“I want to go up on top,” she announced.
“There’s a lounge,” Richard said, looking worried. There was a wheelchair lift, but the boat was moving so much he wasn’t even sure about getting the chair out of the back of the car without it swinging about wildly. All the other passengers had left, climbing up the colored stairwells into the body of the ship.
Claire shook her head. “No. Up. I want to get up.”
She saw Richard and Anna share a look and nearly cried with frustration. Her stupid, stupid wretched body that wouldn’t do a single thing she wanted it to.
- - -
Claire looked awful; she could hardly drink out of a bottle. We had to get upstairs, but I didn’t have a clue how we were going to manage it. I went around to the back of the gigantic Range Rover—I could hardly reach up to open it, swaying with the boat as it seemed to reverse itself. I hadn’t been on a ferry since I was fourteen with Cath, but we’d been too busy singing Oasis songs to notice.
Just as I was trying to figure out the lock, I felt Richard’s eyes on me. As I glanced back at him, he looked at me, shrugged, then reached into Claire’s side of the car, undid her seat belt, and gently, as if she was a child—she was as light as a child, I could see—lifted her up in his arms. I grabbed the blanket.
“Richard!” Claire protested, and I could hear the pain in her voice, but I think we all knew there wasn’t a better way. Carefully, Richard mounted the narrow stairwell. “All right there, sir?” we heard a cheery sailor say, and Richard muttered something about not wanting to bring the wheelchair out, and the sailor said, “Let me know if you need a hand then,” in a way that made me want to swear blind to travel with that ferry company and no one else for the rest of my life.
The top of the ferry was bright and bustling, like an old airport terminal. There were shops and bars and duty free and an amusement arcade already full of children screaming and stabbing at the flashing lights and bells. I could smell fries cooking and glanced into the large lounge, full of seats, the reclining ones already taken by the frequent travelers who clearly knew what they were doing. We attracted a few curious glances, but we simply ignored them and forced our way through to as quiet a corner of the lounge as we could find, where Richard settled Claire as gently as he could, then pretended not to be out of breath.
“Why don’t I get us all a hot cup of coffee?” I said.
- - -
Alice was standing in the doorway when Laurent arrived at the large wooden door, her arms folded. Behind her he could see expensive-looking private nurses moving silently over the highly polished parquet. Fresh orchids sat in the corner.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Laurent. “Look. He doesn’t need to talk to me. But he needs to have the choice.”
“No,” said Alice. “And he doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Fine,” said Laurent. “I’ll drive and not talk.”
“No,” said Alice.
“Yes,” said Thierry, stepping out from the anteroom, where a fire was blazing despite the warmth of the afternoon. He was wearing an enormous smoking jacket. If Laurent hadn’t been so wound up, he might have smiled.
Alice looked at them both, her fingers tightening and her high cheekbones stretching taut and pink.
“Non!” she insisted again, but Thierry was already beckoning someone to pack a bag, and Laurent had grabbed the keys to the company van and stood there. The two men wore a very similar expression and walked together to the van in an injured silence.
Alice could do nothing but stand and watch the van drive away. She swore under her breath. In English.
- - -
When I got back with the coffees, I could see they were in the middle of an argument. Claire, I noticed, still hadn’t moved. I rummaged in her medical bag for the Tiger Balm—I remembered how much she’d enjoyed it in the hospital—and quietly started to rub it in to her shoulders. There was nothing to her, I felt. Just knotted bits of muscle, struggling on when there was almost nothing left in her. Her tufts of bird hair—the scarf had slipped off again—made me want to cry.
“I’m not taking you up there,” said Richard. We could see out of the porthole windows the waves bouncing up and down; there was a slight tang of vomit in the air, as if it had already affected some of the passengers. The sea looked an odd mixture of green and black, and a mixture of spray and rain bounced against the windows. Even though this was only a tiny section of water to cross—people swam it, for goodness’ sake—it didn’t feel like that. It felt like we were out in the middle of the ocean.
“I need the fresh air,” pleaded Claire, her voice quiet now. I glanced at her medicine. She had taken a little more, but she seemed to be entirely compos mentis. I wondered how powerfully it could fight the hideous viper, the tumor growing inside her, spreading, filling her with blackness, hollowing her out. Her face was still composed, still beautiful even.
“It’s not right,” said Richard. “Don’t you want to see the boys again? And Cadence and Codie?”
Claire looked away. “Of course I do,” she said. “There are…there are a few things I want to see again, yes.” Her jaw looked stern.
“You’ll catch pneumonia.”
“I’ve had worse,” she said. “I have worse.”
Richard put his fingers on the bridge of his nose and rubbed, fiercely.
“You didn’t have to come,” she added, pressing home her advantage. “I didn’t ask you too. Me and Anna would have been all right on our own.”
I tried to appear inconspicuous and not point out the obvious, that is that Richard had made it all about a million zillion times easier than he might have done, and if it hadn’t been for him, we’d still have been at Crewe station probably or, more likely, back at home.
Richard glanced at his watch. “Okay,” he said. “When we’re coming in to shore. And not before. Okay?”
Claire nodded weakly, and Richard pulled out his phone and stormed off before we could badger him anymore.
I carefully did Claire’s elbows and wrist joints. “Is it very bad?” I asked quietly, feeling her wince.
“It isn’t important,” she said back, and I wondered if she felt as I did, fearful, regretful that we’d undertaken this at all.