Page 97 of Swept Away

“It wasn’t just that,” I say, looking down.

The network of knobbly veins on the back of Mum’s hand is the color of seawater at dawn. The traffic’s the wind, not letting up. Mybody’s completely tense, every muscle bunched up, as if I’ve been electrocuted. I’ve got that disconnected feeling again, the one that took hold of me on the lifeboat for a while. As though I can’t believe the bad thing has really ended, or I’m just waiting for the next one to start.

“Let yourself settle back in before you think too hard about any of it,” Mum says. “A checkup from a proper doctor, a few days at home, and you’ll be back to your old self again.”

I stare down at my mother’s hand against the filthy, cracked velvet of my trouser leg. I’m not sure going back to my old self is something I want at all.

It’s not until I’m back from the hospital, bandaged, pinpricked and in possession of some strong antibiotics, that I realize I don’t have Lexi’s number.

I’m standing in my childhood bedroom in Alnwick, looking out at the street. Normally when you want to talk to someone it’s kind of an impulse to reach for your phone, but I don’t have that with her. We’ve never messaged. It feels more like I should turn over my shoulder and say,Hey, but all I see back there is the solid white bedroom wall. This house feels so massive after the houseboat, and soboxy. Why do we all choose to live in these big squarish things? Why is there so much floor space in this bedroom? What’s it all for?

I rub my chest. Lexi and I didn’t swap numbers—our phones will be at the bottom of the sea now anyway. I have no way of getting hold of her at all. The realization washes over me like ice-cold water.

“Mum,” I call down the stairs, as though it’s 2010 and I’m a kid again, wondering where Lyra and Jeremy are, whether they’ve gone out without me. I feel like all the different versions of me are clashing right now. “How can I get hold of Lexi?”

“Sorry, darling?” she calls. Mum never hears you the first time.

“Lexi.”

“The houseboat woman?” Her voice is a bit too high. “I don’t know, Ezekiel, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s not,” Jeremy says, coming up the stairs with a cup of coffee.

He hands it to me as he walks past, into my bedroom. He sits down on the edge of the bed and watches me critically, forearms resting on his knees.

“You need a bit of space, Ezekiel. This has been a traumatic experience.”

I stare back at him. “Are you actually telling me what I’ve just been through?”

“Of course, I can’t imagine it,” he says, raising his hands.

“No.” I put the coffee down on the desk. “You can’t.”

He sighs, rubbing his eyes behind his glasses. “I should have known when you said you wanted to buy that houseboat back that it would all end in tears.”

End in tears?I nearly died about ten times. It’s not like I got lost on my way back from school or something.

“It was your idea for me to buy the houseboat back,” I choke out. “You said Dad always stashed his secrets, and that boat was his bolt-hole, and it was bound to have the answers.”

Jeremy frowns. “I know. I stand by that. I wanted to help. You do understand that, don’t you?”

Jeremy always wants to help. He just wades in there, helping left, right and center, and if you happen to be in his path when he’s helping, you’d better be ready to dive out of the way. I remember the truth—which of us has a dead biological father we never met—and simmer down a bit.

“Well, whatever.” I fidget with the new bandage on my finger, hating the whine in my voice. It’s this bedroom: I’m regressing to fifteen-year-old me with every minute I spend here. “I just want to see Lexi.”

“I’ve got a number for her boss, Marissa,” Jeremy says reluctantly, leaning back on the bed to pull his phone out and find the contact.

I glance out of the bedroom window at the street while I wait. There’re a few more vans out there than there were before. And men with cameras. I stare. I’m feeling less weird than I did in the car, but the world’s still so strange. People everywhere. Noise all the time. I can hear the motorway’swhoosheven with the window closed—I don’t know if I’ve ever noticed that here before. And everything smells. Not bad, just…distinct. This whole house has a scent to it that I’m not sure I ever knew was there.

One of the people below clocks me and lifts the camera to their face. It makes me think of a sniper in a film, that’s how quick it is. I yank the curtain across.

When I eventually get through to Marissa on Jeremy’s phone, I remember her voice. It’s the woman from the pub, the one who slipped out from behind the bar when she noticed me looking over. She kind of set me and Lexi up, I guess.

“Hi,” she says. There’s a guardedness to thehithat I don’t like.

“Hey. Can I speak to Lexi?”

The silence is too long. And just like that, I know the bad thing’s not over at all.

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