend magazine in November 2011 and was later included in Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries. So thank you, Jon – and thank you, anonymous person who left their copy of that magazine in a café somewhere so that my mother could later pick it up and bring it home to me…
Thanks to Sheelagh Kelly and Iain Harris for always believing, and with love to Mum, Dad, John and Claire for that and everything else.
About the Author
Catherine Ryan Howard was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1982. Prior to writing full-time, Catherine worked as a campsite courier in France and a front desk agent in Walt Disney World, Florida, and most recently was a social media marketer for a major publisher. She is currently studying for a BA in English at Trinity College Dublin.
First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2016 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Catherine Ryan Howard, 2016
The moral right of Catherine Ryan Howard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locali
ties, is entirely coincidental.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 838 7
EBook ISBN: 978 1 78239 839 4
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