The Quality of Silence

by Rosamund Lupton

  The road is so steep; sometimes on one side you can see mountains like giant horses rearing up, right next to you, like they’re going to smash their hooves into you. On the other side, there’s just black, and that’s even scarier because we could drop right off the edge of the mountain.

  Mr Azizi told me that the Atigun Pass is a quarter of a mile high. He told me that when he didn’t know we’d be driving on it. Or that there would be a snowstorm and a man chasing us. I don’t think he’d have told me that if he’d known. There are barriers at the sides of the road which Mum says are to stop you going over the edge, but I just caught a glimpse of one and it looks a bit flimsy. I don’t think it would stop a truck like ours with a whole house on it.

  Sometimes you see a small sign in our headlights, and it’s just an arrow pointing right or pointing left and that means Mum knows to turn the steering wheel otherwise we might just drive off into the sky and we’d fall for a quarter of a mile. I don’t know how long that would take.

  There was so much snow falling on them that it felt like it was smothering them. Yasmin could only just catch glimpses of the delineator posts on the edge of the road and panicked that the delineator glinting on her right should be on her left and she was driving them off the road and the barrier would give way and they’d go over the edge. Unsure what was ground or sky, left or right, not knowing if it was night or day, her physical disorientation in the darkness and snow crept into her mind, so there were moments when she no longer knew who or what she was running from. Perhaps the blue lights following them unseen in the dark were a phantom, her terror for Matt hunting her down. But that couldn’t be right, because it was her guilt and failure as Ruby’s mother that was stalking her. And she couldn’t turn round and face either, not yet, not till she’d got Ruby safely over the mountain.

  I don’t know how Mum knows where to drive. If I had to, I wouldn’t know where the road is. There are little orange flashes when our lights hit a stick, but they’re teeny. I think it must be like this for aeroplane pilots at night, you know when they come down from a black sky and all they see are little lights to guide them? But as they get closer the lights get bigger, and they’re straight and these ones stay really small and twist around the mountain.

  My bracelet vibrates and the truck is vibrating too and the vibrations get into my bones, like we’re harps, Mum and me, and I like thinking of us this way, but I know it’s a bad noise because Mum looks so frightened.

  At first Yasmin thought it was an explosion, but the noise carried for too long, as if the solid earth and rocks and ice of the mountains had turned into thunder. She heard the avalanche roaring behind them, but she didn’t know how close it was, didn’t know if it was widening to include them in its path. She drove as fast as she dared away from it. And then the noise weakened and stopped. The only sound now was the violent wind, as if at any moment it could start another lava flow of snow.

  Mum tells me there’s been an avalanche. She says that there is good news and not so good news. The not so good news is that the avalanche will have blocked the road behind us so we can’t get back to Coldfoot and no one from Coldfoot can get to us. I don’t think that’s bad at all because I want to go nearer to where Dad is.

  ‘What’s the good news?’ I ask.

  ‘I think the tanker might be the other side of the avalanche.’

  ‘Or it landed on top of him!’

  We both sort of laugh because although the road is high and twisty and it’s

  really hard to see, the main frightening thing was the tanker man and he might not even be there any more.

  We aren’t speaking very much because Mum needs every speck of concentrating for driving. So we haven’t talked about the man who sent the emails, not since I knew it wasn’t Daddy. I think he’s the tanker man, or they’re friends.

  Mum’s taken off her seat belt so she can lean forwards. Her face is super-close to the windscreen. Her fingers are gripping round the steering wheel, like she can hold us on the road.

  The wind was at hurricane force, the snow slamming against the windscreen, as if she was ramming this truck through the core of it. She feared the tanker had also made it through before the avalanche and was close behind them.

  She’d thought about going on Ruby’s laptop and emailing for help or asking for help on the CB, but she’d already spoken to the police and they couldn’t get to them till after the storm.

  She longed to talk to Coby or other drivers on the CB, but worried that the tanker driver, if he’d made it, would hear her. She still had a hope, slight but tenacious, that her decoy plan might have worked and he’d thought they’d gone over the edge of the mountain.

  She felt their cab tipping forwards and realised they must have reached the top and were starting the descent. If there was another avalanche she wouldn’t be able to accelerate away from it because they’d skid and go over the edge.

  Twice the tyres slipped and for a few meteres they went forward out of control and she had to pump the brakes to slow the truck. She could only just see the delineators and sometimes thought her eyes were imagining the orange glints; that they were like Sirens, luring her out into the void and the rocks thousands of feet below.

  She could hear Ruby’s rapid shallow breathing and knew how frightened she was, but she couldn’t reassure her, concentrating solely on driving.

  Finally, they reached the bottom of the mountain.

  In their headlights, she saw a tidal wave of snow accelerating across the arctic tundra.

  At their back were mountains, bisecting Alaska in a seven hundred mile wide barrier, impossible to go back over or around. In front of them, a hundred and seventy miles away was Deadhorse and the Arctic Ocean.

  She remembered the driver’s voice – ‘. . . Eighty-eight thousand square miles of nothin’ . . . no trees to stop the wind . . . Storms blow across there like it’s turned into hell itself . . .’

  The wind’s MEGATRON strong. It’s snowing even more now; like there’s a ceiling of snow and it’s collapsing on top of us.

  We start juddering and I think it’s the wind shaking us, but Mum says it’s not the wind doing the juddering. She says we’ve got ice in our wheels so they’re not turning properly and she needs to chip the ice out. She doesn’t say ‘otherwise the man might catch us’ but I know that’s what she means. We don’t know if the avalanche stopped him. And Mum’s plan with Mr Azizi’s clothes might not have worked either.

  You know that outdoor theatre they had in Rome? The one where they had a slave and let the lion out? It’s like we’re in this huge cold dark theatre, but it’s not a lion who’ll be let out to hurt us but a person who kills a musk ox and a raven and wolves and an Arctic fox cub when they’ve done nothing to him at all.

  Yasmin was hurriedly putting on her arctic clothes, frustrated at the amount of time it took – the base layers and mid-layers and outer layers; her fingers struggling to go faster with the zips and Velcro. All the time the tanker could be getting closer. But the outside temperature was minus forty-two, far lower with the wind chill, and she’d need all that protection or she’d get hypothermia and frostbite and there would be no one to keep Ruby safe. Her ice-scalded left hand was painful as she dressed but she was glad because she was pretty sure pain meant she didn’t have frostbite. She wedged a hammer from Adeeb’s toolbox into her parka pocket, in her right hand she held his torch. She wanted to wear thick mittens, but she wouldn’t be able to grip the hammer, so she put on liners and arctic work gloves.

  She left the heater running and got out of the cab. She’d made Ruby put on extra clothing to protect her from the sub-zero blast of air when she opened the door.

  She climbed down onto the first step and was slammed against the side of the truck, hitting her face, and then she was flung to the ground. Lying on the snow, winded with pain, she turned to face her attacker, the tanker driver surely, but there was no one there. It was the wind at hurricane force that had attacked her. The noise was
like nothing she’d heard in the natural world, a jet engine screaming across the tundra. Her right hand was still holding tightly to the torch; the instinct for self-preservation had been to hold on to light rather than save herself. She was grateful for the layers of clothing that had cushioned her fall.

  Snow was falling so thickly it appeared solid. She crawled on her hands and knees and then flat on her tummy and arms, pulling herself towards the underside of the truck.

  Her eyes were stinging as if she was blinking hot ash; there was a burning in the skin underneath her eyes. When she fell, her goggles had got dislodged. Blinking was getting hard, as if her eyelashes were sticking together.

  She felt the cold surrounding her; a predator made of darkness.

  She crawled over the hammer, which pressed hard into her. She picked it up then slid underneath the truck, which was sheltered from the arctic hurricane. Her eyes had frozen shut, the lashes glued together and she couldn’t open them. She wiped her face hard against the sleeve of her parka, over and over, but it didn’t work. The only warm thing she had was her own breath. She pulled her balaclava up, stretching it over her eyes, so that her eyes and mouth were in the same micro-environment and gradually her exhaled breath warmed her eyelids until they unfroze and she could see again. She pulled her goggles back onto her eyes, but ice had formed around the rims and the fit wasn’t as tight against her skin as it should be.

  She shone the torch at the wheels; as she’d feared, ice was wedged into them. She hit the ice with the hammer but it was hard as metal and wouldn’t give way. She tried again and again. Each time it was harder to hold the hammer. She thought about the coastal bus journey to Cley that she and Matt had gone on so many times years ago. First stop Holme-next-the-Sea, then Thornham, Titchwell, Brancaster, Brancaster Staithe. Each time she hit the ice she thought of the next seaside stop. Burnham Deepdale, Burnham Market, Burnham Overy, Holkham, Wells, Cley.

  When she hit at the ice for the twentieth time she could no longer remember which seaside village came next, or even their names, and she couldn’t keep hold of the hammer. Loss of memory and poor grip were early signs of hypothermia. She had to get back into the truck.

  She shone her torch away from the wheels and into the darkness. Sky, land and snow had fused together into one alien infinite totality. She thought that this was what grief looked like; this was her mind when her mother had died; the endless bleak aloneness of it.

  Somewhere out there was Matt.

  She yelled his name into the dark as loudly as she could. But although her mouth formed the shapes to make the sound and her lungs forced his name into a scream, the sound was obliterated by the wind so that she didn’t know if she’d made any sound at all. It was as if she’d created a void around herself and she could no longer be sure of her presence in this place.

  She climbed the steps back towards the cab, the wind trying to tear her away, her feet numb.

  She’d left the headlights on and from the top step she could see a rocky outcrop, a little higher than the truck, about ten metres ahead of them, with the road cutting through on one side. It was shelter of a kind where they could wait out the storm.

  She looked back to see if she could see the tanker, but the darkness and dense snow would hide him; nor would she be able to hear him above the sound of the wind. But he wouldn’t be able to see them or hear them either. And it was impossible for either of them to drive in this. He would have to wait it out, like they would.

  Mum is getting back inside. Her face has got sore red marks on it and the part of her face next to her goggles is bleeding, like the cold has been biting her. I’m taking off her gloves, which are all icy, and the heater is puffing full blast.

  She starts driving, with only her right hand on the steering wheel because I think her left one hurts too much. There’s so much snow. It’s like we’re inside it.

  Our truck’s still juddering really badly, jumping me out of my seat with my seat belt digging into me.

  Mum stops and I can see teeny gaps in the snow.

  ‘This is a good spot to wait out the storm,’ Mum says.

  The wind can’t push us over here. It just rocks us, like it can’t get its hands around us properly.

  Mum smiles at me. ‘Even if tanker man made it over the mountain, he won’t be able to find us in this.’

  I‘ve been frightened of the storm and the tanker man and the big dark theatre with the man who sent the emails; too afraid to be frightened for Daddy too.

  I make the D shape.

  Mum hugs me. She’s still got her parka on and her sleeves are covered in ice. She takes off her parka so she won’t make me shiver.

  ‘He’s in his aputiak,’ she says. ‘And he’ll be OK. Inupiat people must have weathered storms like this for centuries.’

  I can tell that she really believes it. An aputiak’s much better than a tent, because a tent would just blow away.

  Yasmin knew now that Matt had told her the truth about his wedding ring and about coming out here in winter to film wildlife and he’d told Ruby that he could make an aputiak. She believed him now about all of it. Trusting Matt meant that he had a chance of being safe.

  She felt terror for him, as if fear was a living thing inside her, but she couldn’t allow herself to think about him, not now, not yet. Her priority, and the only practical thing she could do, was to get Ruby through the storm unharmed.

  Chapter 16

  Mum’s getting everything out of our suitcases and we’re putting on all our clothes. We started with the tightest things and we’re putting baggier things over the top. Arms are the hardest and Mum’s helping me tug sleeves over other sleeves, though she can’t use her left hand properly because the ice burned it. She helps me put on Mr Azizi’s parka over the top of everything else and it has a lemony soap smell, which is what Mr Azizi smelled like, only I didn’t know that till I smelled lemony-soap and thought of him. I want Mum to wear the parka but she won’t.

  Our headlights are off so we can’t see anything outside. It sometimes feels like we’re moving, but it’s the wind blowing us. Mum must hear things, because she keeps going stiff, like she’s playing a five second go of ‘Statues’.

  Mum says that when the police come and get us in their helicopter she’ll make them believe Dad is alive and MAKE them go and look for him at Anaktue. She says she’ll hijack their goddam helicopter if she has to. I have never lip-read her saying ‘goddam’ before but Daddy says it quite a lot, about any old thing, like traffic jams. I like the shape her mouth makes when she says it, her lips closing at the end of it – GoddaM – like she’s really determined.

  She’s tucking Mr Azizi’s sleeping bag around me and it has the lemony smell too. She says I should go to sleep because time goes more quickly when you sleep. When I was little she told me that sleeping is like space travel, you just go away for a little while, but when you get back again to Earth it’s been much much longer there. So I close my eyes.

  Yasmin was glad Ruby couldn’t hear the wind’s violence; the polar vortex high above them in the stratosphere descending down to earth as a hurricane, rocking the truck and sending horizontal avalanches of snow across the tundra.

  The truck’s thermometer showed that it was minus forty-four outside, colder still with the wind chill. The thermometer inside the cab read five. They were dressed in as many layers of clothing as they had, but she didn’t know how long they’d survive if the engine cut out.

  She put on the CB in the hope that she’d discover the police were braving the hurricane and storm and coming to get them after all, knowing even as she thought it that it would be insane. But the only voices on the CB were truckers stuck at Deadhorse, Coldfoot and Fairbanks, complaining about delayed trips and lost pay. Their voices were nonetheless comforting, so she left the CB on.

  Beside her Ruby had fallen asleep. Yasmin remembered her pale face and shaking body when she saw the email of the Arctic fox cub and known that the emails weren’t from her father. R
uby had thought then that he didn’t have any survival tools or shelter.

  She remembered looking for a place to turn around.

  No! We can’t leave him!

  She saw a place ahead they could turn

  ‘He might die! Mum, please!’

  Ruby was pushing her laptop at her as she pulled into the turning place.

  ‘I’ll be alone!’

  And the tanker was right behind her, headlights blinding her, and she’d had to drive on, the road steep and windy and treacherous and she hadn’t been able to think about what Ruby had said or read what she’d written on her computer; but she’d felt her failure as Ruby’s mother following her in the darkness.

  She opened the last document on Ruby’s laptop.

  These are my words Mummy. This is me talking.

  This is me

  SHOUTING!

  This is my voice.

  This is me.

  Matt had understood that. And she loved him more for it.

  She stroked the fleece of Ruby’s face mask, as if she could smooth away the crease of tiredness and anxiety on her face beneath.

  She opened Ruby’s blog.

  aweekinalaskablog.com

  Hi, this is a blog about our time in Alaska by Matt Alfredson, who’s a wildlife cameraman and Ruby Alfredson.

  (do you think that’s OK, Dad? You’ll probably write something much better and I don’t mind AT ALL if you change it. I’m not going to publish anything till you’re here too. I’m putting the musk ox photo in first for now. We’ll delete these bits before we publish it!)

  Ruby had uploaded the photo of the mutilated musk ox and had meticulously copied down all the numbers.

  (Is this is for your work, Daddy? Hope so because people reading our blog might feel sick if they see it. I think that you took a photo because it’s a big musk ox, and wolves don’t usually kill big ones? Was he ill or hurt? But we’ll see a musk ox who’s alive, won’t we? So I’ll write about musk oxes and then we can put a different photo and you can add everything I’ve left out.)