Zeke
Zeke
They introduce themselves. Kiki, Steve, Gareth, Paddy, Ash, Madur, smiling as they pull life jackets over our shoulders and pass us bottles of water, asking questions about injuries, asking us what we need.
There’s only one thing Lexi needs, though.
“A phone,” she says, gripping Kiki’s arm. “Please.”
The woman pauses, ducking down—she’s almost six foot, and Lexi seems smaller than ever with her shoulders hunched against the cold wind.
“Lexi needs to warm up,” I say, looking around me.
Everyone’s moving so…comfortably. Like there’s no rush now. Steve’s speaking into a radio, Madur’s gently trying to usher Lexi inside the boat, but the urgency we had in the houseboat’s gone, and with it, the edge seems to have eased away from the storm. The waves are choppy, but standing here on the lifeboat deck in the steady rain, it doesn’t even look like a storm. I bet this wouldn’t make the news—probably doesn’t cut it for a storm name. Not even an article about blown-over dustbins.
“Here,” says Steve, wrapping a foil blanket around my shoulders.
I shake my head, impatient, trying to pull it off so I can give it to Lexi, and he smiles.
“Gareth’s got one for her,” he says quietly. “We’ll get her inside in the dry, all right? And have Madur check her out. Then you.”
I nod, making eye contact for a moment. He gets it. I fought so hard for Lexi for all this time, and I’m not done yet.
Steve’s got one of those mild, open faces, the kind I associate with vicars and middle-aged dads. He’s wearing a camera on his forehead, and I find myself staring into its blinking red light instead of at his eyes. I glance away, toward Lexi, pale in the lights of the boat. She’s now bundled under at least two foil blankets and is talking fast to Kiki, who’s pulling out a weird-looking phone, more walkie-talkie than mobile. Looking at Lexi makes me feel less crazy. Her hair’s completely soaked, lying in stripes on her bare neck. I need to touch her, hold her, check she’s really there.
“You remember the number?” Kiki says to her. “Let’s get inside—Lexi, right?”
Lexi snatches the phone like a starved person grabbing at scraps. Kiki looks startled, glancing over at Madur, who already has an arm hovering around Lexi, trying to direct her down the steps into the area labeled Survivor Space .
“Lex, come on,” I say, grabbing her hand and pulling. “We need to get off the deck.”
She looks up at me. Her eyes are wild. “I don’t know if I remember Penny’s number,” she whispers. “I taught it to Mae, but I can’t…is it oh seven six four nine, or…”
“Lexi, I need to sit down,” I say.
Her eyes sharpen. She glances around, as though coming to.
“In there,” she says to me, pointing to the survivor space. “Now.”
“What a good idea,” says Madur.
I lead us down the narrow flight of steps into the body of the lifeboat. It’s glaring down here, lit by overbright strip lighting. There’re seats lining each side, with padded straps and grips dangling from the ceiling to keep yourself braced. I sit, and Lexi stumbles into the seat opposite me, eyes down on the phone. The boat’s engine is deafeningly loud down here—the sound’s so comforting after the chaotic roar of the wind.
“I can’t remember,” Lexi says tearfully. “I can’t remember if it’s…oh seven, oh seven six…”
Madur glances at me, eyebrows slightly raised. “Can you help her? I really need to examine you both. That’s our number one priority right now.”
He reaches for her wrist and pauses, head cocked, listening to her pulse. On the floor beside him he’s laid out a series of cards in bright colors: I catch the words casualty and lifesaving interventions .
“Lexi, I need you to take a breath. Just in for four, out for eight. Can you try it with me?”
She shakes him off, eyes glued to Kiki’s phone.
“Oh seven…Oh seven seven? Oh seven six?”
“Lexi.”
She looks up. I feel a little dash of pride at being able to cut through to her.
“You’re going to see Mae so soon,” I say softly. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t call home yet. Because you’re going home now.”
Her eyes instantly fill with tears. “Oh, God, don’t say it,” she says. “What if it isn’t true? What if we…”
“Lexi,” Madur says, crouching down in front of her and steadying himself with a hand on the floor. “Looking at what-ifs will have really helped you survive on that houseboat. But you’re safe now. The most important thing to do is to let me look after you, so that when you get home to your little girl…”
His eyes fly to me, checking he’s got it right. I nod.
“You can be the best you can be for her. OK?”
Lexi lets out a shaky breath. “What is it?” she says, in the tone that means, Fine, I’m listening . “In for four, out for what?”
Madur smiles. “In for four, out for eight.”
I lean back into the seat and watch her try it. The phone’s trembling in her lap—her hands are shaking. I look down. Mine are, too. I’m feeling kind of…weird. Disconnected. It’s like I won’t let myself believe it, whatever I say to Lexi about how we’re going home. I guess there’ve just been times before when I thought we were rescued—that ship we saw, the rig—so I’ve got used to never trusting what looks like a miracle.
But there’s Madur, a proper qualified person wearing plastic gloves and checking over Lexi’s injuries. If that doesn’t count as a real miracle, I don’t know what the hell does.
“Is this meant to be doing something?” Lexi says, cracking open one eye. “This breathing thing?”
For the first time in a while, I laugh. My voice sounds creaky, as if I’ve kind of forgotten how to do it.
“I think it’s meant to calm you down,” I say. “Right, Madur?”
“That’s about it, yeah.”
Lexi scowls. “What would I want to calm down for?” she says. “Are we not being rescued? Is this not rescue?”
“Yeah, it is,” Madur says. “That’s exactly what—”
“Calm is for a crisis,” Lexi says, leaning forward in her seat. “Calm is for when we’re trying to work out how the hell not to die. I’m alive now. You’re telling me I’m safe. I don’t want to be anything but buzzing.”
“Right,” Madur says after a moment, breathing out a laugh. “OK, well, as you were, then.”
Lexi meets my eyes, and for the first time since the storm started, her fierce intensity breaks, and she smiles.
“Tell me again,” she says.
“We’re going home.”
“Again.”
“We’re going home.”
“Again.”
“Home,” I say. “Home, home, home, home, home.”
She leans back and closes her eyes, still smiling. “I have imagined this moment so many times,” she says. “And this is it.” Her eyes open again and meet mine. “Right? This is really it?”
“Right,” I say, and seeing her believe it makes me believe it, and just like that I’m crying again.
“I’m sorry to ruin this moment,” Madur says, “but I really would feel a lot better if I could take a closer look at some of your injuries. That, for instance,” he says, pointing at my bloodstained finger, the one where I lost a nail.
“Oh my God,” Lexi says, eyes widening as she seems to come around again. “Check his wound. His stomach. Now —please—I sewed it up myself, and…”
“May I?” Madur asks me.
I nod. To his credit, he hardly reacts to the sight of the clumsily stitched wound across my stomach.
“You did a fabulous job there, Lexi. Let’s clean that up a tad, eh?” he says calmly, already reaching for a bottle in his kit. “This might sting a bit, but looking at what you two have been through, I can’t imagine you’re scared of a little pain.”
“Right,” I say, and then I laugh again, remembering Lexi on the rig, saying, Your toxic masculinity is showing . “Actually,” I say, “I’d love a paracetamol right now.”
Everything hurts, now I think about it. The finger’s the worst, but there’s also my wound—a dull, persistent throb—and the muscles of my legs and arms, and the back of my throat, and…
“Sure!” Madur says, already rummaging.
“Wow,” Lexi says, watching him produce a packet of paracetamol. “Wow.”
It suddenly seems to hit her. She reaches forward, grabbing Madur’s shoulder.
“What food have you got?” she says, her voice a little hoarse. “Have you got—have you got chocolate?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” comes a voice from the steps, and Kiki ducks in, already holding two bars of Galaxy.
“This is heaven,” Lexi says to me, wide-eyed as she grabs the outstretched chocolate. “It’s heaven, isn’t it?”
Kiki chuckles, passing me my Galaxy. “You really have been to hell and back, haven’t you? It’s not even the caramel one.”
Dawn properly breaks today. It just smashes against the sky. Orange, pink, blue.
We watch it come up from the lifeboat deck. They wanted us to stay in the survivor space, but I couldn’t stand how trapped I felt down there. I needed to see it—I needed to know we were moving. We stand hand in hand as the lifeboat forges on, cutting through the waves, taking us home.
I look at Lexi and feel a bottomless sensation that relief doesn’t cover. More like…ecstasy. For the first time in two weeks, I can stop worrying about something happening to her, and the pressure lifting makes me feel like I’ve just surfaced after twelve days holding my breath. Everything else—the nightmare being over, knowing I’ll see my family again…it’s all small compared to really believing Lexi will be OK.
“Here, I can’t offer you tea, which I bet is just what you fancy right now,” Gareth says cheerfully, handing us each our third protein bar of the night, “but I can give you pretty much an endless supply of these. You must be famished. What’ve you been living off in there?”
“We ate pretty well, actually. You’d be surprised what Zeke can do with out-of-date cheese,” Lexi says, with a small smile. “Thanks for this.”
She’s still wearing two blankets like a cloak on top of her life jacket, the top one crinkly with silver foil. Her hair is drying now the rain’s stopped, and she’s moving better, as if she’s got energy back in her limbs.
“The world’s a bit obsessed with you two,” Gareth says, coming to stand beside us and adjusting his hood against the wind.
I have this weird compulsion to touch him. I can’t actually believe he’s here—all solid, bearded six foot of him.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You’ve captured the nation. The houseboaters lost at sea. Once your neighbor raised the alarm, everyone fell in love with the story, I think—the one-night stand, all that.”
He looks briefly panicked, like he might have overstepped in mentioning that, even though absolutely nothing this man says could annoy me right now.
“Anyway,” he goes on, with a slightly anxious side-eye at me, “when a military plane reported a burning oil rig yesterday, with SOS painted on its helipad, everyone went wild, especially when the plane had to turn back because of the weather. Then there was all the suspense with us lot setting out to the marker they’d sent us…Not that we had much hope, I must say. We’d written you off. Sorry,” Gareth adds, patting me on the arm.
“Please never, ever say sorry to us,” Lexi says, her mouth full of protein bar. “You saved our lives. We will love you forever. Forever .”
Gareth smiles. He’s in his fifties, maybe, the sort of average-looking guy you’d overlook on a bus.
“Just what we do,” he says, glancing back toward the cockpit, where his fellow volunteers stand.
Gareth, Kiki, Madur, Steve, Paddy, Ash—they don’t know me and Lexi. They had no reason to save us. They volunteer to do this job because they want to help people. I don’t know if there’s anything bigger or braver than that. I keep saying, “ Thank you, thank you ,” but it seems to embarrass them, so I’m trying to rein it in.
“Oh my God,” Lexi says, suddenly clinging to my arm. “Oh my God, Zeke, look!”
At first it looks like a shadow on the horizon, a thickening cloud. Then it grows and lengthens and darkens.
“It’s land,” Lexi says. “That’s land!”
Gareth smiles beside her. “Not just any old land. Gilmouth harbor.”
I’m crying again. The world’s waiting for us. I can hardly believe it still exists.
“Whatever happens when we get back,” Lexi says suddenly, her grip tightening on my arm, “I don’t want us to lose this.”
“I’ll give you a minute,” Gareth says, slipping off and leaving us alone on the deck.
“I love you,” I whisper, laying my hand over Lexi’s on my arm. “I meant what I said when we got off the houseboat. There’s literally nothing that could happen on dry land that would change how I feel about you.”
She swallows, eyes brimming. “Same. And me neither.”
I kiss her gently on the forehead, breathing in the smell of salt and sea and Lexi.
“Oh my God,” she says, pulling back a little and shaking her head. “You’re going to meet Penny and Mae. You’re going to come around to our flat. Which isn’t really my flat anymore. I need a flat. Shit, I need a flat.”
I laugh, pulling her snug against me with one arm. “We can go shopping for food. I’m going to make you black truffle pasta sauce. I’m going to make you dessert . Oh my God, I’m going to get a McDonald’s.”
“We can watch TV. What do you even watch on TV? Do you watch TV?” She looks up at me, briefly terrified. “You’re not one of those men who spends all day watching sport, are you?”
“You two holding up OK?” Steve calls out to us from the helm. “There’s a bit of a crowd on the dock, apparently, but the coastguard has made sure that your family are there to greet you, and the rest of the rabble are behind the barriers, all right?”
Your family . It surges through me. Mum. Jeremy. Lyra. My family , real and alive and there .
Lexi’s doubled over, crying into her hands, her half-eaten protein bar dropping to the deck between her feet. “Oh my God,” she says. “Mae. I get to hold Mae.”