light farafatry for boats. His eyes would glitter as he’d demonstrate how to twist faraihosy bark into rope or tap babo for fresh water.
She went over to the lodge, but it had a new steel front door, perhaps in response to the recent coup. There were new steel shutters too, closed and bolted, denying her access. She’d just have to wait until morning, borrow keys from Therese. The cabins were unlocked, however. Her father’s was closed only on a latch. There was a white candle by his bed. She lit it, held it up. The place was filled with poignant reminders of him: silver hairs caught in a comb; a black-and-white family photograph of them all together; drawstring blue pyjamas beneath his pillow.
She went back out. The night had grown perceptibly cooler and the stars had all vanished. Bad weather was on its way. She was tempted to head back to Pierre’s, but she needed to see Emilia’s cabin first. Michel’s cradle was by her bed, brightly coloured mobiles of reef-fish dangling low above it. Her heart gave a twist as she recalled the morning, a year or so ago, when Emilia had phoned to let her know that she was pregnant. She’d tried to offer congratulations, but her words had come out strangely hollow. Afterwards, too dazed to work, she’d left the office and had walked for hours. In a bookshop, she’d picked out a paperback on motherhood, had made a wall of her back to hide it from the CCTV cameras, as though it were the most lurid pornography. It had been a rush just to cradle it in her palm: the sharp-edged springiness of its leaves, the creak of its spine, that intoxicating scent of newness. Every day for a week, she’d visited a different maternity store, running her hands over the displays, the silk and satin trickling like fine sand through her fingers. It had been madness. She’d been too well known. Shoppers had murmured with staff; rumours had begun to circulate. An ambitious morning TV presenter with glittering eyes had asked her flat out whether she had exciting news to share. Rebecca had had to tell her about Emilia. It was the first time she’d volunteered information about her family on television, and because her father had once been a TV presenter himself, her childhood had suddenly been in play.
‘What was he like, your father?’ the woman had asked.
Rebecca had simply frozen. How to answer such a question? Was she supposed to talk about the gentle, wise man he’d been before the leukaemia had taken her mother? Or the sporadic drunk he’d then become, the red- faced ranting machine who’d yelled at her and threatened her with his fists? Was that the man she was being asked about?
His abuse had lasted years. He’d felt wretched after each episode, had vowed never to lapse again. But he always had. And, anyway, it hadn’t been the yelling or the threats that had most upset her, it had been the knowledge of the hatred that underlay it, not least because she hadn’t the first idea what she’d done to deserve it, and he’d never said. And while part of her had been glad that Emilia had been spared his wrath during these outbursts, another part of her had bitterly resented the manifest unfairness of this, and so she’d begun in turn to pick on her younger sister, something for which she’d come to hate herself.
In the end, they’d colluded on the solution. Adam had pulled strings with his old Oxford colleagues to get Rebecca a place to read zoology. Distance had allowed her heart to heal, but the scarring still remained. For years afterwards, Rebecca had refused any direct contact whatsoever with her father. But Emilia had eventually brokered a wary truce, a first tentative exchange of letters, emails, even the rare phone call. But whenever either Emilia or Adam suggested anything more, Rebecca would freeze up, the process would be set back months.
In the bottom of a chest of drawers, Rebecca found a home pregnancy kit and a packet of domperidone, a lactation stimulator. Rebecca smiled. Emilia had been planning for motherhood all her life. Where other girls had wanted breasts to titillate the boys, Emilia had only ever wanted them to gorge her babies. Where others had fantasised about their life partners, Emilia’s dream man had always been one who’d get her pregnant and then leave.
– Pierre! How could you choose Pierre?
– A woman needs to be held.
– But Pierre!
– A child needs a father.
– But Pierre!
– As if your choices are so much better.
Outside, she heard an engine. She went to the door, saw headlights through the rain that had started falling. Pierre back from Antananarivo, no doubt. But then the lights went out and a pickup truck lurched with unnerving stealth up the drive. She stepped back out of sight, blew out her candle. The pickup swung around; its engine stilled. Both doors opened and two men jumped down, faces concealed by baseball caps and scarves. They hurried through the rain to the lodge. To Rebecca’s shock, they unlocked the front door and vanished inside, making her wonder whether they’d taken keys from her father and Emilia, and had come here to plunder the place while they knew it would be deserted. She watched the pale fireflies of torchlight flutter around the edges of the shutters as they moved through the various rooms. It would be madness to go challenge them by herself, but there was no reason not to check out their pickup, make a note of their licence plate. Her T-shirt was a treacherous bright white, however, so she tiptoed quietly over to Emilia’s chest of drawers and began searching for something dark.
SIXTEEN
I
The charm of his moonlit walk had long since worn off for Knox. His feet were either plugging in the soft sand or stumbling as he negotiated rocky hummocks and tangles of mangrove. When he took off his shoes to wade across an inlet, something snakelike slithered from beneath his sole. He lifted his foot so abruptly that his dive-bag swung on his shoulders and he fell sideways into the water, yelling out a heartfelt curse.
The night grew cloudy, cold and dark. He took off his pack, pulled out his diving lamp. He reached another rocky outcrop, treacherous with spume. Lightning flickered ahead. A miniature whirlwind brought a hoop of dust and dead leaves towards him, whipping and twisting and bowing. It began to rain, light patters at first, but quickly growing strong. He looked for shelter, but there wasn’t any. He fought his way past more mangroves and then kept going, a hundred paces at a time, the rain growing heavier around him, the lightning drawing closer. He was on the verge of giving up when he finally saw a small white building ahead. Its door was locked and its awning offered precious little protection. He shone his lamp through the small window, revealing diving gear hanging up on the far wall and a compressor for filling scuba tanks. He surely had to be close to Eden now.
Hurrying on with renewed energy, he soon reached a sign directing him up a track to a clearing of wooden cabins and a large, low building. He hurried between parked vehicles to the shelter of the veranda, was surprised to see that the front door was ajar and that torchlight was flickering inside, as though there’d been a power-cut. He shouted out as he put down his bags, and two men appeared a moment later, wearing baseball caps and scarves around their mouths, obviously up to no good. They yelled out and charged at him, knocked him backwards off the veranda. Knox slapped instinctively at an ankle as it passed, and one of the men went sprawling. He leapt upon him but the second man came back and aimed a kick at Knox’s face, forcing him to defend himself, allowing his companion to squirm free. They ran for the pickup, locked themselves inside, started it up and sped away, spraying watery mud all over Knox as he gave chase. Then they turned south along the track and vanished.
He tramped back to the veranda. A woman in dark clothes came out of one of the cabins, plastic sheeting over her head. For a glad moment he thought it was Emilia, that she was safe after all; but then he realised it was her sister Rebecca instead, the one person Emilia had made him promise never to breathe a word of the Winterton project to. She came over to him, looking concerned. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine,’ he assured her. ‘Who were those guys? What the hell’s going on?’
‘I don’t know. I was in one of the cabins. They just showed up.’ She looked at the open door. ‘They had a key.’
‘Just as well,’ said Knox. ‘I’m drenched.’ He squelched his way inside, kicked off his shoes.
‘Matthew Richardson,’ she said from behind him.
He looked around, startled that she should know his name, only to see her crouched down by his bags, reading his tags. ‘Everyone calls me Daniel,’ he told her.
‘The Maritsa?’ she frowned, still reading. ‘Is that a ship or something?’
‘Yes.’
