Текст книги "The Jump"

Автор книги: Doug Johnstone

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

10

She led him out the back door and locked it behind her. It was twilight now, street and house lights coming on across the water, the orange sheen from the bridge lights making the churn of the Forth look radioactive. The gloom would help them, though.

She pushed Sam ahead of her, down to the beach. The clatter of pebbles and shingle under their feet was loud in Ellie’s ears. She had a small rucksack slung over one shoulder and was clutching a Tesco carrier bag with all Sam’s clothes in it. She wasn’t sure how yet, but she would have to get rid of them.

They headed west along the beach, the backs of the posher houses overlooking them. Hopefully it was dark enough now that they couldn’t be seen, or maybe just mistaken for a couple of dog walkers. The tide was out so they could get quite far along on the pebbles before they reached the larger rocks of the embankment under the road bridge. They passed the converted steading and the residential home then reached some oak trees and trudged up through them till they came out on Shore Road directly under the bridge. The concrete supports were fenced off, barbed wire across the top, security signs everywhere. Inside the fenced-off area were diggers, giant rolls of metal wire, huge pipes. It was like a kid’s play set on a massive scale.

They risked a hundred yards on Shore Road then ducked through some more trees and across the car park at the back of the marina. It was dark here, not enough money to keep the security lights operating, they had brought it up at marina committee meetings, Ellie remembered. Long, thin warehouses and boat sheds were all around them, boats parked up on lanes and alleyways as well, from tiny dinghies through bigger sailboats to macho powerboats.

They went round past the toilets and block of changing rooms rather than risk walking past the yacht clubhouse or the coastguard Portakabin. Not that there would be anyone inside at this time, skeleton staff on reduced shifts these days.

Ellie and Sam skirted the last of the boats in the dinghy park then rounded the workshop nearest the quay, the slipway down to the water’s edge a mess of mud and seaweed. They clambered on to the pier then scurried along it. At the marina shed they walked past the weather-beaten sign prohibiting the landing of foreign animals, then Ellie stopped at the security gate that led down to the berths.

She looked around but couldn’t see anyone. She didn’t want to run into one of the old seadogs tinkering on their boats. She turned to Sam and nodded at the gate.

‘I’ll show you the code in case you need to come and go. It’s C0604, then you turn this dial.’ She showed him carefully, and the door clunked open.

Sam looked round. ‘I’ve never been here before.’

Ellie closed the gate. ‘Now you try. The “4” is a bit stiff.’

He opened it no problem and she ushered him down the steps. There were four rows of pontoons leading off from the main one, all pointing at the breakwater further out. The harbour walls either side meant the water was calm and the pontoons only swayed a little under their weight.

‘We’re D8,’ Ellie said, pointing. ‘This way.’

Up the last pontoon, along to the eighth berth and there was the Porpoise, the boat she and Ben had owned for a decade. Named after their little purpose, of course. A scruffy 1980s Hunter Horizon, twenty-three footer, twin keel, with a crappy four-stroke outboard slung on the back. Off-white with blue trim and in serious need of a paint job. She wasn’t much but she was all they could afford.

Ellie pulled on the mooring rope to bring the bow next to the pontoon, held it tight for Sam to get on board then followed him.

‘This is yours?’ he said, taking it in.

‘Mine and Ben’s.’

‘So you can sail?’

‘Ben’s the real sailor, but yeah, I can sail.’

The mast and rigging clanked as the boat rocked. There wasn’t much room on deck with the two of them there, and the motion of the boat made Sam stumble then steady himself.

‘It’s better below deck,’ Ellie said. ‘Come into the cabin.’

There was a padlock on the small wooden door to the cabin. She took out a key and unlocked it, then went inside and sat down. He followed, ducking to avoid banging his head. They sat on opposite benches with the tiny mess table between them. She put the plastic bag of his clothes down and took the rucksack off her shoulder.

She pointed to the forward cabin, where a snug berth was squeezed into the space. ‘That’s your bed for tonight. There are blankets in the drawer underneath.’

She unzipped the rucksack and began pulling things out. She’d spent five minutes at the house packing a bag, trying to think what Sam might need. She laid it all out on the table now. Cheese sandwiches, crisps, three Wispas, bananas and a large bottle of water. She pulled out a metal box. ‘This is a portable battery. I presume your iPhone is running out of juice?’

He checked his phone and nodded. ‘Ten per cent.’

She pulled a connector out and plugged it into the battery. A small blue light went on. She offered the other end of the connector and he inserted it in his phone.

She pulled toilet roll out the rucksack and pointed a thumb to the side of the entrance. ‘There’s a chemical toilet over there.’

He nodded.

‘Are you hungry?’

A shake of the head.

‘You should eat,’ Ellie said. ‘Here.’

She picked up a Wispa and undid the wrapper for him, handed it over. He bit and chewed like it was made of dust.

‘And drink plenty of fluids,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

She pointed to the small stove in the corner. ‘There’s a kettle, coffee, teabags and UHT milk in the cupboard above the ring. You want a cup of tea just now?’

‘No.’

He put the chocolate down and reached for the water bottle and she watched as he glugged, Adam’s apple rising and falling.

‘Get some sleep,’ she said.

She took two pills out her pocket and placed them on the table.

‘They’re herbal,’ she said. ‘Nothing to worry about. They’ll just help you to go over, that’s all.’

He stared at them but didn’t speak.

‘Stay here for now,’ she said, ‘until I find out what the situation is out there.’

She pointed towards the porthole behind him.

‘You said we were going to find Libby?’ he said.

Ellie nodded. ‘I am. That’s the first thing I’m going to do.’

She got her phone out her pocket and nodded at his phone on the table.

‘I presume you’ve got a picture of her?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Send it to my phone, and forward me her number too.’

Ellie told him her number and he began pressing buttons. She got the picture on her phone and looked at it. A selfie taken in a bathroom, lips pouting, obvious make-up, blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders like she’d just shaken her head a second before. She wore large-framed geek glasses and a white T-shirt with a small black heart over the breast. She was still a kid, trying to be a grown-up like all girls that age. She was pretty in a gawky kind of way, a seriousness in her eyes that made her look older.

‘She’s eleven, yeah?’

‘Eleven.’

‘And your dad has been hurting her?’

His head still down, looking at his phone, a slight nod.

‘How long for?’

He didn’t speak.

‘Sam, it could be important.’

He looked up. ‘Why?’

‘It just might.’

‘I don’t know.’ Sam’s hands began to shake. ‘Today was the first time I actually saw anything but . . .’

His chest rose and fell, sharp breaths.

Ellie put her hand out and took his.

‘Take it easy,’ she said.

‘I’ve been thinking about it all day,’ he said. ‘She never said anything to me, not exactly, but I think she might’ve been trying to let me know. She used to come into my room late at night and just sit around. Like she was nervous. I thought she was just being a pest. I used to chuck her out. If I’d been a better brother, maybe she could’ve told me. I should’ve asked if anything was wrong.’

‘You can’t blame yourself. Your dad’s the one who’s been doing awful things, not you.’

Sam held her gaze. ‘Do you blame yourself for your son jumping off the bridge?’

Ellie took a deep breath. ‘It’s different.’

‘How?’

‘It just is.’ She hated the tone of her voice, like a strict schoolteacher. ‘Look, can you tell me exactly what happened today?’

He shook his head.

‘It might help.’

‘I can’t.’

His body was shaking again. He was on the edge of coming apart all the time. Ellie knew how that felt.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘But Libby left the house?’

‘After . . .’ He stopped, scratched at his hand. ‘I was just standing there looking at him. Then I went to find her but she must’ve run out the house. I was kind of in a trance or something. I don’t even know if she has her phone with her.’

‘Where might she have gone?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Could she be back home by now?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘She saw me, and Dad. Saw the knife and everything.’

‘So?’

‘Would you go back if it was you?’

Ellie thought. ‘Maybe, if I had nowhere else to go.’

‘There is nowhere else.’

‘What about a secret place she likes to hang out?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing like that.’

‘Are you sure?’

He looked up. ‘Shit. There was somewhere she mentioned, I never thought before.’

‘What?’

‘She’s been smoking with her friend Cassie. I told her it’s stupid. Cassie’s dad has a lock-up garage, they go there. I think it’s on the lane under the rail bridge, past the Hawes Inn?’

Ellie nodded. ‘I’ll try there first.’

‘And if she’s not there?’

‘I’ll try your home.’

‘That’s too dangerous.’

Ellie got up. ‘I need to find out what the situation is with your dad anyway.’

‘How are you going to do that?’

She put her phone in her pocket. ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll find Libby and I’ll find out what’s happening, then we can start getting things sorted.’

‘This is never going to be sorted,’ Sam said.

Ellie looked at him. ‘It will. Things won’t be the same again, but there’s still a way out of this for you, I promise.’

‘You can’t promise that,’ Sam said.

11

Back on the pier she stared at the old crane perched at the end of the quay, all rust and flaky paint. She turned to take in the marina. Decay everywhere. Port Edgar was going to the dogs and it was only going to get worse with the closure of the sailing school. Ben had worked there for seven years and they were shutting it down. The council said they would try to get him something else but that was just talk, they couldn’t afford to keep on staff, and besides, there wasn’t anywhere else on the east coast that taught sailing through local authorities.

She looked at the Porpoise. She was a rickety old thing, and they might have to sell her soon anyway. With Ben out of a job and her still signed off long-term sick from Marine Scotland they couldn’t justify it. The government’s enthusiasm for renewables meant that her research into the effect on marine life was bulletproof for now, but she couldn’t imagine ever going back to work. Sitting in that office, having meetings, taking minutes, working on action plans, giving presentations – it was meaningless now. Logan’s death had robbed her of any confidence that she knew what she was doing, so how could she sit there and tell others how to do their jobs? She had an appraisal meeting with HR coming up, assessing her fitness to return to work. She wasn’t fit, they would likely cut her loose, then she and Ben would be in much deeper water. Or maybe she would have to pretend to be capable, keep them afloat. Neither option held any appeal.

Beyond the boats and the breakwater, giant yellow cranes sat on barges in the water. The new bridge supports were just breaking the surface of the Forth. Work had been carried out underwater for months, structures being built unseen by anyone. She couldn’t imagine what the engineering involved, the scale of it eluded her. She tried to picture the finished bridge arching away into the night, but couldn’t. She wondered if the new bridge would help the marina, if Port Edgar would get a new lease of life from its proximity, but she couldn’t see how.

She wondered if Sam would take the pills, if they would work.

She walked to the end of the pier clutching the plastic bag of Sam’s clothes in both hands. She’d thrown a handful of stones from the Binks into the bag and she felt the heft of it now. She checked the knot in the top was firm, then looked back along the pier. No one in sight. She narrowed her eyes looking for CCTV, but the only camera was down at the entrance to the berths, pointing at the gate. She heaved the plastic bag with both hands and watched as it landed in the water then sank, dragged to the bottom by the ballast inside. She watched the ripples where the bag had been then turned away.

She looked at her phone, flicked to the picture of Libby. Zoomed in closer and she could make out spots beneath the foundation on the girl’s skin. She tried to imagine having a daughter, a female companion, but nothing came into her head. She wondered about those women on television who said their mums were their best friends. Had she been best friends with Logan? It never felt like it. She was always too much of a mother for that, too protective. And anyway, he didn’t live beyond the stroppy teen years so she would never know if they could’ve been grown-up friends. She liked to think so, imagined them going to gigs together, or out for a meal. Or maybe the three of them out for dinner, her and Ben proud parents, him keen to head off to meet his mates and go clubbing, her and Ben sharing a knowing, worn smile, this is what we made, between us, this one good thing.

Thinking like this was destroying her. Or maybe it had already destroyed her.

She walked down the pier, past the coastguard hut and the tumbledown storage buildings, cracked windowpanes, weeds tangled in drainpipes, crumbling brickwork.

She stopped at a memorial stone, wreaths of poppies round it. It was the one thing in this place that was well kept. She’d walked past it many times and never paid much attention. She read it now. It was a remembrance stone for the Navy’s minesweeping service that had trained here during the Second World War, erected by the Algerines Association, whoever they were. At least somebody cared, it was obviously looked after. Across the top of the granite stone was a line:

‘Let there be a way through the water.’

She stared at it for a long time, then turned and walked to Shore Road, heading towards town. She went the front way this time, past the police station then past her own house. The downstairs lights were on, so Ben was back. She’d been right to get Sam out of there when she did.

She kept walking, past the Binks then the harbour, along the old High Street, charity shops and pubs, cobbles underfoot. She was striding by the time she got to the long stretch of seafront where the shows pitched up a couple of times a year, cars parked up there now, a middle-aged couple sitting in one eating bags of chips and staring at the view. That could’ve been her and Ben if things had worked out differently.

She thought of everything they’d been through together, more than twenty years. They met as students at Edinburgh Uni, both doing marine biology and ecology. They hadn’t hit it off initially, took three years of circling each other, dating others, before they got it together.

They had so much in common. Both from small coastal towns, her North Berwick, him Anstruther, both in love with the sea. Keen sailors and swimmers, as much at home on the water or in it as they were on land. He was almost a year older, born at the tail end of ’69, a running joke between them that he was a child of the sixties, an old hippy, while she belonged to the brave new world of punk.

Ellie had stayed on at uni after her degree, the offer of a PhD too good to ignore, while Ben scrabbled around doing the usual shit – pub jobs, office temp work, slowly getting a foot in the door with the marina and the sailing school, helping out in his spare time until they offered him shifts covering for other tutors. After her PhD, a lack of jobs for Ellie, no Scottish government then, no renewables programme, the only jobs in her field in London, a place so remote she could hardly imagine it.

Then marriage, a move to South Queensferry, the small seaside town that was theirs together. Ellie got a job working at Deep Sea World across in North Queensferry. She was stupidly over-qualified but she got to work with animals all day, getting into the tank to feed the sharks in front of gawping children, letting them handle starfish and crabs, making sure the rest of the fish were fed and cared for.

A string of miscarriages, six in three years. That seemed startling but it wasn’t so uncommon, she was on the statistical curve, not exceptional, just had to deal with it. After the first one she and Ben performed a little ceremony, a remembrance thing, and gave the baby a name, Stuart. They got the idea from some website and while it seemed new-age nonsense at first, it helped. But successive miscarriages numbed them, each dead foetus mocked the sincerity and sombreness of that first time with Stuart, and they didn’t give the others names. In Ellie’s mind they just piled up like the death toll of a tsunami only worse, a nameless horde of dead babies, mocking her inability to carry a child in her womb like the billions of women before her.

Then Logan came along.

No one could blame her for being over-protective. Seventh time lucky. Neither she nor Ben ever mentioned the others, not once they had their hands full with nappy changing and colic and six feeds a night and Logan’s hernia that had to be operated on, just a normal procedure they said, it happened to a lot of boys. They were lost in the fog of fatigue for a while but gradually found themselves again, discovered themselves as a family.

When Logan was around three, once Ellie felt ready, they tried again for another. Two quick miscarriages then a trip to a specialist who told them to cut their losses and count their blessings. Something had happened to Ellie’s insides giving birth to Logan. It was incredibly unlikely she could hold on to an embryo long enough, and she might kill herself trying.

So Ben got the snip and they settled down as a trio, the three stooges, the three musketeers, all that. They joked that the best things always came in threes anyway, happy just to have each other.

Ellie walked past the boarded up Two Bridges restaurant. There was a rumble up ahead then a train thudded out over the rail bridge heading north across the water. As the clack-clack faded Ellie strode past a bistro then the motorbike shop and the Hawes Inn, a picture of Robert Louis Stevenson, their most famous customer, on the chalkboard outside.

She crossed the road at Hawes Pier. The Maid of the Forth bobbed in the water, waiting to scoot tourists to Inchcolm Island tomorrow. Ellie had set off from this pier six years ago on a sponsored swim, back when she was really fit, when she was at her best. A team of eight of them in dry suits, the middle of summer, the most benign conditions possible, and still it nearly broke her. It wasn’t the distance, not much more than one and a half miles, but the height of the waves, a tidal range of over six metres to compete with. They had to alert coastguard and the harbourmaster beforehand, check for shipping traffic. But it had been worth it, the eight of them raising twenty thousand for the Sick Kids, and she was immortal for a brief moment afterwards. Staggering up the slipway at North Queensferry, hands on knees, she felt a mix of immense tiredness and overpowering adrenalin, bone-weary but unable to sleep until the small hours of the morning. It felt like she’d achieved something useful, and the glow of it had stayed with her for weeks.

She was directly under the rail bridge now, passing the huge stone legs supporting millions of tons of red steel. She wanted to feel the shudder of a train overhead, but none came.

It was only once she reached the lock-ups that she realised she didn’t have a clue what to do if she found Libby. There were six garages in a row, all in darkness, no street lights here. She went to the first one, listened. Silence. She tried to open the corrugated door but it was locked. She knocked on the door, which rattled in its fitting.

‘Hello?’

She went along the row doing the same, listening, trying the lock, knocking, but if Libby was in one of the later ones she would’ve heard Ellie coming, and would surely stay quiet.

After shaking the last door handle Ellie stood looking out to sea. The lights of the rail bridge stretched into the gloom over the Forth, like the promise of a brighter tomorrow. The sound of the waves, the salty smell, so familiar to her.

She unlocked her phone and opened Facebook. Checked out Logan’s page. A heart and three kisses from a girl called Melissa. A picture of the two of them together, in what looked like her bedroom. Ellie didn’t recognise her. How could your son be friends with a girl you’ve never heard of? How could he spend time in a teenage girl’s bedroom and you not know about it?

She typed in Sam McKenna, three mutual friends, apparently. She clicked through but it was no one direct, always once removed. That was the problem with Facebook, one you had a few hundred friends you were connected to the whole world, we’re all intertwined now, whether we like it or not.

She looked at Sam’s profile, not much there. Logan’s was the same, none of the kids cared about filling in their lives because they hadn’t lived much yet.

One hundred and thirty-five photos. She swiped through them, barely stopping to register. Gangs of mates hanging around the seafront, at school, in each other’s houses. Holiday photos. She slowed down at those, checking out his sister in a few of them, his mum and dad. Jack and Alison. They weren’t tagged in the pictures, so maybe they hadn’t succumbed to social media. Ellie tried to remember a time before she’d been on Facebook, but struggled. Just another crutch now.

She looked closer at the holiday pictures, flicking back and forth, then stopped at one that must’ve been taken by Sam. Libby and her mum and dad standing on a Scottish beach somewhere. Ellie zoomed in. What could you tell from the look on a face in a photograph? She stared at Libby, large-framed glasses on her face, a cluster of spots in the space between her eyebrows, those eyebrows brown but her hair tied in a blonde bun, so she was old enough to be dying her hair.

She clicked on Libby’s tag and went through to her page. Two hundred and four pictures. Swipe, swipe, swipe. The most recent ones all moody, fish-faced selfies, in a bathroom or bedroom, wearing make-up in a haphazard way, always trying to look older, more sexual, hand on hip, chin out, the universal teenage pose for social media. Ellie wondered where they learned it. At that age Ellie had been a bumbling, childish mess, painfully shy, no social skills. She could never have imagined posting pictures of herself in a tight dress for everyone to see, opening herself up to so much hurtful spite, psychological damage. What was the obsession with being connected?

She flicked back to Logan’s page and posted quickly.

So missed, always, xxx

She clicked ‘like’ on Melissa’s comment then turned away from the sea and back into town.