Something inside me screams.
I let Mal steer me to a bench and we sit in the dark as the storm begins to slide east, rain thinning to a hard damp mist. I’m so out of it I swear I hear a phantom chopper in the sky. That the harbour lights glow brighter as the wind drops. That it means something as we wait and wait and wait for the end of the world to hit us, our only comfort that the coastguard holds fast and keeps the lifeboat out.
For now.
I reach for my brother. “I’m glad you came home, I ever tell you that?”
Beside me, Mal shifts, wet through and cold in a way he can’t feel yet either. “You don’t need to. I feel it every time you look at me.”
I turn to face him, emotion pressing hard against the numbness I need to survive this. “I love you.”
“I love you too, brother.”
I nod. Once. There’s so much more to say, but a sudden surge of energy in the harbour pulls us apart. A current running through the crowd as heads turn and radios crackle sharper.
I’m on my feet in a second, following the attention of every man in the harbour, gaze drawn to the inky horizon as something cuts through the dark.
Lights.
Low and moving.
Expanding.
“Lifeboat’s coming in.” Mal locks an arm around my waist, steadying me as my heart punches hard and fast, dread and hope pitching a never-ending battle for dominance.
The RNLI vessel forces her way through the harbour entrance, riding heavy, spray blowing off her bow, lights flashing against stone and water.
Men surge forward.
Lines are thrown and she’s hauled in tight, her crew blurred orange as they move across the deck.
And I see it then. Two shapes laid out. Strapped down, covered and unmoving as the boat rocks.
Like weight and nothing more.
Sev is suddenly with me again. Another cry tears out of him, but I’m moving before I think to comfort him. Irun, and yet I’m still too far away as they bring the first stretcher to land.
Water streams from it.
I see skin.
Pale.
Still.
And then the second follows, no movement or fight. Another body hauled from the sea on Christmas night. Another sailor who hasn’t come home.
27JACK
They’re not dead.
Sol and Oscar.
It takes an age for me to realise that, and by then, the world is moving too fast for me to keep up.
They’re critically injured.
Unconscious. Cold.