by Alex Day
But it didn’t matter because it was obvious it was not going to work. Some of the passengers started to get angry, shouting and moving around on the boat in a way that pushed its already dubious seaworthiness to the limit. It shipped in water every time there was too much of a commotion, its sides so low anyway that even the slightest increase in weight on one side or the other put it under the water level. People were bailing out the brine, with their hands or cups or water bottles, but it was seeping in quicker than they could get it out, spilling insidiously over the grey rubber like an ominous lava flow.
Fatima was soaked and freezing; a strong wind was blowing and the air was cold and harsh. She was trembling uncontrollably, from the chill and the convulsive vomiting and the heart-stopping fear that they were floating there only for the brief period of respite before they drowned. She tried to comfort the sobbing children but couldn’t. The pretence that she had started out with – that they were going on a midnight picnic – seemed not only ridiculous but now also cruel. In the unlikely event that they survived, they’d never want to have a picnic again. Arguments were breaking out, people shouting and fighting about what they should do, but it was all pointless because one moment’s thought was all it took to know that there was nothing whatsoever they could do.
The grandfather was weeping quietly into his granddaughter’s curly hair.
‘What kind of a man am I that I can’t save my family?’ she heard him mutter. It was a question, wrested from the soul of someone so desperate and invested with so much pain that there was no possible answer.
The infant, miraculously, remained fast asleep, oblivious.
Time passed; it was impossible to know how much. She tried to soothe her twins, stroking their filthy, matted hair, nestling them against her body as best she could, what with the bulk of her life-jacket and the incipient bump of her baby. She didn’t know what else to do.
Time goes slowly when you are waiting to die, Fatima discovered.
And then a light was spotted, to the west, and not too far off. Seized by excitement, everyone moved towards it.
‘Sit tight!’ Ehsan’s voice was authoritative and sure. Fatima almost felt proud of him and then immediately threw up, or would have done if she had anything left inside her. Proud of her rapist? What madness – but then nothing made any sense in this utterly surreal, completely terrifying environment.
‘For God’s sake, sit down, don’t move!’ Ehsan had taken off his shirt – it had once been white but was now a dirty shade of grey, but it still appeared pale and luminous in the feeble light of the moon. He began to wave it in slow, regular circles around his head. Fatima couldn’t believe that the approaching boat could really see it, but miraculously, unbelievably, it continued to make its way towards them. Soon they could discern its markings; those of the Greek coastguard. A cheer rang out and people leapt to their feet, ignoring Ehsan’s previous instruction, behaving with the lack of foresight that is the penance of the desperate.
They lurched towards what they saw as their salvation, leaning towards the approaching vessel, wobbling precariously in the flimsy dinghy, every movement bringing them closer to their doom. Water flooded in, cascading over the rubber sides in an unstoppable torrent, filling up the boat with a dead weight. Panic ensued, a frantic scrabbling for a position in a part of the boat that was still above water. The end came quickly. Within seconds, the boat had sunk, the grey rubber that had been their only protection from the sea gone.
We have our life-jackets, was all Fatima could think as she wrapped the twins’ arms around her neck and struggled to keep afloat. The boat was there, almost upon them. Surely we can’t die now, surely they’ll get to us in time? The placid acceptance of whatever fate should have in store for them which had been the only way she had got on board now disappeared. Like the little boy who didn’t want to die, she knew, with a desperate, searing lightning flash of realisation, that she didn’t, either.
‘Hold on tight. Don’t let go,’ she urged the girls. The wash of the coastguard boat drawing near sent a rush of water over their heads and they emerged, sputtering and spluttering but still breathing.
‘You can do it. Not long now.’
She went under again, and felt the girls go down with her. She pushed her arms upwards, kicking her legs frantically, desperately trying to keep Marwa and Maryam above the surface. But the more she tried to do this, the more she herself sank down. She couldn’t understand how the life-jackets, far from supporting them and giving them buoyancy, seemed to be dragging them under. They should have been enough. But they weren’t because she was sinking down and down, the girls going with her, the sea closing in above them, her frenzied fight for breath at an end. She reached out her arms, stretching them as far as she could, holding the twins above the water, but it was impossible. Her strength deserted her. As she blacked out all she could think was, save the children first.
Save them before me.
TWENTY-FOUR
Edie
Edie sat in the restaurant playing with her food. She should feel justified in her decision to go on the trip, not to pull out at the last moment as had crossed her mind. She should feel that everything was OK, because the text on her phone was from Laura.
Hey Edie! I am having a great time. Hope you are too. Love Laura.
The message was followed by a row of smileys, a cocktail, a palm tree and a balloon.
Edie had read it over and over again. The country code was the same as before – Greece – but the number was a different one. Edie ran the details back and forth in her mind as Vuk and the other guests ate slow roast lamb and made small talk. Patrick and his family were chattering away, seemingly oblivious to Vuk’s habitual taciturnity and Edie’s troubled silence. As people finished eating and began to drift off, to the toilets and the smoking area or outside into the fresh air, Edie could remain silent no longer. Suspicion was crowding her mind, doubts and questions pervading her thoughts. She showed her phone to Vuk.
Slowly, chewing his last mouthful of lamb, he read what she held in front of him. ‘Great news. If she were … if anything had happened to her, she wouldn’t be texting, would she?’ He swallowed and lifted his eyes to meet hers. ‘So now you really know for absolute certain that Laura is safe and well.’
Edie shut the phone off and put it back into her pocket.
‘No, I don’t. In fact, I know precisely the opposite.’
Vuk raised his eyebrows and tapped a cigarette out of a battered packet and onto the table.
‘I know nothing about Laura,’ reiterated Edie. ‘Because that message is not from her.’
The waiter came and cleared away the plates.
‘So the message says it’s from Laura but you know that it isn’t.’
The way Vuk said it belittled Edie, made her seem stupid. But she knew she was right.
‘It’s not from Laura. Firstly, she never calls me Edie, only Ed. That was odd about the first message. Secondly, she never, ever, ever, not in a million years, would use emoticons. She despises them.’
Vuk shrugged and flipped the cigarette from end to end in his hand.
‘She’s changed. People do.’
‘Not Laura. She’s the most stubborn, unbending, uncompromising person I’ve ever met.’ Edie was resolute. ‘After me, that is.’
Vuk did not respond.
‘What’s going on, Vuk?’ she demanded, to break his silence as much as anything else. ‘Someone is sending me messages pretending to be Laura and I don’t know why they’re doing that other than to make me think she’s OK when she’s not and it’s doing my head in.’
Vuk stood up and turned to leave the restaurant, motioning to Edie to follow him. Angrily she did so, wanting to shout after him that she needed answers but not wanting to create a commotion and embarrass Vuk in front of the guests. She still had her wretched job to think of. He led her to an outside seating area with a view of the canyon and lit his cigarette. He offered one to her even though she had tol
d him a hundred times that she didn’t smoke. She shuffled a little closer to him on the bench they were sitting on, desperately wanting some comfort, some reassurance.
‘There are weird things happening, Vuk,’ she pleaded, despairingly. ‘The hut on the hill, Laura’s scarf, the messages. None of it makes any sense.’
Vuk drew on his cigarette, long and hard.
‘It is all perfectly straightforward, Edie.’
She listened, desperate for a rational explanation that she could believe.
‘This is small and poor country,’ he explained, speaking quietly and unequivocally. ‘Some people are homeless. Plus there are Roma here.’
He paused, wrinkling his nose in disgust as if something smelt bad. ‘You’ve seen them, getting their children to beg in the old town. They are not good people. They have been using the hut. They probably stole the scarf from Laura and then dropped it up there.’
Slowly and deliberately, Vuk let his cigarette butt fall onto the stones where he ground it down with his right foot.
‘You don’t think …,’ Edie ventured hesitantly, frantically twiddling her hair between her fingers. ‘I mean, I thought – could these people have abducted Laura or killed her or something …? If they’re bad people like you say, it’s possible, isn’t it?’ Her voice had risen and was tinged with hysteria. ‘And they’re sending the texts to keep me off the trail until it’s gone cold?’
The cigarette butt had split apart and disintegrated under the pressure Vuk had applied. He was smoking another one already, still staring at the ground, seemingly fascinated by the tiny stones that lay there, rubbing the toe of his shoe into them and watching the white dust rise.
‘When we get back from this trip – I’m going to the police again. I’ll chain myself to the furniture there until they do something.’ She had spoken far too loudly, a high-pitched whine that she hated in herself but couldn’t stop, filling the silence left by Vuk’s failure to answer.
Very, very slowly, Vuk turned towards her. The look he gave her warned of things she could not fathom.
‘Edie, you are exaggerating as always. You will not go to the police because they do not care. And as for the messages – whatever your addled mind is telling you, they are from Laura. Who else would have your number?’
Edie bit the inside of her cheek as she considered this fact. It was true and stupid of her not to realise it. The knot of anxiety in her stomach tightened. Vuk was cross. She had really blown it now. Totally ruined everything. Vuk cast his second cigarette aside and, reaching out for Edie’s hand, gripped it firmly. She stood up and their feet tangled together and she almost tripped; he was standing on the lace of her Converse and as she pulled forward, the lace untied itself, letting a long cord of dirty white trail behind her. She ignored it, wanting to keep up with Vuk’s rapid march. He paused, planted a kiss on her head and smiled, his sexy, lop-sided smile.
‘It’s cute, the way you care so much about your sister.’
Edie didn’t reply. She couldn’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t care about their own sibling, identical twin or not. But then, there were always people who questioned the bond and disparaged it, perhaps even more than they would do about an ordinary brother or sister, perhaps because twins scared them with their togetherness and its associated exclusivity. Whatever. Vuk wasn’t angry after all and that was good because she needed him on side, needed his help. Or was it so she could keep track of him, of what he was doing? Right now, she wasn’t sure.
She watched as he strode towards the little clusters of guests and began to round them up. He led the group to the view of the bridge across the canyon, where angles for photos were discussed as well as awe at the feat of engineering required to build it. There was a narrow path that led away from the viewpoint to a lower rocky outcrop where an even more expansive vista could be seen. A few of the more intrepid guests, including Patrick, were heading down there, and Vuk followed, indicating to Edie to come along.
‘Get your camera ready, Edie,’ he instructed her. ‘These will be the pictures for the folks back home.’
Reluctantly, swallowing her fear, she stepped tentatively off the platform, attempting to walk exactly in his footsteps as if this would somehow offer protection from the chasm below.
Zayn appeared behind them, but Edie’s stifled terror was too great for her to care.
‘You should do your shoelace up, Edie,’ he advised her.
Inadvertently, she looked down and in so doing, caught a full on glimpse of the dizzying depths of the gorge. The fucking deepest in the world after the Grand Canyon. Edie could not imagine what had possessed her to come so close to the edge. She hated heights, was terrified of them. She felt dizzy and sick and nauseous with fear. But she could not go back now; there was a trail of people behind and no possibility for one to pass another. She had to keep going. The lace could wait, she couldn’t possibly bend down and retie it here, she might lose her balance and – and what might happen after that was too terrifying to contemplate.
She was right behind Vuk, not leaving his side, sheltering in his bulk and relying on it to keep her from falling. The path ended and the person at the front, who happened to be Patrick, stopped short. An almost comical effect of each one behind jarring to a halt ensued. Edie could hear Debs calling from above, presumably admonitions to Patrick to come back, not to be so stupid as to take a chance on this crumbling path. Whatever she was saying or doing was pointless as her words were lost in the air that filled the giant space beneath.
They all stood, speechless. Vuk reached out to Edie and pulled her gently towards him. She wondered fleetingly what had brought on such a public display of affection but assumed that the potency of the location was responsible. Being up here was enough to make anyone feel light-headed and cause them to act out of character.
Time seemed to stop and there was nothing but the bridge and the grey-white cliffs and the tumbling water, so far below as to be utterly silent. Edie managed, with trembling hands, to take a photo. As long as she didn’t look directly down, she could cope. Cameras snapped and videos whirred and Edie was suddenly aware of the birdsong all around. She breathed deeply two or three times, trying to put into practice her free-diving relaxation techniques. It was actually all right, hovering above this precipice, if she concentrated exclusively on being all right. Sort of all right, anyway.
She shifted her position. There didn’t seem to be room for her feet, even though they were so much smaller than Vuk’s giant ones, and she thought about the shoelace and wished she had followed Zayn’s advice and retied it. Vuk was pointing at something, some kind of bird – an eagle? – on the other side of the canyon and she turned her head to look, and caught another inadvertent glimpse of the vast distance below her that was so overwhelming that panic overcame her and she began to laugh hysterically. And then she stumbled.
Stumbled, and fell, the air parting for her, letting the gorge swallow her up, the laughter halted by the terror that caused saliva to rise bitter in her throat, her arms flailing, wind-milling, her hair covering her face and getting into her mouth as she screamed, a scream wrenched from the depths of her being.
And the only thought in her head, as the gaping chasm claimed her, was of Laura and how she’d never find out what had happened to her now.
TWENTY-FIVE
Fatima
Fatima regained consciousness to find herself wrapped in a survival blanket and propped up against the cabin of the boat, a plastic mug of hot tea beside her. The twins were there, next to her. She couldn’t understand how the three of them had survived; maybe it was up to God as Khalid had pontificated and He had been kind to them.
A man in uniform passed her. He paused when he saw her eyes upon him.
‘Are you all right?’ He spoke in thickly accented English, hard to decipher.
‘Fine, thank you,’ she answered politely.
‘I want to kill those bastards who sold you those life jackets,’ the man went on.
&n
bsp; Fatima stared at him uncomprehendingly. Of all the people she felt hatred for, the person she’d bought the life jackets from had not, so far, featured.
‘Filled with newspaper, worse than useless,’ the man sneered. ‘Those fucking bastards, selling them; making them in the first place.’
He wandered on along the deck, muttering to himself, ‘fucking bastards’. It was scarcely believable. Life-jackets that were actually death-jackets. She recalled how she had seemed to sink as they spent time in the sea, how the jacket she wore had felt ever-heavier around her shoulders. She had thought it was the weight of the twins hanging on, but the weight had grown and grown just as it would if three bundles of newspaper were absorbing water by the litre. They would only have lasted another few seconds, if the coastguard hadn’t got there.
The boat was already coming in to dock and on the quayside, in the gathering dawn, Fatima could see a flurry of activity. Another coastguard vessel was lined up ahead of them, a steady stream of people disembarking from it. Looking around her, on their boat, there seemed to Fatima to be only women and young children. Where were all the men? Surely not left in the sea? Someone helped her up and onto the tarmac, passing the girls to her. She saw the prow of the boat crowded with standing figures, the men, old and young, and the boys who were of an age and size to be grouped with the adults. With a sick feeling of relief, she spotted Youssef amongst them. There was no opportunity to wait for him though, as they were being directed onwards. Handsome, efficient looking Europeans wearing fluorescent tabards with the name of an organisation Fatima had never heard of were handing out bottles of water and casting their eyes expertly up and down everyone who passed them.