Chapter Twenty-Two 25 July 2011 #3
When she didn’t answer, I figured she must have gone to the other cabin below deck. I climbed back down the steps and pushed the door slightly ajar. I could see nothing in the black.
“Mum?” I whispered.
I didn’t want to wake her. She was a poor sleeper and I knew she would be annoyed, but I skimmed my hands along the wall until I found a switch.
The yellow light revealed two sets of bunks, every bed empty.
Perhaps she had crawled in with me in the other cabin and I hadn’t noticed.
I walked through the galley, flicking on every light switch I found. My bed was a crumpled mess.
“Mum,” I said sharply, as if perhaps she would stir among the bulk of blankets. When nothing happened, I pulled back all the bedclothes, just to be safe.
I was more furious than frightened as I checked the bathroom and snapped back the shower curtain.
Who gets lost on the world’s smallest yacht?
I went back to the deck, as if we’d missed each other before.
The lounging area was still empty, so I climbed onto the dining table and looked through a gap in the fibreglass canopy, wondering if she’d gone up there for a better view.
I saw nothing but stars and I stood there listening to my own breath.
There was only one place left to check, and there she must be.
Trembling a little in the crispy air, I hung onto the metal grab rails that ran along the canopy, placing one bare foot after another as I shimmied myself towards the boat’s pointed bow.
The guardrails at my feet barely passed my ankles.
I was determined not to look down into the shimmering water or give in to the vessel’s delicate roll, which, up there, felt like I was lurching on the crest of a towering wave.
I was sure I’d find Mum sitting on the cushions at the bow.
The lounging area was too enclosed. She’d want to be right at the tip of the yacht, where she would be under the night sky like she was floating through it.
When I found it empty, I sank down into the leather and felt the low thud of my heart.
The ocean suddenly looked infinite, a colossal, wrinkling body with no end in sight.
I could hear nothing but my ragged breaths and the lapping of water on the metal hull.
I could see nothing but the slow, relentless flutter of light in the darkness.
I was alone, and I knew it.
I screamed for her, once, and then swallowed my gasps so I could listen.
The breeze brought me nothing in return.
I sat there frozen. Surely I was wrong. I scrambled back to the cockpit and checked every inch of the boat again.
I even opened cupboards in the galley, as if she would be hiding there.
Finally I found my phone and went back to the lounging area at the stern.
With trembling fingers, I dialled the number.
It was 3 a.m. in Italy, which meant it was 2 a.m. in London.
He barely answered my calls as it was, but his was the only voice I wanted to hear.
When it rang out, I sat down on the deck and sobbed into my hands.
I would have to call Louis next or the Italian police.
I would have to press the panic button that would alert my security detail back at the villa.
I would have to switch all the dials in the cockpit and somehow careen the boat back towards Rapallo.
In my lap, my phone chirped and I half-believed it was Mum calling to tell me where she had gone, why she had left me alone on a boat in the middle of the sea. But it wasn’t her.
“Papa,” I whimpered.
“Lexi, what on Earth?” he said, his voice rough with sleep. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t find her, she’s disappeared. We got on the boat and went out so we could watch the sunrise, and I fell asleep, and when I woke up, she was gone. I’ve checked everywhere.”
He was silent for a moment and I thought the line might have gone dead. “Wake the captain up right now and put me on to him.”
“No, you don’t understand,” I wept. “It’s just us. She drove the boat herself. And now I can’t find her. I don’t know where I am, and I think I might be out here alone. Should I press my panic button, Papa?”
“No, wait… just give me a moment to think,” he said. I could hear him rustling down a hallway and shutting a door. The line went very quiet.
“Papa?”
“I’m here, Lexi, just give me a minute,” he said sharply. “Was she acting strangely at all when you last saw her? Was she drinking?”
“I mean, we had some champagne, but—”
“Oh, Lexi,” he groaned. It was the same tone he used when I was a child and stuck my tongue out at the photographers or shoved Louis at an event when we were bickering. The same hot prickle of shame rushed up my throat now. “Does your brother know? Have you called anyone else?”
“No,” I said. “Only the Italian security guy knows we’re out here. The others didn’t see us leave. Should I call the police?”
“No,” he said. “You and I are going to hang up. I’ve got the location of your phone, so I’m going to send someone to come get you.
It might take a couple of hours, so you’ll have to be strong for me, can you do that?
While you’re waiting, I want you to get all the things that belong to you and pack them up.
Did you say you slept in a bed? Go and make it.
Get everything on board the way it was, just as you found it. ”
“Papa,” I said. “Shouldn’t I look for her?”
“You need to do exactly as I say and nothing more. Do not answer this phone to anyone but me, do you understand?”
“Please don’t hang up.”
“I have to, mignonette. I have to make some phone calls now. Do as I say and everything will be alright.”
The line went dead and I was on my own again, floating through black nothingness.
The quiet became too much, and I ran through the boat, closing cupboard doors and remaking the bed and switching off all the lights.
I looked everywhere for the champagne bottle, but it was gone.
Mum’s tote bag was still slumped on the floor of the cockpit and my eyes blurred with tears as I stuffed the blanket back inside it.
I sensed Papa’s plan more than I was willing to acknowledge it.
It was like I could glimpse it from the corner of my eye but would not turn to face it.
When everything was as it should be, I climbed back to the bow to wait and screamed her name over and over until my throat burned.
There was nothing but silence and water.
Distantly, I heard the low rumbling of a boat.
It occurred to me then that if a cruiseliner came barrelling through, I was incapable of turning over the yacht’s engine and moving out of danger.
But instead, a small fishing boat was gliding through the water with its lights off.
I clambered back to the stern. I had no idea who was out there, but I knew I had less than a minute before everything changed.
There was a lifebuoy hanging near the cockpit, and I took it and flung it into the dark.
If she was alive out there, maybe it would drift towards her.
Maybe I could undo this with one final offering to the black night.
For the conspiracy theorists who obsessed over my mother’s death, this tiny detail would transfix them for years.
It had its own subreddits, its own amateur podcasts, its own Wikipedia page.
If Princess Isla was really alone on that yacht, who threw the lifebuoy into the water?
Some speculated that there was no flotation device on the vessel in the first place.
But two months after it went into the water, it washed up on a beach in Cavalaire-sur-Mer, bearing the faded but legible name of the vessel.
By then, Italian police had closed the case, and the discovery was shrugged off by everyone who didn’t dwell at the internet’s hard edges.
The approaching boat slowed to a thudding crawl, and then there was a great flood of light. Blinded, I held my hand up to shield my eyes.
“Carina?” a man called.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s your mother’s guard, Davide. Your papa sent me. We have to go now.”
“I can’t find her,” I sobbed. “I woke up and she was gone.”
He was tying his fishing boat to the yacht’s swim step. He didn’t seem to understand the urgency of the situation. Once he was satisfied with his knot, he held out a hand to me. “Please, carina, we must go now.”
I shook my head and the tears slipped down my neck. “I can’t leave her.”
He looked around at the black night. “I’ll take you to the villa, and then I come back here and search for your mama.”
I hesitated.
“Please, you cannot stay out here. This is what your papa wants.”
It was the kind of walk I thought only possible in a nightmare.
I staggered down to the swim step on legs that were feeble and unsteady.
Everything was moving too slowly, everyone was taking this catastrophe in their stride, including me.
Once I was on board, he began to untie his knots and pull in his ropes.
“Do you think,” I asked, “that we should check the boat one more time?”
He looked at me impatiently. “I don’t think she is here, but when I drop you off, I will come right back and check again.”
From the stern of the fishing boat, I watched the yacht grow smaller and smaller on the horizon.
It bobbed on the waves, receding from view, until finally it was swallowed by the dark.
I sat numbly as the engine roared below my wooden seat.
The ocean spray stung my face. The stench of boat fuel burned my eyes.
As the lights of Rapallo grew closer, Davide Rossi turned the motor down to a purr. He threw me a blanket.
“Lie on the floor and hide under this until I tell you it’s safe,” he said.