CHAPTER 67
Damien does that thing he sometimes does where he cups the back of Simone’s head in his huge palm.
Eventually, he seems to come to some decision, there on the deck as the boat swarms with police sent to capture them, to take their family and tear them apart. ‘Simone,’ he says. His voice is hot against the nape of her neck. It is warm and intimate in contrast to the cold and chilled sea air.
‘What?’ she says, her voice full of trepidation.
He takes a breath, exhales slowly, this time through his nose. It’s cooler, dizzying against her neck. He’s done it thousands of times, her husband, but never like this. Their intimacy now feels awful, loaded, dangerous.
‘I should have said this before, but I didn’t want to tell you until I had to.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Do you remember, a while back, you asked me what I knew, from the time I spent with the police?’
‘Yes,’ Simone says, and the officers are moving down the deck, towards the stairs. They don’t have much time.
‘You were right to ask me. I do know something,’ he tells her, his voice low. He’s still behind her, speaking directly into her ear. He covers her hands with his. She turns within the circle of his arms to face him.
‘There is a reason I didn’t tell you,’ he tells her. ‘It’s – I didn’t want to.’ A pause. ‘I didn’t want to have to.’
Simone merely stops still, horrified and waiting for him to finish.
‘They always said, in the briefings and in the interviews with me, that if you handed yourself in and pleaded guilty to every count, then they would spare Lucy her charge of wounding the police officer,’ he tells her. ‘I can’t – I can’t let you not know this –’ his eyes to the police – ‘now.’
Simone blinks at him, her eyes wet, and everything falls into place. ‘No trial,’ she says softly. ‘Just guilt and – and then prison.’
‘Yes,’ he says, in a sad whisper.
She turns away from Damien, stares out to sea, and then, there with the swirling sky and the crisp, salty air, everything Lucy said to her last night coalesces into one single thought. Parenthood isn’t just loving your child; it is sacrifice.
Lucy wants to be free. She told her as much. Maybe she didn’t know that Simone could make it happen, but she requested that she try. Parents have to let their children go.
Lucy wants to move away from Simone, she always did, to RADA, only she didn’t know how to say.
And she wants freedom now, too. And this is what Simone should be fostering: not only love, but independence, too.
An eighteen-year-old needs her liberty more than she needs her mother.
This is the truth; it just is. And if they’re on the run, Lucy does not have her freedom.
Lucy doesn’t want to live in the Bahamas. And now Simone has a way to give her freedom.
Here’s the answer to the conundrum. It isn’t finding the kidnapper.
It isn’t going to trial at all, and hoping to find a defence or get off.
It’s this, a simple this: parental self-sacrifice.
It always was. It would’ve broken Simone’s heart when Lucy moved out, but it would’ve been the right thing to do. And this is a mere extension of that.
She has got to hand herself in. She should have done so weeks ago.
Simone’s body goes into shock. She hums with it, a guitar string plucked and left to shiver. She’s going to go to prison.
Damien’s face is full of regret and sympathy, and maybe she is nodding, maybe she just thinks she is. He reaches one of his huge hands out, cups her chin gently. ‘I didn’t want to tell you if there was a possibility we could still make it work.’
‘I know that,’ she says softly. ‘I appreciate that.’
‘You don’t have to do it,’ he tells her. ‘I don’t know what I would do.’ She meets his eyes. It’s a lie, but a kind one. He would do exactly what she’s going to do. They might not have agreed on the ransom, but on this they are aligned: sacrifice yourself. Spare Lucy. It’s no decision at all.
‘You would do it,’ Simone says. Her eyes to his. ‘You love her equally to me.’ It’s an apology, for what she said in Fort Davis. Too late, no doubt.
Damien lowers his head in acknowledgement of it, the circumstances too sad to discuss it.
‘The reality,’ Simone says, landing on a firm and concrete truth as steady as the land they almost sailed away from, ‘is that parents love their children more than children love their parents.’
‘True enough.’ Damien smiles sadly.
‘It’s almost like unrequited love. You give it all and then they go away.’
‘They take it with them,’ Damien replies simply. One of the truest sentiments Simone has ever heard.
The police are on their deck, now. Searchlights everywhere.
Right before the police reach them, Lucy does. She’s been to the shop, is carrying something with her. ‘What’s going on?’ she says, her eyes everywhere.
In her hands is a Caribbean rum cake, the one Simone likes. On the side it says ALCOHOL FREE.
Simone crosses to Lucy and grabs her wrists urgently.
The cake topples to the deck. ‘The police are here.’ They have so little time; she has to be clear.
‘They’re here for us and they’re going to take me,’ she says.
‘I am going to say it was all me – OK?’ She makes the plea bargain sound simpler than it really is. ‘So they won’t arrest you.’
‘No!’ Lucy shouts.
But Simone has to do it. Lucy will recover. And she will be free.
Simone is suddenly reminded of when Lucy was a toddler, and the smallest things were traumas.
Being dropped off at nursery. Falling into mud.
Those same eyes shone up at her in the exact same way they do now, like, Please fix this.
Mummy, please fix this. And she always could; they were things that were so simple to correct.
‘You’ll have Dad. And you can go to RADA – and …
’ Simone says, but her voice is cracking, a symptom of a broken heart, and she stops pretending as the police close in, and begins to cry.
As Lucy does, too, the police raise their guns and say, ‘Can you confirm you are Simone Seaborn?’ She nods mutely, there on the boat in a sea of blue. And Lucy’s hands are still in hers.
‘No,’ Lucy says. ‘No. Don’t do it. Please don’t do it.’
‘I have to – but, listen,’ Simone says, and are the police encroaching slowly because they can see the parting of mother and daughter, or is everything just in slow motion anyway?
‘This is the last time for a while that we’re going to get to speak privately,’ she tells Lucy.
‘I want you to know – I don’t regret it.
Any of it. It was worth it all for you.’
Lucy holds her hands, and Damien comes forward, too, their family a daisy chain. There is no one Simone would rather leave Lucy with than her father. Her protector, her stable influence, their rock.
‘And it might – it might …’ Simone’s voice is choked. ‘It might be a while. But you will be OK.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You will,’ she says, and then the grace period is over. The police close in.
‘We have reason to believe that you are Simone Seaborn, that, on the second of September you did shoot and kill …’ they continue. ‘You have the right to remain silent …’
Lucy stares, and Simone feels no regret.
Lucy was taken from Simone in the beginning when she was kidnapped, and now, actually, it is Simone being taken from Lucy.
And that’s better. That is the natural order.
The parent always leaves first. Simone just didn’t think it would be this soon, so soon.
They didn’t get enough time together. But doesn’t every parent always think that?