The main street was interesting but I was on a mission. Ignoring the lure of shops, I glanced in every café as I headed down towards the bay I’d seen from the ship. There, I circled around then sat on a bench under the shade of a tree and watched the world go by, eyes peeled for Mum’s slightly awkward gait.
The cruise passengers were easy to spot: couples ducked in and out of shops, their faces reddening in the heat. The stop in Katakolon wasn’t that long and many were nervous of going too far from the port. Families sank gratefully into chairs outside the cafés; children dug into pastries and tall glasses of frozen yoghurt while their parents leaned back in their chairs, fanned themselves, and sipped cold drinks. I doubted any of them were sitting there worrying about the whereabouts of an elderly mother. Even though the cruise had been Mum’s gift to John and me, I started to think how different it would be if I were there with Mark instead of Mum. Maybe we’d have done a bit of shopping, and then we’d have sat in a café for a slap-up lunch, maybe strolled back to the ship hand-in-hand for a siesta. I wouldn’t have spent the day searching for an old lady.
Unbidden, the thought entered my head that there would, at some point, come a day when Mum would no longer be around – what would life be like then? I shook my head, trying to stop the thought from continuing. But once the idea had materialised, I couldn’t get rid of it. For a moment – a scary, heady moment – I glimpsed a world in which I no longer needed to worry about my mother.
I stood up suddenly, deeply disturbed at the turn my thoughts had taken. Still, I couldn’t stop them as I walked back into the busy shopping street. There would be a gap in my life without Mum, but there’d be nothing to worry about either; no arguing with John about who cared for her. I’d get used to it. Everything would be so much simpler. And you’d have the money from Dad’s will, a small voice whispered. I thought about John’s new clothes, his greasy smile. Is this how he felt? I walked slowly back to the ship, hating myself more with every step.
17 July 2013, 3 p.m.
Back on board, I went straight to Mum’s room hoping the sight of her smiling around the door would assuage the guilt that was sitting in my throat like a physical lump. No reply. I walked slowly down to John’s room, wondering what to say to him. I heard rustling from inside, then John, sunburned, poked his head out.
‘Hi.’
‘Did you see her today?’ I asked.
John shook his head slowly. ‘You didn’t find her?’
I indicated the empty space next to me. ‘What do you think? Would I be standing here asking you if I had? Can I come in?’
John opened the door wider and stepped back to let me in.
‘It’s been thirty-nine hours,’ I said. ‘I don’t care what you say: something’s wrong.’
John ran his hand through his hair.
‘I’ve been going through what could have happened.’ I said. ‘One: she got off the ship and didn’t get back on – maybe she had an accident or a fall or something in Santorini or Katakolon. Two: She had an accident or fainted on the ship and is lying somewhere on board. Three: She …’ I swallowed. ‘She’s … oh God.’
‘Overboard,’ said John. ‘Look. She’s either on the ship or not on the ship. We need to find out which.’
‘My feeling is she’s not on the ship. We’d have found her by now if she was. But we need to get the ship searched to be sure. And then we can look at the other possibilities.’
The balcony door was open and I stepped outside and leaned on the railings looking down at the people walking back to the ship in dribs and drabs. On the dock, crew members were trying to get passengers in the mood for the final sail-away party. Stewards and stewardesses in uniform were line-dancing; people were hanging over their balconies, drinks in their hands, watching, cheering and lapping up the atmosphere. Unconsciously, my eyes searched the dock for Mum. I turned to John, who’d followed me out.
‘I’m sick of searching,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing more we can do. We need to raise the alarm.’
Now I’d said it out loud, all I wanted to do was call someone and get an official search started, even though a part of me felt that maybe I was being a melodramatic. I imagined the hassle of telling the crew my worries; the embarrassment of having them find Mum safe and sound.
‘Who do we even tell?’ I asked.
‘Guest Relations?’
‘Oh God. I don’t know.’
‘Okay.’ John went back into the room and came out holding the ship Directory. He flicked through it. ‘Yes. I think Guest Relations is the best bet. I’ll call them. Does that make you feel better?’
I nodded.
‘Come on then.’ We went back into the room and John picked up the phone. ‘Sure?’
‘Yes. Just do it.’
‘Okay.’ He clicked a four-digit number into the phone.
‘Yes, hello,’ he said into the phone. ‘This is John Templeton in zero eight sixty-two.’
I listened while he told the person on the other end of the phone the details of Mum’s disappearance, then he was transferred to someone else, to whom he repeated the whole story.
When he’d finished speaking, John nodded a few times.
‘Thank you,’ he said. He replaced the handset slowly and turned to me, his face suddenly ashen.
‘What did they say?’ I asked.
‘They’re going to send the cruise director here to talk to us, prior to launching a full search of the ship.’
‘So what now? We wait here?’
‘Yes. We wait. The cruise director – Doris something, I think she said – is on her way.’ There was a silence as we both took in this development. John moved over to the dressing table, where he had a bottle of gin.
‘I don’t know about you, but I need a drink.’
17 July 2013, 3.45 p.m.
Even though I was waiting for the knock at the door, it still made me jump when it came. John and I had been sitting in silence; I lost in my thoughts while John nursed his gin. John jumped up and opened the door, ushering two people in to his cabin.
‘Mr Templeton? I’m Doris Maier,’ said the first person. ‘Cruise director.’ She was a short, stocky woman with dark skin, dark hair, and way too much red lipstick for the time of day. She held her hand out for each of us to shake. ‘And this is Angelica Floros, director of Guest Relations. I believe you spoke to her on the phone?’
John nodded.
‘May we, umm …’ she pointed to the sofa.
‘Yes, of course, please sit down,’ I said. ‘I’d offer you tea, but we can’t …’ I waved my hand at the lack of tea-making facilities. ‘I can order?’
‘We’re fine, thank you,’ said Doris. She settled herself on the sofa while Angelica took her place standing with her back to the balcony window. She stood squarely, distributing her weight equally on both feet, and held her hands neatly in front of her body, looking not unlike a bouncer. It made me think her role was that of witness. Was this a legal conversation? Doris took out a notepad; a pen was already clipped to it.
‘So, we’re here to talk about Mrs, uh, Templeton?’
I nodded.
‘Your mother?’ Doris looked at John then me.
‘Yes, both our mothers.’ It sounded wrong. ‘His and mine. Our mother,’ I said.
‘Okay, and you say you haven’t seen her since when?’
‘Since the White Night party.’
‘Two days ago? Am I correct?’ Doris flicked through her diary. ‘Yes, White Night was after Mykonos. Yes, this will be the second night. So, two full days and one full night?’
‘Yes, about to enter the second night,’ I said. ‘Thirty-nine hours, to be precise.’ I gave a little laugh as if it was funny I’d added it up.
‘And she is sixty-nine years old?’
‘Seventy.’ My voice was small. ‘It was her birthday.’
Doris sat with her pen poised over a notepad. ‘And this is the first time you have reported her missing?’
I nodded.
‘May I ask why you didn’t report this sooner?’
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Suddenly I saw it through Doris’s eyes: an old lady had been missing for thirty-nine hours and her children hadn’t reported it. It sounded like we’d neglected her. Images of John and I dancing in the bars, drinking, eating, and enjoying shore excursions while our mother drowned flashed through my mind. Was this what Doris was thinking? Were we such terrible children?
‘We didn’t want to make a fuss unnecessarily,’ John’s voice was smooth. ‘We weren’t spending all day, every day, together, so it was easy for us to miss seeing her. We each had our own itineraries. When we didn’t see her, we just assumed she was doing something else. It took a while for us both to realise that neither of us had seen her.’
Doris nodded. ‘And disappearing is unusual behaviour for Mrs Templeton?’ she asked. ‘She doesn’t often wander off?’
It took all my strength to rein in a sarcastic response.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Highly unusual.’
Doris looked at John. He nodded.
‘And you’re positive you haven’t just been missing her as you move about the ship? She in the library while you’re by the pool? That kind of thing?’
‘That’s what we were saying. That’s what we thought, why we didn’t call you earlier. But now I’ve searched everywhere!’ A sob caught in my voice. ‘I’ve searched the entire ship from Deck 13 to Deck 4. Every restaurant, every café, every lounge, every shop. The theatre. The lobby. Everywhere.’ Doris nodded and I felt she was finally beginning to understand the situation. ‘I’ve knocked on her room door a hundred times.’
‘And not got a reply?’
‘No.’
‘Forgive me for asking, but have you tried calling her room?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Yes.’ I sounded exasperated, even to me.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Doris. ‘I have to ask these things. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a so-called missing person turns out to be a misunderstanding.’
‘Call her yourself, if you like.’
‘I already have,’ said Doris. ‘I should also hear from her butler any minute. I sent him along to check if the bed had been slept in. In fact …’ she punched a number into the mobile phone she had clipped to her belt and spoke rapidly into it. Then she looked up.
‘No,’ she said. ‘The room hasn’t been touched.’
I gasped. Not having seen Mum was one thing; having it officially confirmed that she hadn’t been to her room was a shock. I’d assumed that the fact that my note had gone would imply Mum had been to her room but, even as I thought it, I realised, of course, that the butler would have taken it inside. John looked pale. He stood up and started to pace up and down the room.
‘Could she have just got off the ship and not got back on?’ he asked. ‘Is that possible?’
Doris shook her head. ‘No. As you know, every passenger must swipe their card out and swipe back in. We know exactly who’s on board at any given time.’
‘And she didn’t swipe out and not swipe back in?’
‘The captain would be aware had that been the case, but I’ll double check.’
John turned to face Doris. ‘Is it possible that she’s somehow gone overboard? Is that something that will be considered?’
Doris nodded. ‘It is. And it does happen. But we mustn’t speculate at this stage. First, I inform Captain Stiegman. Most likely, we will page for Mrs Templeton over the public address system, then we will check the CCTV. At the same time, with the permission of the captain, staff will perform a full search of the ship. This will take some time. If we find nothing, Captain will make a decision about reversing course and, or, deploying lifeboats.’
I looked at her in disbelief. ‘You mean, we’re not obliged to turn back? What if she did fall overboard?’ An image of Mum treading water in her White Night outfit appeared in my mind’s eye. For how long could she have lasted?
Doris shook her head. ‘It’s at Captain’s discretion. The timescale is crucial. If someone witnesses an overboard,’ I cringed as she used the word as a noun, ‘we would reverse course and deploy lifeboats at once but …’ she looked at me and then at John, ‘in this case … if we’re talking about pax overboard … if … we don’t know when or where she went overboard. It could have happened at any point between the waters off Mykonos to Katakolon via Santorini. It’s a huge distance. I cannot speculate as to what Captain Stiegman will do.’
‘But the quicker we know what happened, the quicker we can turn back,’ I said. ‘What if she’s in the water? Alive? Waiting? What if she’s hanging on, watching the horizon for us to come back? She’ll expect us to come back!’
‘There are a lot of factors to consider,’ Doris said. ‘The time she’s been missing … the distance we’ve travelled … if there are any other ships in the area … the tides … many factors.’
‘The main factor being that an elderly woman could be treading water in the Mediterranean.’ I couldn’t disguise my disgust.
Doris looked down and then I realised what she was being so coy about admitting: that the chances of Mum still treading water after all this time were slim. She didn’t think she would have survived this long. I turned away.
‘What about other ships?’ John asked. ‘Are there any other ships closer? Ones that could divert to have a look?’
‘It is possible,’ Doris said.
‘There was! I saw another cruise ship travelling parallel to us. Maybe they saw something? Maybe they could go back? Can we speak to them?’ Even as I said it, I knew the ship had been too far away for them to have seen anything.
‘It will be in Captain’s hands,’ said Doris. She stood up, straightening her skirt as she did so. It was tight and it had ridden up when she’d sat down. ‘But let’s not be pessimistic. I will get the search of the ship underway and, with hope, we will find her. It will all be a misunderstanding.’
‘And what do we do in the meantime? I feel like we should be doing something.’
‘Wait. And try not to worry,’ said Doris. She walked towards the door, Angelica in her wake. At the door, she turned. ‘It would be helpful if you could stay in your state room this evening. So I can contact you.’
John nodded.
‘Sure,’ I said.
The door closed behind them.
17 July 2013, 5 p.m.
I turned on the public address speaker in John’s room. ‘I want to hear if they page for her.’
John didn’t say anything. He was still pacing the room, his forehead furrowed.
‘It’s crazy to page for her,’ I said. ‘If she was able to hear that, we’d have found her somewhere. Either she’s unconscious, she’s locked up somewhere, or she’s …’
John looked up. ‘It’s not wasting any time. That Doris woman said they’d do the search simultaneously, didn’t she? So let them page her. Maybe it’ll jolt someone’s memory. Maybe another passenger will realise they’ve seen her. I don’t know. It can’t do any harm, can it?’
There was a silence, then the speaker crackled to life followed by the three-toned ping that preceded every public announcement. A female voice rang out: ‘Paging Audrey Templeton. Paging Audrey Templeton. Would Audrey Templeton please go at once to the Guest Relations lounge on Deck 5.’
‘Is that it?’ I asked.
‘They’ll be starting the search now.’
I stepped out onto the balcony and leaned over the railing, scouring the sea. From the height of the eighth deck it wasn’t easy to see anything. If Mum had gone overboard, the chances of her being found were miniscule. As Doris had said, it could have been any time since I left the White Night party until today. She would have been a weak, seventy-year-old dot in the ocean. My only hope was she’d have been picked up by another ship. But how would she have gone overboard? I tried to think of the different scenarios: she was tipsy, the ship lurched and she slipped. She climbed up to get a better view of something over a railing a
nd lost her balance. She leaned on a gate or something and it gave way. She was pushed over. She was attacked, hurt, and thrown over.
I had to shake my head to stop myself from going down these avenues. Who would want to harm an old lady on her birthday cruise? This was the stuff of movies, not real life.
‘What are you thinking?’ John stood beside me.
‘Oh – just …’ I shook my head. ‘If she fell … God. We should have started the search ages ago.’
‘We weren’t to know.’
‘But we did know! We knew she was missing. She’s been missing thirty-nine hours now and what did we do? Nothing! I should never have listened to you.’
‘We didn’t know she was missing,’ John spoke slowly, enunciating each word carefully. ‘We knew we hadn’t seen her since the White Night party. There’s a difference.’
I thought back to the last time I’d seen Mum, dancing to Shakira. ‘Stavros!’ I banged my fist on the railing. ‘I left her with Stavros. He might know something!’
I rushed back into the cabin and scrabbled with the papers on John’s table for Doris’s number.
‘Thank you,’ she said, politely, after I’d explained. ‘I’ll speak to him.’
I couldn’t help myself. ‘Any news yet?’
‘The search has started. I will call you with any information. Please try to stay calm.’
I hung up and looked at John. He raised his glass.
‘Well, cheers,’ he said. ‘The cruise certainly turned out more interesting than I’d imagined.’
A flash of anger ran through me. ‘You want to watch what you say from now on,’ I said. ‘If they find out that Mum had just told us about Dad’s will, they’ll be asking both of us questions.’
‘Lexi. Seriously? I was just trying to lighten the moment.’
‘But look at yourself. Here you are, set to inherit a fortune, drinking gin and making jokes about your missing mother! It doesn’t do you any favours.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lexi. What else can I do? Weep and wail?’
‘I don’t know. Join in the search?’
The Disappearance Page 21