She had been happy at boarding school until the bullying started and she had turned into a lonely girl, sometimes a victim of teasing about her scrawny height. They had called her Miss Take as a cruel pun on her name.
Then, through her genetic inheritance, from a gangling twelve year old she had blossomed into a tall well-proportioned figure by her mid-teens. In addition, through a series of martial arts classes augmented by vigorous self-imposed exercise, she had become a tough determined character whom nobody dared cross.
First of all she had adopted a policy of totally ignoring the bullies whilst slowly building up her strength and agility. When she was on holiday back in the Gulf she enrolled in a judo class, and then she began taekwondo. After a year she had mastered most of the basic movements but what she really wanted to do was impress her enemies with a jump spin hook kick. At the end of the long summer holidays when she was sixteen she was ready to use her skills but by then the bullying had stopped. She was now tall, powerful, morose and nearly friendless. At the end of the year her father was posted back to London. Her parents wanted her to stay on at the private school but she insisted on going to the local comprehensive. She was five feet ten inches tall and weighed one hundred and fifty eight pounds of trained muscle and was immediately marked out as someone not to be trifled with. This reputation was confirmed when she came to the defence of another girl who was being threatened by a couple of young men and she used her skills to somewhat unnecessarily violent effect. Fortunately this incident took place in the town and although it was witnessed by her school friends, none of her fellow pupils were involved. Her parents had been somewhat aghast as the policeman who had been called to the scene just off the high street had officially cautioned her on the use of martial arts.
Her time at university had been fairly happy. She had finally had her first sexual experience in her second year when she had at last learned not to be so prickly with the young men who would ask her out once, but generally not a second time. By the time she graduated she thought herself to be fairly well adjusted but she sometimes wished she had not decided to read psychology because she subjected herself to unrelenting critical self-analysis.
After university she had applied to join the Intelligence Service and after two years she had joined Executive Operations. Her training had advanced until she was lethal with her hands and feet as well as with guns and blades and other weapons. Then a few years on, just as she had unexpectedly found her life enhanced by meeting Philip and the bemusing prospect of becoming a parent, her life was overshadowed by his death. And then after she had allowed Rashid Hamsin to escape, it seemed that some sort of divine or devilish retribution was visited upon her and in a state of bewilderment and depression she had ended up in prison.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Every time the life raft rose to the top of a wave she glanced around the horizon hoping to sight the impossible miracle of a ship. From time to time, overcome by fatigue, hunger and dehydration, she would slump into a semi-conscious sleep until fleeting dreams brought her back to wakefulness.
She was desperately bored. At first she had begun to sing to herself but soon grew frustrated by her inability to remember complete songs. Strangely enough it was Christmas carols and hymns from her childhood and songs from “The Sound of Music” that seemed to be indelibly lodged in her memory and she sung those until she was fed up with them. She had spent some time thinking back over her sex life, classifying former lovers, although lover was a term barely applicable to some who had been merely one night stands. Then she remembered Dan Hall’s extraordinary declaration of love and she speculated about where he might be. Perhaps he would wonder what had become of her and might even organise a search. She clung to the slender hope as the raft pitched up and up, lurched at the crest of the wave and then sank down and down. She lay back against the side and realised it was not as resilient as it had been. She looked about her and found the hand pump in the equipment bag and spent half an hour pumping up the raft and then slumped back feeling lethargic and even more thirsty.
The small quantity of water she had collected off the canopy was tormenting her. She stared at the contents of the bottle as it sloshed back and forth as the raft rose and fell over the gentle swell. From the label she muttered the brand name ‘Crystal Geyser.’ In Castaway, Tom Hanks had called his volleyball Wilson. She had tried calling her bottle ‘Crystal, darling’ then ‘Geyser, you bastard’ depending on whether she thought of it as female or male, but it had no blood-painted face staring back at her, it was just a bottle containing a little tainted water. She picked it up and twisted its neck as if strangling it. ‘Take that you stupid fucking prick,’ she muttered. ‘When you’re empty I’ll call you Ryan and break you in half.’ Then she picked pieces off the label and dropped them over the side until she broke a fingernail. She slammed the bottle down and shouted ‘Shit!’ but then her dry throat finished the exclamation off with a painful cough.
She gazed up at the sky. All morning she had been cursing the sun as it sapped the moisture from her body. Now the cloud was building up and she was fervently hoping for rain. She hoped that she could pull the canopy down into a bowl shape and through a small hole she would be able to gather water in the empty bottles. In the distance she saw a flicker of lightning against the darkening sky. Surely that greyish curtain reaching down to the sea was rain. She shivered as a cool breeze stole across the sea and the sea sucked and gurgled along the underside of the raft. It rose higher as a stronger wave reached it, shortly followed by another. She felt slightly chilled and began to get dressed, wrinkling her nose as she caught a whiff of vomit from off the front of her shirt. She wondered again if she was really cold or if dehydration was beginning to distort her senses. If only it would rain! She practised kneeling in the middle of the raft, pulling the canopy down and holding a bottle under the hole. She did not need to practise, but after so many hours on the raft with nothing else to do she needed something, anything to occupy her mind besides the ever present fear of death.
A sudden lurch of the raft made her fall forward. She saw a big wave with a foaming white top high above her some hundred metres away. She whimpered in terror and scrambled back into her seating position against the side of the raft. A few seconds later the raft began to heave quickly up the wave until at the crest it tilted sharply up as it met the foaming crest and Gerry screamed in alarm and then coughed and spluttered as spray caught her in the face. Then the raft seemed to soar down the other side of the wave and Gerry’s protesting stomach heaved. Despite her emptiness she coughed up acidic bile which trickled down her chin and added to her misery. With a frantic effort she untied the canopy and folded it up then she stared out and saw another wave even taller than the first rushing towards her. She gave a little moan, grasped the straps on the raft side and then looked in alarm as her water bottles rolled across to the other side. She let go of her hold and flung herself across the raft to retrieve them. The raft surged up the wave and Gerry clung on to her bottles lying face down in the sloshing bilge water. Then the raft tipped and she swore as she began to slide towards the open end of the raft where it had been attached to the aircraft side. She let go of one bottle and grabbed for a strap just before her feet reached the end. Then the raft tipped back and she slid all the way to the other end and collided with Ali’s body. She looked at her bottle and with intense relief she found that it was the one that still contained water and then she saw the other one rolling about. She watched out for the next wave, still a little distance away. She crawled back to her usual seating position and tucked the bottle inside her shirt and prepared to sit out the storm.