She’d looked at the near-wreck again, trying to see it as he clearly was. “Perfect for what?”
The plan, as she’d understood it that day, was that Billy and his dad would come to fix the boat up, as and when they had free time. She’d protested, saying Billy had no free time, not with cramming two years of high school into just one year, alongside all his other projects. That it would overtake his other, more important demands on his time. And maybe her lack of faith had offended him a little, because he hadn’t mentioned the yacht to her again, and she hadn’t asked, assuming it must have been one of the projects that fell from favor and would be quietly forgotten. It wouldn’t be the first. So as she drove down now it wasn’t with high hopes. She assumed that if the Caroline was even still here, it would have simply fallen further into disrepair.
She crested the final rise in the track, as it led up to the flood embankment which cut off the view of the water. She held her breath as she did so. The image that she had in her head – the image that had forced her to turn away from the ferry to the mainland – was of a beautifully restored yacht, bobbing on silvered water, perhaps with a wisp of smoke coming from a new, stainless-steel chimney, indicating that a little wood burning stove warmed a cozy cabin.
The car’s tires slipped a little on the gravel as she climbed the embankment, but she revved harder and they bit. And her heart sank. The boat was there, but it looked much the same as it had the previous time she’d seen it. If anything it looked worse, there was more tarpaulin, presumably covering more rotten wood and missing windows. Amber stared at it a long while, the engine still running. Then she turned it off. There was a sudden silence, that slowly revealed itself to not be silence after all, but a low moan from the wind, and the lonely cawing of some seabird. Billy would have told her what type.
Suddenly she was crying again. What had she really been expecting, coming here? A miracle, that’s what. That the police, the FBI, Billy’s father – that they could all be wrong, and Billy somehow could be still with her. That the best friend she’d ever had, the boy who she assumed she would love as a brother for her whole life would be here, hiding away and living life the way he always had. But it was nonsense. Of course it wasn’t real. The police weren’t wrong, the FBI hadn’t made a mistake. They saw him onto the ferry, and they saw he didn’t get off. Abruptly she got out of the car, needing the cold wind to blow the now sobbing flow of tears from her face. And her feet seemed to take her automatically, down to the head of the jetty, and then out onto its rickety wooden boards. She picked up a rock as she walked, not knowing why but knowing she intended to smash it against the boat, to damn it for having given her false hope. She went right up to the Caroline, raising the rock, wishing she’d taken more of them. Before she threw it she saw that some work had been done. Presumably Billy’s dad – it looked well done. She wondered what Sam would do with it now. Would he finish restoring her now Billy was dead and had no use for a boat? What would any of them do?
She didn’t attack the boat with the rock. Instead she just let it slip from her fingers, into the muddy water.
The wind hadn’t dried her tears, quite the opposite. They flowed, fully, for the first time since she’d learned of Billy’s death. Perhaps because this was the first moment she truly believed. Now that she had looked Sam in the face. Now that she had been to his memorial service. Now she had come here, and confirmed he was nowhere. Not hiding out in his secret project but dead. Drowned. Gone. How was she supposed to go on? Now that Billy was gone.
“Can you stop crying please?”
The words, which came from nowhere, stopped her dead. She looked around. There was no-one. Not on the jetty, not on the boat. But then the tarpaulin was lifted from underneath, and Billy’s head appeared, a look of frustration and irritation on his face. “And whose car is that? Why didn’t you come in your mom’s car? I was watching for that one.”
Amber was speechless. Literally unable to form a single word.
“You better give me your phone. I can scramble the signal, so that no one will know you’ve come here, but I can only go back half an hour.” He came fully out of the tarp now, and into the cockpit, standing up. His hair was scruffy and messed up. He held out his hand.
“Come on. They’ll be tracking you. I have to be quick to make use of the delay in the data. Make it look as though you’re at home.”
“You’re not dead?” Amber managed. With the back of her hand she swiped tears from her cheeks.
“No. But why did you take so long to come here?” Billy looked irritated again. “And can I have your phone, please?”
Automatically she handed it over, and Billy disappeared out of view, pushing the tarp more out of the way, and revealing the steps down into the cabin. He didn’t tell her to come aboard, but after a few moments she did so anyway. This time when she stepped onto the wooden deck it tipped a little under her weight. Caroline was afloat this time.
She lifted the tarp, and looked underneath properly. And then gasped. The inside of the yacht, which had
