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his arms: Stopper slowly levelled his gaze back on his buddy, but Jane doubted it had anything to do with his pleas for attention. Stopper's eyes were wide open but unseeing. Clouds had formed, despite the wind, pinguid and low, like something thick in a mixing bowl, streaked with the colours of decay. The secret colours he had only ever heard mentioned by his mother and her sisters: taupe, mauve, teal. The clouds sweated greasy rain.
Jane bundled Stopper into the lifeboat and swung the hatch shut. He pressed his fingers against Stopper's regulator to prevent him from spitting it clear, waiting to see if any of the granularity of the sky had followed them inside. What there was settled quickly without the wind to propel it. It settled like a weird matte glitter on their clothes, twinkling dully. Scintillas of quartz, Jane thought. Obsidian. Asbestos. He plucked the regulator out and drew a breath.
'Normal service has been resumed,' he said, trying a smile. Stopper blinked at him. Jane gently tugged free Stopper's mouthpiece; a glut of drool followed it out. The other man didn't protest but regarded him slackly, as if every muscle in his face had been injected with relaxant.
'Buckle up, Stop,' Jane said. In the end, he had to do it for him, pulling the straps tight over flesh that felt deboned, as yielding as a baby's.
Jane secured his own restraints and took a few fast shallow breaths. He hated fairground rides, and the times he'd rehearsed lifeboat drops had left him on the brink of vomiting. There was a lurch, but not his guts, not yet: the oil platform. Something had given way, most likely the leg they had been trying to reinforce. He peered through the hatch and saw the deck of the oil platform tilting towards the sea as the supports folded beneath it. Then a hard jolt and the tilt was halted. Jane reached out and hit the release button, but nothing happened. He punched it again and again. No reaction. It would need to be released manually, from the outside.
He unbuckled his harness and went to the porthole. 'Maybe the sea will wrench us clear,' he said, 'when the platform gives way.'
He looked back at Stopper, who had freed himself and was spinning the wheel of the hatch.
'What are you doing?'
Stopper stopped and slowly turned around as if addressing a fool. 'Uncoupling the boat,' he said.
'But it needs to be done on deck.'
Stopper gestured at the hatch. 'I know.'
'But . . .' Jane had been about to say you'll die and had to stop himself. Stopper was in shock. He wasn't thinking straight.
'I know ,' said Stopper. 'I'm not going with you. I'll set you free.'
'What do you fucking mean, you're not going? We're a team. I'm taking you off this platform. Now sit down and buckle up, or I swear' – he unsheathed the fire extinguisher from the wall – 'I'll deck you stone cold with this cunt.'
He turned back to the window. What bothered him most about Stopper's act of bravery wasn't that his friend would die but that Jane would be left alone. He wasn't sure he could face that, especially with the electrics on the boat shot, relying on the violence of the waves to take them to shore. They hadn't discussed the madness of this, but they had gravitated to the boats because that was what happened in an emergency. It was their only way off the platform, the only hope for survival. At some point there'd be a rescue attempt. Better to be warm and dry in an eye-catching orange capsule than a corpse pinned to the seabed by a thousand tons of steel. Better to . . .
He felt a spray of something hot against his cheek, and Stopper was saying, 'OK, so can I go now ?'
There was other stuff in the First Aid box. Chocolate, Kendal Mint Cake, a vacuum-sealed pack of raisins. Water. Jane eyed the bandages and plasters and dressings. None of them any use. He was sitting hunched in his seat, surrounded by a slurry of vomit. He had emptied his bowels too, unable to control himself through a fit of retching that he'd thought might turn him inside out.