Page 92 of Swept Away

“Again.”

“Home,” I say. “Home, home, home, home, home.”

She leans back and closes her eyes, still smiling. “I have imagined this moment so many times,” she says. “And this is it.” Her eyes open again and meet mine. “Right? This is really it?”

“Right,” I say, and seeing her believe it makesmebelieve it, and just like that I’m crying again.

“I’m sorry to ruin this moment,” Madur says, “but I really would feel a lot better if I could take a closer look at some of your injuries. That, for instance,” he says, pointing at my bloodstained finger, the one where I lost a nail.

“Oh my God,” Lexi says, eyes widening as she seems to come around again. “Check his wound. His stomach.Now—please—I sewed it up myself, and…”

“May I?” Madur asks me.

I nod. To his credit, he hardly reacts to the sight of the clumsily stitched wound across my stomach.

“You did a fabulous job there, Lexi. Let’s clean that up a tad, eh?” he says calmly, already reaching for a bottle in his kit. “This might sting a bit, but looking at what you two have been through, I can’t imagine you’re scared of a little pain.”

“Right,” I say, and then I laugh again, remembering Lexi on the rig, saying,Your toxic masculinity is showing. “Actually,” I say, “I’d love a paracetamol right now.”

Everything hurts, now I think about it. The finger’s the worst, but there’s also my wound—a dull, persistent throb—and the muscles of my legs and arms, and the back of my throat, and…

“Sure!” Madur says, already rummaging.

“Wow,” Lexi says, watching him produce a packet of paracetamol. “Wow.”

It suddenly seems to hit her. She reaches forward, grabbing Madur’s shoulder.

“What food have you got?” she says, her voice a little hoarse. “Have you got—have you got chocolate?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” comes a voice from the steps, and Kiki ducks in, already holding two bars of Galaxy.

“This is heaven,” Lexi says to me, wide-eyed as she grabs the outstretched chocolate. “It’s heaven, isn’t it?”

Kiki chuckles, passing me my Galaxy. “You really have been to hell and back, haven’t you? It’s not even the caramel one.”

Dawn properly breaks today. It just smashes against the sky. Orange, pink, blue.

We watch it come up from the lifeboat deck. They wanted us to stay in the survivor space, but I couldn’t stand how trapped I felt down there. I needed to see it—I needed to know we were moving. We stand hand in hand as the lifeboat forges on, cutting through the waves, taking us home.

I look at Lexi and feel a bottomless sensation thatreliefdoesn’t cover. More like…ecstasy. For the first time in two weeks, I can stop worrying about something happening to her, and the pressure lifting makes me feel like I’ve just surfaced after twelve days holding my breath. Everything else—the nightmare being over, knowing I’ll see my family again…it’s all small compared to really believing Lexi will be OK.

“Here, I can’t offer you tea, which I bet is just what you fancy right now,” Gareth says cheerfully, handing us each our third protein bar of the night, “but I can give you pretty much an endless supply of these. You must be famished. What’ve you been living off in there?”

“We ate pretty well, actually. You’d be surprised what Zeke cando with out-of-date cheese,” Lexi says, with a small smile. “Thanks for this.”

She’s still wearing two blankets like a cloak on top of her life jacket, the top one crinkly with silver foil. Her hair is drying now the rain’s stopped, and she’s moving better, as if she’s got energy back in her limbs.

“The world’s a bit obsessed with you two,” Gareth says, coming to stand beside us and adjusting his hood against the wind.

I have this weird compulsion to touch him. I can’t actually believe he’s here—all solid, bearded six foot of him.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“You’ve captured the nation. The houseboaters lost at sea. Once your neighbor raised the alarm, everyone fell in love with the story, I think—the one-night stand, all that.”

He looks briefly panicked, like he might have overstepped in mentioning that, even though absolutely nothing this man says could annoy me right now.

“Anyway,” he goes on, with a slightly anxious side-eye at me, “when a military plane reported a burning oil rig yesterday, with SOS painted on its helipad, everyone went wild, especially when the plane had to turn back because of the weather. Then there was all the suspense with us lot setting out to the marker they’d sent us…Not that we had much hope, I must say. We’d written you off. Sorry,” Gareth adds, patting me on the arm.

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