The Three: A Novel

by Sarah Lotz

  After I left that horrible room where we’d been funnelled by the inept Go!Go! staff, I spent the next half-hour in that airport pub just staring up at the screen as Sky’s rolling banner repeated the terrible news over and over again. And then came the first footage of the area where they thought Stephen’s plane had gone down: a shot of the ocean, grey and rolling, the occasional piece of debris bobbing in the waves. The rescue boats scouring the water for survivors looked like toys in that bleak endless seascape. I remember thinking: Thank God Stephen and Shelly taught the girls to swim last summer. Ridiculous, I know. Duncan Goodhew would have struggled in that swell. But in moments of emotional extremis, it’s incredible what you cling to.

  It was Mel who came and found me. She may smoke forty Rothmans a day and buy her clothes at Primark, but she and her partner Geoff have hearts as big as Canada. Like I said before, you can’t judge a book by its cover.

  ‘Come on, love,’ Mel said to me. ‘You can’t give up hope.’

  The yobs at the bar were giving me a wide berth, but they hadn’t taken their eyes off me the entire time I was there. I was in a terrible state, sweating and shaking, and I must have been crying at one point as my cheeks were wet. ‘What are you staring at?’ Mel barked at them, then took my hand and led me back to the briefing room.

  An army of psychologists and trauma counsellors had arrived by then. They were busy passing around tea that tasted like sweetened dishwater, and setting up screened-off counselling areas. Mel sat me protectively between her and Geoff: my own shell-suited bookends. Geoff patted my knee, said something like, ‘We’re all in this together, mate,’ and handed me a fag. I hadn’t smoked for years, but I took it gratefully.

  No one told us not to smoke.

  Kelvin, the fellow with the dreadlocks, and Kylie, the pretty redhead who’d been holding the balloon (now nothing but a squiggle of rubber on the floor), joined us. The fact that us five were the first to hear the news gave us a shared intimacy, and we huddled together, chain-smoking and trying not to implode. A nervy woman–a counsellor of some type, although she looked too high-strung for the role–asked us for the names of our relatives who’d been on the doomed flight. Like all the others, she had the ‘we’ll update you as soon as we know’ line down pat. I understood, even then, that the last thing they wanted to do was give us false hope, but you do still hope. You can’t help it. You start praying that your loved one missed the flight, that you’ve got the flight number or date of arrival wrong, that everything is just a dream, some loony nightmare scenario. I fixated on the moment before I first heard about the crash–watching those kids dismantle the long-forgotten Christmas tree (a bad omen if ever there was one, although I’m not superstitious)–and found myself longing to go back there, before the sick, empty feeling had taken up permanent residence in my heart.

  Another panic attack started poking its icy fingers into my chest. Mel and Geoff tried to keep me talking while we waited to be assigned a trauma counsellor, but I couldn’t get a word out, which wasn’t like me at all. Geoff showed me the screensaver on his smart phone–a photograph of a grinning twentyish girl, overweight but attractive in her own way. Told me that she was Danielle, his daughter, the one they’d been there to collect. ‘A bright girl, went through a rough patch but back on track now,’ Geoff said glumly. Danielle had been in Tenerife on a lavish hen party escapade, had only decided to go along at the last minute when someone else dropped out. How’s that for fate?

  I was struggling to breathe by now, cold sweat dribbling down my sides. I knew if I didn’t get out of that room immediately, my head would explode.

  Mel understood. ‘Give me your number, love,’ she said, squeezing my knee with a hand weighted down with gold jewellery. ‘Soon as we know more, we’ll let you know.’ We swapped numbers (I couldn’t remember mine at first) and I ran out of there. One of the counsellors tried to stop me, but Mel shouted, ‘Just let him go if he wants to.’

  How I managed to pay for my parking and make it back to Hoxton without sliding under a lorry on the M23 is a mystery. Another complete blank. Later, I saw that I’d parked Stephen’s Audi with its front wheels on the kerb as if it was a discarded joyride vehicle.

  I only came to when I stumbled into the hallway, sending the table we use for post flying. One of the Polish students who lived in the ground floor flat popped his head around his door and asked me if I was okay. He must’ve seen that I wasn’t because when I asked him if he had any alcohol, he disappeared for a few seconds, then wordlessly handed me a bottle of cheap vodka.

  I ran into my flat, knowing full well that I was about to fall off the wagon. And I didn’t care.

  I didn’t bother with a glass, I drank the vodka straight out of the bottle. I couldn’t taste it. I was shaking, twitching, my hands were tingling. I dug out my BlackBerry, scrolled through my contacts, but I didn’t know who to call.

  Because the first person I always called when I was in trouble was Stephen.

  I paced.

  Downed more alcohol.

  Gagged.

  Then I sat on the sofa and switched on the flat screen.

  Normal programming had been suspended in favour of on going reports on the crashes. I was numb–and by that stage, well past half-cut–but I gathered that air traffic had been grounded, and more pundits than you could shake a stick at were being ferried into the Sky studio to be interviewed by a grim-faced Kenneth Porter. I can’t even hear Kenneth Porter’s voice these days without feeling physically sick.

  Sky concentrated on the Go!Go! crash, it being the one that was closest to home. A couple on a cruise liner had caught shaky footage of the plane flying dangerously low above the ocean, and Sky repeated it endlessly. The moment of impact was off camera, thank God, but in the background you could hear a woman’s voice shrieking, ‘Oh my gawd, Larry! Larry! Look at this!’

  There was a number people could call if they were concerned their relatives might have been on the flight, and I vaguely thought about dialling it, before thinking, what’s the point? When Kenneth Porter wasn’t quizzing air safety officials or grimly introducing another repeat of the cruise ship couple’s coup, Sky turned its attention to the other crashes. When I heard about Bobby, the boy who’d been found in the Florida Everglades, and the three survivors of the Japanese disaster, I remember thinking, it could happen. It could. They could be alive.

  I drained the rest of the bottle in one gulp.

  I watched a clip of a naked Japanese boy being lifted into a helicopter; footage of a traumatised African man screaming about his family, while behind him toxic black smoke roiled. I watched that crash investigator–the one who looks a little bit like Captain America–urging people not to panic. I watched a clearly shaken airline exec report that flights had been cancelled until further notice.

  I must have passed out. When I came round, Kenneth Porter had been replaced by a slick brunette anchor wearing a ghastly yellow blouse (I’ll never forget that blouse). My head was throbbing and nausea was threatening to overwhelm me, so when she said that reports were coming in about a Go!Go! passenger being found alive, at first I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.

  Then it hit me. A child. They’d found a child clinging to a piece of wreckage a couple of miles from where they thought Stephen’s plane had gone down. You couldn’t see much from the helicopter footage at first–a group of guys on a fishing boat waving their arms; a small figure in a bright yellow life jacket.

  I tried not to get my hopes up, but there was a close-up as she was lifted into a helicopter and I knew in my gut that it was one of the twins. You know your own.

  I called Mel first. Didn’t think twice. ‘Leave it to me, love,’ she said. I didn’t stop to think how she must be feeling.

  It felt like the family liaison team were there in seconds, as if they’d been hanging around outside my door. The trauma counsellor, Peter (I never did catch his last name), a little grey man with specs and a goatee, sat me down and talked me through e
verything. Warned me not to get my hopes up, ‘We have to be sure it’s her, Paul.’ Asked me if he could contact my friends and family, ‘for added support’. I thought about calling Gerry, but decided against it. Stephen, Shelly and the girls were my family. I had friends, but they weren’t really the type you can lean on in a crisis, although later they all tried to muscle in, eager to grab their fifteen minutes of fame. That sounds bitter, I know, but you find out who your real friends are when life as you know it falls apart.

  I wanted to fly out straight away to be with her, but Peter assured me she would be medivacced to England as soon as she was stabilised. I’d completely forgotten that all European planes had been grounded. For the time being, she was being assessed in a Portuguese hospital.

  When he thought I was calm enough to actually hear the details, he told me gently that it looked as if there might have been a fire on board before the pilot was forced to ditch, and Jess (or Polly–we didn’t know which twin she was at that stage) had been injured. But it was hypothermia they were most concerned about. They took a DNA swab from me to be sure that she really was one of the twins. There’s nothing quite as surreal as having the inside of your cheek rubbed with a giant ear bud while wondering if you’re the only surviving member of your family.

  Weeks later, at one of our first 277 Together meetings, Mel told me that when they heard Jess had been found, she and Geoff didn’t give up hope for weeks, not even after they started finding the bodies. She said that she kept imagining Danielle washed up on an island, waiting to be rescued. When air traffic was back to normal, Go!Go! offered to charter a special plane to fly the relatives out to the Portuguese coast, which was the closest they could get to the scene of the crash. I didn’t go–I had my hands full with Jess–but most of 277 Together went. I still hate the thought of Mel and Geoff looking out over that ocean, feeling a sliver of hope that their daughter might still be alive.

  There must have been a leak inside Go!Go! as the phone rang off the hook from the moment it was confirmed that one of the twins had survived. Whether the hacks were from the Sun or the Independent, they all asked the same questions: ‘How do you feel?’ ‘Do you think it’s a miracle?’ To be honest, dealing with their incessant questions took my mind off my grief, which would come in waves, sparked off by the most innocuous thing–a car advert showing an impossibly groomed mother and child; even those toilet paper commercials with the puppies and multicultural toddlers. When I wasn’t fielding calls, I was glued to the news like pretty much the rest of the world. They ruled out terrorism early on, but every channel had experts galore speculating about what the causes might be. And like Mel and Geoff, I suppose I couldn’t murder the hope that somewhere, out there, Stephen was still alive.

  Two days later, Jess was moved to a private hospital in London where she could get specialist care. Her burns weren’t severe, but there was the constant spectre of infection, and although the MRI scan showed zero sign of neurological damage, she still hadn’t opened her eyes.

  The hospital staff were great, really supportive, and they showed me to a private room where I could wait until the doctor gave me the go-ahead to see her. Still swamped with a feeling of unreality, I sat on a Laura Ashley sofa and flipped through a Heat magazine. Everyone says they can’t understand how the world can just keep turning after someone you love has died, and that’s exactly how I felt as I paged through images of celebrities snapped without their make-up on. I dozed off.

  I was awoken by a commotion outside in the corridor, a man’s voice shouting, ‘Wotcha mean we can’t see her?’, a woman screeching, ‘But we’re her family!’ My heart sank. I knew immediately who they were: Shelly’s mum–Marilyn Adams–and two sons, Jason (‘call me Jase’) and Keith. Stephen had dubbed them the ‘Addams Family’ long ago for obvious reasons. Shelly had done her best to cut ties with them when she left home, but she felt obliged to invite them to her and Stephen’s wedding, which was the last time I’d had the pleasure of their company. Stephen was as liberal as they come, but he used to joke that it was compulsory for an Adams to spend at least three years in Wormwood Scrubs. I know I’m going to come across as simply the most awful snob, but really, they were a walking chav cliché, right down to the casual benefit fraud, the dodgy fags they sold on the side and the souped-up motor in the council house driveway. Jase and Keith–aka Fester and Gomez–had even named their kids (an army of them, spawned by a coterie of different mothers) after the latest celebrity or footballers’ kid trends. I believe there was even one called Brooklyn.

  Hearing them screeching in the corridor took me right back to Stephen and Shelly’s wedding day, which, thanks to the Addams Family, would be remembered by everyone for all the wrong reasons. Stephen had asked me to be his best man, and I’d brought along my then boyfriend, Prakesh, as my plus one. Shelly’s mum had shown up in a pink polyester nightmare of a dress that gave her an uncanny resemblance to Peppa Pig, and Fester and Gomez had eschewed their usual knock-off leather jackets and trainers for ill-fitting off-the-peg suits. Shelly had worked hard to organise that wedding; she and Stephen didn’t have a lot of cash to throw around back then, it was before they did well in their respective careers. But she’d saved and scrimped and they’d managed to book a minor country house for the reception. At first the two halves of the family kept to their own territory. Shelly’s family on one side, me, Prakesh and Stephen and Shelly’s friends on the other. Two different worlds.

  Stephen said afterwards he wished he’d put a cap on the bar. After the speeches (Marilyn’s was a moribund disaster) Prakesh and I stood up to dance. I can even remember the song: Careless Whisper.

  ‘Oy oy,’ one of the brothers yelled above the music. ‘Bum me a fag.’

  ‘Fucking poufs,’ the other one joined in.

  Prakesh wasn’t one to take an insult lying down. There wasn’t even a verbal altercation. One minute we were dancing, the next, he was nutting the closest Adams to hand. The police were called, but no one was arrested. It ruined the wedding, of course, and the relationship; Prakesh and I split up shortly afterwards.

  It was almost a blessing that Mum and Dad weren’t there to witness it. They died in a car crash when Stephen and I were in our early twenties. They left us enough to see us through the next few years; Dad was good like that.

  Still, when the Addamses were shown into the waiting room by an intimidated nurse, one of the brothers, Jase I think it was, had the grace to look shamefaced when he saw me, I’ll give him that. ‘No hard feelings, mate,’ he said. ‘We got to stick together at a time like this, innit.’

  ‘My Shelly,’ Marilyn was sobbing. She went on and on about only finding out when a tabloid leaked the passenger list. ‘I didn’t even know they was going on holiday! Who goes on holiday in January?’

  Jason and Keith passed the time flicking through their phones while Marilyn blubbered–I knew Shelly would have been horrified knowing they were part of this. But I was determined that for Jess’s sake, there wouldn’t be a scene.

  ‘Popping out for a fag, Mum,’ Jase said, and the other one sloped out after him, leaving me alone with the matriarch herself.

  ‘Well, what do you think about this, then, Paul,’ she started in. ‘Terrible business. My Shelly just gone.’

  I mumbled something about being sorry for her loss, but I’d lost my brother, my twin, my best friend and I was hardly in a state to give her any real sympathy.

  ‘Whichever one of the girls they’ve found, she’ll have to move in with me and the boys,’ Marilyn continued. ‘She can share Jordan and Paris’s room.’ A massive sigh. ‘Unless we move into their house of course.’

  Now wasn’t the time to inform Marilyn about Shelly’s custody decision, but I found myself blurting: ‘What makes you think you’re going to look after her?’

  ‘Where else will she go?’

  ‘What about me?’

  Her chins quivered in indignation. ‘You? But you’re a… you’re an actor.’

  ‘She�
�s ready,’ the nurse said, appearing at the door and interrupting our delightful tête-à-tête. ‘You can see her now. But five minutes only.’

  Even Marilyn had the nous to realise that now wasn’t the time to have this sort of fraught conversation.

  We were given greens and face masks (where they found ones big enough for Marilyn’s bulk I’ll never know) and then we followed the nurse into a room designed to look like a hotel suite, all flowery sofas and state-of-the-art television, the illusion only partially broken by the fact that Jess was surrounded by heart monitors, drips and various other intimidating pieces of equipment. Her eyes were shut and she barely seemed to be breathing. Dressings covered most of her face.

  ‘Is it Jess or Polly?’ Marilyn asked no one in particular.

  I knew straight away which twin she was. ‘It’s Jess,’ I said.

  ‘How the fu—how can you be so sure? Her face is covered,’ Marilyn whined.

  It was her hair, you see. Jess’s fringe had a chunk cut out of it. Just before they’d left for the holiday, Shelly had caught Jess hacking away at it, trying to copy Missy K’s latest half-shorn style. Plus, Jess had the tiniest scar just above her right eyebrow from when she’d fallen against the mantelpiece when she was learning to walk.

  She looked so tiny, so vulnerable, lying there. And I swore, right then, I’d do anything I could to protect her.

  Angela Dumiso, who is originally from the Eastern Cape, was living in Khayelitsha township with her sister and two-year-old daughter when Dalu Air Flight 467 went down. She agreed to speak to me in April 2012.

  I was in the laundry room doing the ironing when I first heard about it. I was working hard to finish in time so that I could catch my taxi at four, so I was already stressed–the boss is very fussy and liked everything, even his socks, to be ironed. The madam ran into the kitchen and I could see by her expression that there was a problem. She usually only wore that face when one of her cats had brought in a rodent and she needed me to clean it up. ‘Angela,’ she said. ‘I’ve just heard on Cape Talk, something’s happened in Khayelitsha. Isn’t that where you live?’