Page 122 of The Rising Tide

One, two, three …

No thought, no emotion. Just a mechanical process, an up-and-down movement, a piston that doesn’t know when to quit.

… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

Lean forward, lips over mouth.Breathe.

Nothing.

She rocks back on her heels. Looks up at the sky.

An image returns to her: Penleith Beach on Sunday evening, her children’s names spelled out in candlelight on the sand. And Luke Creese, the pastor from St Peter’s, trying to offer her comfort.

‘Does your God allow this?’ she’d asked him.

‘Yes, He does.And sometimes that’s the most difficult thing to understand. God doesn’t always offer us answers, Lucy. In this life, we may never really know why some things have happened. But Godalwaysoffers us Himself. Whatever hardships we face, we can choose to go through them with God at our side or without Him.’

Such bullshit, she thinks.

Such empty comfort.

Opening her eyes, she snarls at the sky. ‘Don’t take him.’

Lucy pauses, tries again. ‘Please – don’t take him. He’s got too much potential. Too muchlife. He needs to be here, with me. I need to see him grow.’

But Billie had brimmed with potential too, had overflowed with life and love. Even though she knows it’s useless, Lucy bends back over her boy. With two hands braced on his chest, she continues to pump.

FIFTY-FIVE

The prayer has barely left Abraham’s lips when he spots it: a white light arcing up from the sea, south-west of their position.

‘There,’ he rasps, coughing blood into his fist.

Moments later, the light reaches its peak and bursts into a red flare.

‘I see it!’ the coxswain shouts. The lifeboat heels over and throttles up to full power.

Abraham’s seat pogoes on its mount, absorbing some of the shock. ‘Listen up,’ he says, raising his voice above the roar. ‘I don’t wantanyone putting themselves in danger. If that’sHuntsman’s Daughter, I’m first onboard. No one joins me without my say-so.’

A couple of the crew exchange looks. Then the navigator glances up from his radar display and lifts his binoculars. ‘Got something,’ he says. ‘Two forty-one degrees.’

Abraham strains his eyes. All he sees is ocean and sky. He feels the boat marginally change course. When someone hands him binoculars he pans them across the horizon. And then he sees it: the shivery white outline of a yacht.

The Tamar bumps closer, eating up the waves. That faint shape resolves. Abraham realizes he’s looking not at one yacht, but two.

The pain in his chest is a serpent constricting his lungs. He wants to take out his pills and toss a couple down his throat, but his seat is shifting so violently he’s worried he’ll choke.

‘Two yachts, side by side,’ the navigator says. ‘Looks like one of them hit the other. Can’t see anyone onboard either but … yeah … second boat’sHuntsman’s Daughter. And it looks like … it looks …’

The man’s words trail off. Abraham knows why. He’s staring at the same thing.

FIFTY-SIX

One, two, three …

Lucy hears engines now. The slap of a hull against flat sea. And, just about distinguishable, the distant chop of rotor blades. When she looks up, she can’t locate the helicopter, but she does see Skentel’s offshore lifeboat, thundering across the water.

They’re too late.

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