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There was a lot of blood sprayed across the walls, a scary amount, given that Stopper had taken just a few seconds to turn the hatch wheel and duck out into the wind. Then the thunk of locking pins being hammered free and the drop into the ocean that he could not now recall, despite his fear of it. The scissors from the First Aid box were rattling around the floor, sticky with the blood that Stopper had cut out of his body. His severed artery had hung like the ragged end of a rubber hose in the exposed meat of his forearm.
Jane had been unable to say anything. Maybe this was all down to nitrogen in his blood. Maybe this was how your brain dealt with things when a million bubbles were expanding in its folds. If only.
Somehow he managed to sleep a little, although he supposed it was more a kind of unconsciousness, a turning away. He was able to sip some water and nibble a little mint cake during momentary lulls in the violence. The sugar fortified him, persuaded him that he wasn't dying, that the iridescent chips in the air were not going to cause his lungs to rupture.
He kept the restraints firmly fastened. The boat was tossed so violently that he doubted he'd survive should he free himself. He couldn't be sure if the boat had turned turtle at all; it didn't really matter. It was sealed. It wasn't sinking. The hull was the same colour no matter which way was up. Nobody had died – as far as he knew – from a surfeit of Big Dippers and Corkscrews. The storm must abate soon. Somebody must come to rescue him. If the oil platform did not topple, the helicopters would see that a boat had been launched. It couldn't be long. The thought of drifting far out into the North Sea and never being picked up he could not host. Nor consideration that a capitulation such as Stopper's was something that would become more attractive to him.
He pulled the letter from his pocket. He struggled to read it in the endless vibration and shuddering of the boat but studied it four or five times anyway. Stanley stayed with him. There could be no letting go while his boy waited at home for him. He would not see his letter lacking a response. The smell of his scalp; the shape of his slim shoulders under his father's hands. Machine-gun laughter whenever he was tickled.
dad, can we tak the tent to the bech soon and hav a picnik lik befor but not get sand in the food. remember we plad futbal and I scord ten gols. can we have a baby soon. a boy I dont lik gerls.
Cherry, flat-line mouth, lifting the boy's pudgy hand to wave goodbye. Cherry, unable to lift a hand of her own. 'You're pulling us down,' she told him. 'I don't want to be a part of a family that has a corner of its triangle missing.'
'I'm not missing. I'm working,' he reasoned. 'Who paid for that leather jacket you love so much? Who bought us the extension to our house? Who bought the Audi you've christened Mungo?'
'It's my house. Dad bought it for me.'
'It became ours when we married, Cherry. We share everything. That's what marriage is all about. Read the small print.'
'Marriage.' She spat the word as if it were something spoiled she had put in her mouth. 'This is no marriage. This is me skivvying at home while you swan off for a piss-up with your Aberdeen cronies.'
He'd been unable to counter that. She must break down and start laughing soon, he had thought. She must just be kidding. 'We can afford to get help in,' he had managed at last. 'You don't have to lift a finger.'
'I'm lifting this finger,' she said, and showed him her wedding ring. She slipped it off and tossed it to him.
'Think of Stanley,' he told her. 'What this will do to him.'
'I am thinking of Stanley,' she said. 'He wants a dad, not some lodger who brings him an expensive toy every couple of months. He's growing up and you're missing it.'
'I'm providing for my family,' he said, but the anger had been punched from him. She was right. He was missing it, but it wasn't his fault. It was called sacrifice. You put up with the cold and