She would think about Matt when Ruby was safe.
If she thought about him now she wouldn’t be able to put on the snow chains and get back in the cab and drive; she wouldn’t be able to breathe or blink or swallow.
Twice more during a dark frozen hour she failed to get the chains on and had to do it all over again. The tanker’s lights remained the same size; parked and waiting.
When she’d tried to find the torch in the snow she’d felt the metal of her wedding ring and Matt’s becoming colder in the sub-zero arctic temperature and then the soft skin of her finger was sticking to the metal, like lips to a frozen iron railing. Matt had told her the truth about needing to take off his wedding ring when he was working.
She thought back to holding his ring at the police station, the touch-warmed metal in her fingers.
Chapter 14
The temperature had dropped three degrees in the last fifteen minutes. Yasmin finally had the chains on. She went back up the steps to the cab. Through the window she saw Ruby shaking, her face pale. She hurried in.
The laptop was open on a new email.
The photo was a dead Arctic fox with gently rounded ears and big eyes in soft white fur. Yasmin wanted to see it as being like a plush toy you could buy, impossibly fluffy and appealing, not a once-living creature, but the fox’s childlike vulnerability and soft beauty reminded her so strongly of Ruby that she caught her breath. The man’s torch lit only the cub’s face. Blood was smeared around its mouth.
The subject was DSC_10027; 68733615 14965998 under the photo.
He’d sent it four minutes ago.
Ruby looked devastated, but there wasn’t time to comfort her, she must get her to safety. She hurriedly started driving, looking for a place to turn.
I was crying with Bosley and Dad came in and we talked about school and Jimmy and he said we could do a blog together. He showed me photos on his iPad of beautiful animals and birds. There was a photo of an Arctic fox cub. Dad said every time he saw an Arctic fox cub and looked at its pretty face he’d be able to see me really clearly. Just like Mum and the peridot in the ring.
The fox cub in the photo is dead.
Dad would never send Mum that photo.
The emails aren’t from him.
When I thought Daddy was emailing us, I thought that he was safe because he had a laptop and a terminal with him and he was OK enough to type things and send them.
There so much snow falling, like it’s an army of siafu ants. One little ant-flake can’t hurt you but millions and millions of them kill everything, even people. Dad might not have anything with him. Not a laptop or a blanket or a knife even. What if the snow attacks him and he can’t hide?
The sign for Daddy is making a D shape with your fingers, and the shape makes me cry, but I’m trying hard not to. And it’s no good because Mum can’t see me sign because she’s driving so I put on Voice Magic.
‘Dad needs a knife to make an aputiak,’ I say. ‘He might not have one.’
‘I think he has his survival kit with him,’ Mum says. ‘And he’ll have all the tools he needs.’
I read her words on Voice Magic, over and over again. I wish I was a little Reception child again and could believe her and think that Dad is safe.
But I’m in Year Six. And in September I’ll be in secondary school.
I look out of my window at the siafu-ants-snow, like if I stare at it enough, I can make it go away, but it looks like there’s even more. Mum’s said something because there’s more type on Voice Magic:
‘We have to go back to Coldfoot and wait there till the storm’s over.’
She can’t mean that.
‘We’ll set off as soon as the storm’s over, I promise, go straight to find Daddy then.’
‘No! We can’t leave him!’
I’m trying to shout but Voice Magic won’t shout.
‘He might die! Mum, please!’
It isn’t my voice, it’s a stupid fluffy vacuum bag voice.
‘I’ll be alone!’
I type something for her to read in my own voice and I push my laptop onto her. She’s driving us into this big lay-by and I know it’s where she’s going to turn around and leave Dad.
She stops the truck, but the engine’s still running because I can feel the humming of it under me.
‘Daddy is all right,’ she says. ‘He’ll have made a shelter.’
It makes me feel sick to shake my head.
‘It’s scenario two, Ruby. Daddy went off on a trip and took his survival things with him.’
But she doesn’t really believe there’s a scenario two. She just wants to believe there is. It was like that even outside the airport, the very first time she said it. I didn’t think it in words, just felt it. But I didn’t mind because for ages I thought Dad had important things with him, like his terminal and a friend’s laptop and a knife.
‘I was just pretending that I believed Dad went off on filming trips,’ Mum says and I’m so surprised I do a little flip-jump inside. ‘I pretended to the police, to you, to me even. But now I’ve seen pictures of a musk ox and Arctic wolves and an Arctic fox and a raven and the wing prints of a ptarmigan and Lord knows how many other creatures there are out here too.’
‘There’s river otters,’ I say. ‘And snowy owls and snowshoe hares. Loads and loads of things.’
‘Exactly,’ Mum says. ‘And Daddy came out here to film them. And I think he was away on a filming trip when the village caught fire. So he’s got his survival kit with him, with everything he needs.’
She’s smiling at me and I know she really believes it.
‘He told me an aputiak is a good shape in a storm,’ I say. ‘Because it’s curved and the wind just blows over the top.’
‘That’s true, I hadn’t thought of that. Well then, his emergency kit will have the tools to make an aputiak and he’s snug inside it.’
When her wedding ring and Matt’s had frozen to her finger the Matt she knew and loved had come crashing into her memory, his decency and honesty assailing her. He hadn’t lied about his wedding ring. And he hadn’t lied about coming here for the animals.
The threatening emails and the tanker driver chasing them frightened her, yes, but also gave weight to her belief that he was alive because someone didn’t want her to reach him.
She would get Ruby to Coldfoot and ask Coby to look after her and then she would go on alone to find him. If the men there tried to prevent her from leaving then she’d just have to fight her way out.
She put the truck into gear and checked her driving mirror before turning the truck around. Glaring headlights behind them dazzled her, momentarily blinding her. The tanker was right behind them, headlights on full beam. She was forced to accelerate out of the turning place so he wouldn’t ram them and they were still going north.
She just needed to get far enough ahead of him to turn, because surely there would be another place that would be wide enough.
But even if she did turn around, she’d have to pass him going the other way. He was dangerously violent towards them, she knew that now. He’d force them off the side of the road and they were in the mountains, a sheer drop on one side.
She quickly took Ruby’s hand and squeezed it before reaching for the CB.
‘Coby, are you there?’
‘Yasmin, good hearin’ your voice. You headin’ to Coldfoot now?’
‘I couldn’t turn round. A tanker tried to ram the truck when I slowed to turn around.‘
‘Jesus.’
‘He’s been following me for miles. Can you get the police?’
‘Sure. You just hold on, OK? The police’ll come through on this channel.’
She looked in her driver’s mirror. The tanker had dipped his bright lights and stopped. He must be listening in to this. He wouldn’t want the police to find him so close to her.
It meant that she too could stop the truck, and for a moment the relief of not driving was overwhelming.
‘I’m
sorry, Mummy,’ Ruby said ‘I didn’t mean it.’
Yasmin knew that Ruby had been terrified by the tanker and marvelled at the strength she had still to be kind. She also knew that Ruby had meant it.
She remembered telling Adeeb that Ruby would be lost without her father, and it had startled her when she’d said it, the truth of it hitting her as if this knowledge had come from someone else, not there inside her all the time. Lost without her father, yes. Devastated. Bereft. Yes to all of those terrible things. But not alone.
A man’s voice came onto the CB. ‘Mrs Alfredson? It’s Lieutenant Reeve.’
She remembered him from Fairbanks. As soon as Coby mentioned her, the call must have gone to him.
‘You’re out on the Dalton?’ he asked, sounding appalled.
‘Yes.’
‘Where’s your child, Mrs Alfredson?’
‘She’s with me.’
The tanker driver would be listening. If it was Silesian Stennet he already knew Ruby was with her, but another man might not. Would it stop him being violent? Or maybe he’d exploit their vulnerability.
There was silence on the CB. She imagined people listening to this and their horror towards her and she felt it towards herself. What kind of mother endangered her child like this?
‘I have been told that someone tried to ram you?’ Lieutenant Reeve said.
‘He was trying to stop us turning around. He’s been following us for about a hundred miles, maybe all the way from Fairbanks.’
‘Are you drivin’ Azizi’s rig?’ another voice said, that she thought she recognised.
‘Yes. He—’
The man interrupted. ‘I’m at MP 174, headin’ south? Passed Azizi’s rig ’bout thirty miles back. There’s nobody behind this lady.’
She was sure he was the same man who’d asked her if she had a gun.
‘Drove another twenty minutes before I saw another rig headin’ north,’ the man continued. ‘And that was a truck not a tanker. Like I said, there ain’t nobody behind her.’
‘You’re lying,’ she said. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? Driving the tanker with blue headlights. Going north, not south. Right behind me.’
‘Hey, don’t go gettin’ delusional with me, lady.’
Lieutenant Reeve came on again. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do, Mrs Alfredson. You are going to try to find someplace safe to stop while we send a rescue helicopter to come and get you both. OK?’
He was talking to her very calmly, self-consciously reasonable, like you would try to talk someone down from a ledge, she imagined.
‘Yes.’
She wanted to tell him about the emails and the possible land grab and Silesian Stennet, but at the moment she had no credibility – a bereaved madwoman, who stole a truck, endangered her child and imagined a tanker chasing her down.
But when their helicopter flew over the Dalton, they’d see there was a tanker behind her. Then they would know that he’d lied. They’d have to listen to her. And she would persuade them that Matt was alive, that he most probably knew something about Anaktue, which was why someone was trying to prevent her from reaching him.
Behind them, the blue lights were getting larger as he moved closer. The road ahead was two lanes and straight for a few hundred metres, not wide enough to turn a massive tanker but wide enough for him to overtake. And if he did that, he’d make out that he’d never been behind her.
She started driving again, keeping ahead of him through the squalling snow.
She just had to keep ahead until the police arrived. The huge wipers were scraping the thick swarms of flakes off the windscreen as they hit it but only just giving her space to see.
They reached a narrow steep stretch of road, winding round the mountainside. There wasn’t room for the tanker to pass them here, so she slowed down and stopped. The tanker driver was forced to stop behind them. This was how she’d wait it out till the police came. In front of them, she saw two small spruce trees, bent sideways by the wind.
‘It’s all my fault,’ Ruby said. ‘I went to sleep.’
‘Nothing’s your fault.’
‘But if I’d woken you up we would have got away from the man behind us, we’d have got nearer to Daddy.’
‘It made no difference.’
Ruby shook her head.
‘I promise you. No difference at all.’
Yasmin hadn’t realised till this appalling journey how kind Ruby was towards her and now here she was taking the blame on herself when all of it – everything – was entirely Yasmin’s fault.
Lieutenant Reeve came onto the CB. ‘I’ve spoken to our rescue team. I’m sorry but it’s impossible for a helicopter to fly in these weather conditions.’
Yasmin immediately started driving, knowing that the tanker driver, listening to this, would come after them now.
‘Even if they could get to you, and that’s doubtful,’ Lieutenant Reeve continued, ‘we couldn’t risk having you and your daughter in a helicopter in these winds. They are gusting at up to fifty miles an hour, and look set to get worse. Hurricane force. You’d be safer waiting out the storm in your cab.’
‘A helicopter went out to look for survivors of Anaktue,’ Yasmin said. ‘Even though there was a storm—’
‘The winds weren’t as strong. It was risky to fly but not suicidal. That’s simply is not the case today; the storm is set to get far worse.’
‘There is a tanker, with blue headlights, right behind us. Trying to ram us off the road. Please, you need to believe me.’
‘We checked. None of the haulage companies have anyone out there. Their drivers are waiting it out at Deadhorse, Fairbanks or Coldfoot. No one else is driving in these conditions. We’ll come and get you as soon as it’s possible.’
The blue lights remained the same size in the darkness, so he was keeping pace with them. Maybe she could try and outrun him. But the road was steep and windy and treacherous and the snow was getting heavier.
We’re going very very slowly because it’s hard to see through the snow and the man behind us is going very very slowly too. Like he’s hunting us in slow motion, but he’s still hunting us.
There’s a sign: farthest north spruce tree – do not cut. Next to it is a dead tree, all white with snow and ice, like it’s made of tiny bones. The furthest north alive tree was probably miles and miles ago.
In her mirror, Yasmin saw the tanker’s blue lights move suddenly to one side before becoming centred again. He must have skidded. Perhaps he hadn’t stopped to put on snow chains. Perhaps he would just skid over the goddam mountainside and be gone. Or, not as good, he’d have to stop and put on snow chains and would be as ham-fisted at it as she’d been and would take an hour and they’d get far ahead of him.
Through the snow she glimpsed the road marker MP 242. She knew from Adeeb’s map that they would soon be approaching the Atigun Pass, the highest mountain pass in Alaska. On the other side of it lay the immense north slope coastal tundra, stretching to the Arctic Ocean.
The dense darkness and snow were punctured only by her headlights and behind them the blue lights of the tanker. But she felt her guilt following her in the darkness too, for putting Ruby in such danger, and behind that guilt another quieter culpability: ‘I’ll be alone.’
Chapter 15
The wind was blowing the snow horizontally at the windscreen, their truck pummelling its way through. Yasmin couldn’t see the sides of the road, relying on the delineators reflecting a brief orange flash to guide her. She felt their huge truck tilt in the building wind.
She had turned off the CB after her conversation with Lieutenant Reeve and didn’t put it on again; she didn’t want to hear the tanker driver’s voice, though she longed to hear Coby’s, a man she’d never met and most likely never would.
The visibility was so bad that she didn’t how close the tanker was behind them. It had been half an hour since she’d been able to see his headlights.
The tanker man is hiding in the snow and dark behi
nd us but we don’t know where.
Mum stops the truck. She asks me to get Mr Azizi’s bright orange tunic-thing, which is in a compartment in my door. It’s like the one she makes me wear on my bicycle. Mr Azizi wore it when he was sorting out the truck in Fairbanks.
She drives us towards the edge of the road, right by the drop, and opens the window. The truck sways, like the wind’s got its fingers through the open window and snow blows in, loads and loads of it, and lands on Mum’s lap, really fast, like if she left the window open for too long she’d be covered in snow and turned into a snow-woman.
Mum throws the bright orange tunic out of the window, and the wind grabs it from her and whirls it away and then she asks me to get clothes out of Mr Azizi’s suitcase and I do and she throws them out too. But she doesn’t throw out his parka, probably because arctic parkas are super-expensive, then she quickly closes the windows. We’ve been looking out for the blue lights but we still can’t see him.
Mum reverses us away from the edge of the mountain and then we go forwards again, right up to the drop. Then she does it again and I feel a bit sick. She says she needs our tracks to be really deep so that the snow won’t fill them in.
She was a mother who’d changed fairy tales, editing out psychotic stepmothers; who didn’t allow Ruby to watch anything above a PG, and now here she was telling Ruby how the tanker man would see the clothes and their tracks and think that they’d gone over the edge. And the terrible thing was that this was the only comfort she could offer her.
‘But he’ll see our tracks when we drive away,’ Ruby said.
‘No, because they won’t be so deep and the snow will soon fill them up.’
‘But the wind might blow the orange thing and the clothes down the mountain.’
‘That would be OK.’
Because then the man would think they were dead and that was a good thing. Whatever happened to them, she knew that this journey would always mark for her the end of Ruby’s childhood.
The Quality of Silence Page 15