Thrills and Spills

by Dominique Kyle

  “They agreed I could come with you. We’re not going to leave you on your own, Eve. We’re going to be looking after you…”

  I had this amazing sensation of the Satterthwaites bonding together around me like the secure walls of a castle, protecting me from everything outside. Jo standing between me and the general public, Paul between me and the media, Sue between me and Pauline and all Pauline’s pain, and Pete, just enveloping himself around me to stop me falling down this big dark hole.

  I lifted my face gratefully to his. “You’re all so kind, your family Pete, all of you are so wonderful to me…”

  He bent his head and kissed me. “We love you, Eve, you must have worked that out by now, surely?”

  Seated at the gate waiting to board, an ITV camera hove into view with the evil Annette tip tapping along behind in her high heels. I sighed. But I knew this was the deal. The other passengers looked curiously across at us as the mike was hovered just above my head.

  “So how are you feeling right now Eve, as you wait for the plane to take you up to Aberdeen?”

  Pete glared at her and stepped in to aggressively defend me, “How can you ask her something like that?”

  I squeezed his hand. “It’s ok, Pete…” I lifted my chin and stared straight at the camera. “Well of course I’m anxious, but you have to approach these things rationally… Of the last five helicopters that went down coming back from the rigs, only one of those accidents caused the loss of all lives on board. The other four had either all or most passengers survive. Like all the other men who work on the rigs, my father was given extensive sea survival and underwater helicopter evacuation training before he left, and they have state of the art tracker devices these days to help with the rescue mission.”

  “Well, that is an admirably positive and robust attitude to take, Eve, we can see you are made of stern stuff,” Annette commentated.

  She was hoping for hysteria and tears, I thought. Well I’m not going to be giving her any… I could see people eyeing us from the corner of their eyes, and some openly staring and ear wigging. There was a high number of hardy looking single men sitting around, some of them with kitbags at their feet and I guessed that they would be heading out to Aberdeen for their own stint on the rigs. Next Wednesday there’d be men watching this footage in the common room on the Quarters and Utilities Platform thinking about their own journey home.

  “Dad’s a survivor,” I said coolly.

  Pete shifted beside me and gave me a little nudge. “You knew when it happened though, didn’t you Eve?” Later he told me that he could see the rage on Annette’s face and figured we ought to give her a bit more human interest as payment for our airline tickets.

  I obediently told her about the dream that had woken me up at the moment that the accident had happened and the fact I’d know instantly that something was wrong. I told her that Dad was coming home early before the end of his contract because his new girlfriend was seven months pregnant and was in danger of losing the baby due to pre-eclampsia, and that this latest drama wouldn’t be doing her blood pressure any good…

  Annette visibly calmed down and even managed a tight sounding ‘good luck’ as we were called to board the flight.

  Standing in the queue to show our boarding passes a grizzled weather beaten old bloke with a kit bag slung over his shoulder ahead of us turned round briefly. “Good lass,” he directed at me, “the press are vultures and it’s best not to give them anything to feed on…”

  At the other end we were met by a car that took us to a BP operations office. Pete held my hand tightly. It was only his rocklike presence beside me that had allowed me to be so cool and defiant. If I’d been sitting in that airport on my own and seeing Annette approaching, I probably would have crumpled into tears in a desperate need to tell someone about it.

  A BP representative met us at the door and shook hands with us. An ITV camera was already in situ.

  “Firstly, I’m truly sorry about your father,” he said pleasantly shaking our hands in turn, “but I’d like to reassure you that we are doing all in our power to locate him and the other passengers and crew. To help you understand the precautions we have in place I’ve brought a Project Jigsaw manager in to explain their systems.”

  Another man came forward and shook our hands and we were ushered along to an office. We sat there being blinded with science and statistics. The BP manager explained the training the offshore workers were obliged to undertake before they left for the rigs – emergency first aid, emergency responses on an offshore installation, and emergency procedures for the helicopter transit including time in a helicopter simulator in a swimming pool learning how to escape from it and survive if it ditched into the sea.

  Then the Jigsaw guy took over. He started with a sentence that showed that this meeting with us was viewed as a PR gig of the highest order, “Despite what you may have seen on the news, with the general secretary of the offshore union RMT claiming that there is low workforce confidence in the Super Puma type aircraft, the most recent crashes involved the EC 225, which were grounded for some time but after extensive investigations into the causes of the crashes they were given the official go-ahead to resume service, and the type of helicopter involved today is an L2, which we are now suspending all use of until investigations are complete…”

  I nodded politely and he continued with his by-rote speech.

  “The North Sea area operates the world’s largest fleet of heavy instrument flight rules helicopters. They carry about two million passengers per year from sixteen onshore bases of which Aberdeen Airport is the world’s busiest with 500,000 passengers per year.” Then he got on to the nitty gritty of what I was interested in. “Project Jigsaw uses locator beacons on all helicopters, standby vessels and fast rescue craft, connected to a computerised system located in Aberdeen. Therefore locations of all rescue craft and their response time are always known to staff in the BP control centre, and all staff travelling in the helicopters are supplied with wristwatch personal locator beacons that automatically activate when immersed in water.’

  “So have you located any survivors yet?” I asked.

  There was a short silence. “No,” he said. “The weather is deteriorating fast and we are struggling with all sight lines. We found one of the two on-board life rafts from the helicopter about twenty minutes ago, but it was empty. There has been no sign so far of the other one…”

  Pete and I were now sitting in another room with plastic chairs and tables and a crappy drinks dispenser, along with some other relatives of the missing men. Tension was running high, and they kept giving us updates that amounted to nothing whatsoever. Either they didn’t actually know anything, or what they did know they had no intention of passing on. The last thing that Sue had said sternly to Pete was, “Make sure she eats, she’s not had anything all day yet.”

  But I couldn’t eat. Pete had forced a coffee down me on the plane and now he got a scalding, intensely sweet hot chocolate for me from the dispenser and insisted I get it down me. Actually it did help a lot. The cameraman hung around, occasionally shooting some footage or asking some questions of the relatives, or wandering off, presumably in search of other action to film or staff to collar. We’d see him between times loading it up on his laptop and sending it off to the production staff via the office Wi-Fi system.

  Pete and I kept an eye on the news on my tablet, as did the others in the room on their various devices. When the ITV news came on, you could hear several of them, all slightly different speeds emitting round the room. On the first one, rather embarrassingly, they showed a clip from my birthday meal, blowing the kiss to my Dad and the guys on the UQ platform and telling them to keep safe, referring to me as ‘racing driver, Thrills and Spills star, Eve McGinty’ and everyone in the room looked across at me with shock in their eyes. Later on, once there’d been time for a production team to edit it, there was a clip of my defiantly positive reaction at the boarding gate, and in yet another broadcast there
was a clip of the Jigsaw guy explaining the tracking systems to me and Pete plus some of the other reactions given to the cameraman from other relatives in this room an hour or so ago.

  I was exhausted. Pete and I sat on the gritty lino tiled floor with our backs against the wall because it was more comfortable than the awful plastic chairs and I stretched out with my head in his lap and went to sleep. Later, in the next Thrills and Spills episode there was a brief close up of myself curled up into Pete, fast asleep, with Pete’s hand entwined protectively into my hair, and his watchful gaze alert on the room. And my heart gave a little flip at the expression the cameraman had caught on Pete’s face as he glanced briefly down at me.

  Pete woke me up. “Eve, they say they’ve got some news.”

  I awoke with a shock, my heart thudding unevenly. I rubbed at my face. “What time is it?” I mumbled.

  “Eleven,” Pete said, stifling a yawn.

  The cameraman hurriedly got ready and the man who’d come in to make the announcement, cleared his throat. Pete and I stayed where we were, out of the sight lines, hoping to avoid the camera.

  “About half an hour ago a flare was spotted by one of the RAF helicopters, and on investigation it proved to have come from the missing second life raft. The conditions are challenging, high winds and large waves, but they have already started winching the men in, and the rescue support boats are heading to the scene. We can’t confirm who is on board the life raft yet, but we can confirm that of the fifteen men and one woman missing, at least twelve men and the woman are in the raft.”

  Someone burst into tears and started saying, “Alison, thank God,” over and over again, so I guess they were a relative of the one woman who was easily identifiable.

  Pete squeezed my hand. “Well that’s an eighty percent chance that he’s made it,” he comforted. “Which is better odds than half an hour ago when they hadn’t even found them yet…”

  It was a tense half an hour longer before the names started rolling in. They came in batches as they winched them up and another helicopter came in to take their place.

  My Dad’s name was read out in the second batch. I suddenly came over dizzy and faint for a moment, and then, as I saw on the footage shown in the next episode, all the colour came back into my face and I broke into a smile of relief with tears in my eyes and Pete gave me a big hug.

  While we were waiting for the next developments, I texted Jamie and Pauline the good news, and asked Pete to text round his own family. All around us people were on their phones, talking loudly, with the ones who hadn’t heard yet looking grey and anxious.

  By one o’clock in the morning, those of us who had someone being flown back had been put on a minibus and taken to where the copters would be landing. We stood out in the cold blasting wind and stinging rain and watched the surprisingly massive helicopter come in. Crew leapt out and they began to help out identically dressed men in overalls wrapped round with shiny silver survival blankets. As I saw my Dad walking across the tarmac I ran forward and threw my arms around him. He looked utterly taken aback and surprised to see me and then he took my face in his icy cold rough hands and kissed me on the lips.

  “Hello, lass, nice to see you,” he said with a smile.

  I put my arms around his neck and he gave me a big hug. He was soaking wet and the silver thing had blown away and someone was picking it up for us.

  “How are you Dad?” I asked.

  “Oh, a bit seasick – I never was much of a sailor.”

  “You took your time getting back!” I chided. “I’ve gone and sardined my Stock car and it’s all hands on deck for the welding now…”

  “Maybe Tuesday night?” He suggested. “They want us to stay overnight in hospital then they’ll fly us back tomorrow, then I need to see Pauline…”

  I kissed him on the cheek. “Course you do Dad! You’ll get a shock when you see her – she’s enormous,” I did a big belly gesture, “and there’s still at least six weeks to go…”

  I saw the paramedics hanging around waiting for us to finish talking. “You’d better go, see you sometime soon huh?” I pushed him towards the ambulance, and he pinched my cheek affectionately and went with them.

  I walked back to Pete and the cameras followed me. “Your father seemed cheerful,” an interviewer said to me.

  I took Pete’s hand and smiled into the lens. “Yes, my Dad always takes everything in his stride,” I said, my heart suddenly overflowing with love for him.

  They’d booked us into a Premier Inn. We got straight into bed and I slept without waking or dreaming right through until nine am. Then aware that there still may be media interest, after I’d showered and washed my hair I took particular care with the very few products I had with me to look as nice as possible. I must have looked a right sight yesterday. We’d even had to buy toothbrushes and toothpaste from a dispensing machine in the lobby.

  Pete made us tea and went straight onto my tablet. “They haven’t found the other three…”

  Tears filled my eyes as I realised how lucky I was to have my Dad back, and how terrible it would be for the three families who didn’t.

  They rang us to say that we were booked on the midday flight back to Manchester, and so was my Dad. I suddenly realised that I should be at work. It hadn’t even occurred to me to ring in. But then Jo would have gone in and told them what was happening, and they must have all seen it on the news.

  On the plane I asked Pete if he minded if I sat by my Dad. It was only a short flight but I had an instinct that this may be the last chance we would ever have to spend time completely alone together. Soon the baby would be born and all Dad’s priorities would change.

  It seemed to occur to Dad too. We sat in silence. He was watching out the window and I held his hand and leant into him with my head on his shoulder. Suddenly he said, “I’ll probably be over sixty before the lad leaves home.”

  “I know,” I said. The silence lengthened out again. I knew he didn’t want another child. He’d wanted companionship and sex and fun and freedom with Pauline, not to start all over just as his responsibilities were nearly over with us two.

  “But you’ll fall in love with him when you see him,” I comforted.

  He squeezed my hand. “I’ll get used to it, I guess. I just have to set my mind to it…”

  I nudged his shoulder with mine. “I even know how to put a nappy on now,” I told him. “I’ve practiced on Mariah…”

  He gave a slight melancholic smile. “Yes Pauline’s right in Kathleen’s pocket. But on the plus side that means that Kathleen will be able to help her out with all the baby stuff,” then he hesitated. “As long as-” He stopped abruptly.

  “–Kathleen doesn’t die…” I finished for him. “She doesn’t look too good right now does she?”

  “Yes, that’s all we need right now…” He said gloomily.

  Paul was waiting for us at Manchester airport. He shook hands with Dad and said, “Good to have you back with us…”

  Dad sat in the front seat alongside Paul and they chatted in a friendly relaxed way all the way home.

  “Pauline’s in hospital at the moment,” Paul reported. “But they’ll let her out today if her blood pressure comes down. She was refusing to go in until Eve texted that you were safe, and then they rushed her there by ambulance. Do you want to go straight to the hospital?”

  Dad shook his head. “Better go home first and freshen up. Have a shave.” He rasped his chin. “Maybe speak to Jamie…”

  Listening into all this from the back, I quickly texted to Jamie with instructions to get himself back home pronto because Dad would be coming in shortly.

  After we’d dropped Dad off and watched him amble slowly up the path, Paul glanced in the mirror to me. “Where for you, Eve?”

  “You’d better drop me at work,” I said ruefully, “to make my apologies. I’ll get a lift out to yours with Jo after work to pick my car up. I need to get it back to Dad. I bet he’s forgotten he loaned it to me an
d will walk out the house expecting it to be there to go to the hospital…”

  “Sue will expect you to stay for tea,” Paul told me.

  “I need to thank her for everything she did for Pauline…” I agreed.

  When I walked back into work, Jo turned round and flicked sarcastically, “Part-timer now are we?”

  Dewhurst straightened up and Bolton came out of the shed. “Life’s never been boring since you started working here McGinty,” Dewhurst observed.

  Mr. Entwistle came out of the office.

  “Sorry Mr. Entwistle,” I said hanging my head, “I couldn’t get back from Aberdeen in time…”

  “A likely story…” He dismissed with dry cynicism. “Shall we call it annual leave?”

  “Yes, Mr. Entwistle,” I said meekly. I reached for my overalls. “What shall I start on?”

  I asked Jo to stop at a supermarket on the way out of town so I could buy Sue some flowers. Jo seemed to think it was unnecessary, but I knew Sue would like them. When I gave them to her she seemed really touched. I thanked her for looking after Pauline but she just brushed it off and said it was nothing, but frankly it would have been my idea of my own worst nightmare if I’d had to do it. On the journey up to Aberdeen and during the hours of waiting in that scummy room unwelcome thoughts had been occurring to me that if Dad died, Pauline would be helplessly hanging around my neck, expecting me to look after her just because the bump had some of Dad’s DNA in it, and maybe I’d have been forced to move back in, even if just to look after Jamie… Thank God, thank God that Dad was alive! I had seen a vision of life without him in it, and it was awful.

  I drove Dad’s car back to his house quite late that night. The lights were on in all the rooms. On the other side of the living room curtains I could see shadows moving about, one of them with a bump. I smiled and walked away without ringing on the doorbell. Then I walked the forty minutes across town back to the flat in the cold night air with a brilliant moon in the sky and any stars that could manage to pierce the street lights glittering.