LUCY #2
‘Actually,’ Lucy cut him off, ‘I think I’ll go and have a look at our cabin. Unpack our stuff.’ She did want to check out their room, but also the nausea was rising again – if she was going to throw up, she’d rather be on her own to do it.
‘Good idea,’ Mark said. ‘I’ll join you.’
Lucy chewed her lip. Considering her partner was an investigative journalist – that his entire career required him to be able to follow subtle clues and read between the lines – it amused her how often Mark failed to get the hint. ‘I’ll go on my own. You know I’m no company when I feel sick.’
A trace of disappointment passed across his features, but – to his credit – he didn’t push her. He nodded. ‘Hope you feel better in a bit,’ he said.
Lucy picked up her welcome pack, then turned and took slow, careful steps along the upper deck towards the door, worried if she moved too fast the nausea would peak again.
She opened the envelope and scanned to find the name of their cabin: Sirena.
She snorted. Lucy couldn’t feel less like a siren if she tried.
She walked downstairs and through the salon to the stairs leading below deck: they were lined with plush cream carpet, but narrow, and she held on to the banister as she descended.
The passageway at the bottom of the stairs was cooler, and dark with all the cabin doors closed and the receding daylight from the salon above.
She was about to reach for a switch, but motion sensors detected her movement and the corridor flooded with sudden brightness.
She exhaled – it had only been a second in darkness, but down here, far from the others – was enough to make her spine tingle.
Lucy checked the names on the cabin doors: Sirena was the first one on the right.
It was directly opposite the master stateroom – Rory and Talia’s cabin.
She made a mental note of that information for later, then dug a key card from the envelope in her hand, held it to the door, and it unlocked with a soft click.
She pushed the door open – even the swish it made sounded expensive – and gasped with delight at the room inside.
It was a million times posher than that hotel in Hertfordshire.
Thick cream carpet that bounced under her feet; a large double bed with fat cushions arranged on top of the pillows; a proper dressing table with little lights around the mirror, like in the movies.
She strolled to the bed, pressed down on the mattress – the perfect amount of firmness – then climbed on and lay back on the pillows.
Her mind wandered; she replayed the tour of the yacht, the stunning view of the ocean.
This is going to be a good week. She deserved this trip and she meant to enjoy it, even if she’d brought more baggage with her than the world’s biggest suitcase could fit in.
Because just look where she was – a luxurious superyacht in one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
Lucy – shy, scared-of-everything Lucy – sailing around the South Pacific, when all her life she’d never been further than France.
And everyday life was an unrelenting slog.
This was a chance to escape it all, on a trip that couldn’t feel more different to back home: squeezing onto packed Tube trains, staring at numbers from nine to five, picking up ready meals in Tesco on the way home …
The boat bobbed gently on the water; Lucy’s eyelids drooped, heavy.
She forced them open; it was a bad idea to fall asleep now, wasn’t it?
She’d never get to sleep tonight if she did, and the advice she’d read online said she should try to shift her body clock to Tahiti time as soon as she arrived, even if she was shattered.
But it was overwhelming, the tug towards sleep. Maybe if I set an alarm, I could just nap for ten minutes. She barely managed to set the timer on her phone before her eyes drifted closed …
She floats, disembodied, towards the kitchen door.
She doesn’t want to go in there – something is hideously wrong in that room and she can’t bear to be reminded of it.
She feels crippling guilt about what’s happening on the other side of this door; it never should have got to this point.
The door creaks open, and she sees them: the people she loves most in the world – and then she sees the blood; so much blood.
A desperate cry lodges deep in her throat.
She tries to scream, but she can’t. She can only watch them in paralysed silence, knowing that she’s to blame for this; that this is her fault …
Beep-beep. Beep-beep.
Lucy lurched upright, yanked violently from her nightmare, her nausea now cloying with the horror of what she’d just relived in sleep.
She ran to the bathroom, lifted the toilet seat and threw up until there was nothing left.
She pushed the button to flush, washed her hands and splashed some water on her face, then sat on the edge of the bed and cried into her palms.
It’s happening again.
If only the images from her dream could be flushed away as easily. But here they were, always with her, her own subconscious stalker. She’d travelled nearly ten thousand miles, but there was no distance between Lucy and her nightmares.
Even here – especially here – there would be no escape.