‘I stink, don’t I.’ she said.
‘Yes, you do!’ he replied.
‘I didn’t dare swim off that raft to clean up. It’s quite difficult to climb back on again when you’re knackered.’
‘So how did you come to be in it?’ He saw that Emily was staring intently at him, but her gaze did not appear to be focussed on him. Her eyes were wide with an expression of barely suppressed anger. Her mouth twitched; her grip tightened around the gun
‘It’s a slide raft from a freighter aircraft. We came down onto the Atlantic… four… no, five days ago, I think. Since then I’ve just been living off a very little water and my own fat, hoping some miracle would turn up. You did, and I’m very grateful.’
Steven stared at her, wondering what she would be doing on a freighter aircraft unless she was a pilot, and if this was the only explanation she would give him. ‘Why did you hit me and tie me up,’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you just call out when you saw my yacht?’
She did not answer, seeming to be lost in some inner contemplation. Then she blinked several times and gazed at him with a more natural expression.
‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ he asked.
She began to run her fingers through her hopelessly tangled hair, looked at her fingers and wrinkled her nose.
‘Perhaps you’d like to have a shower. Clean up.’
‘You have a shower on this boat? With fresh water?’
‘Well no, it’s sea water actually. I don’t have the fuel to spare for running the desalinater except for drinking and cooking.’
‘Is there any chance you could lend me some soap and shampoo?’
Somewhat incredulous, Steven stared at the woman; she had attacked him, tied him up, threatened him with his own gun and was now calmly requesting the loan of bathing sundries.
‘By all means. Let me show you the way.’
‘Thanks. Here you are.’
She held the Smith & Wesson out in the palm of her hand. He took it from her in silence, and then placed it in a locker under the seat.
She nodded her understanding while he explained the operation of the bathroom facilities to her and then he left her in private. He looked around the cabin. Nothing had been moved, but there was a nearly empty plastic two litre water bottle which he did not recognise as his own and a box of cereal bars newly opened and three of them had been eaten. He wondered how long she had gone without food and if she had enough sense not to eat and drink too much too quickly after a period of extreme deprivation.
He climbed back out to the cockpit and gazed around the yacht. It was pitching gently on the swell, its drift still restricted by the raft attached to the stern. He found his flashlight in a corner where he must have dropped it when she hit him, its bulb now giving out nothing more than a dim glow. He changed the batteries and then stuffed it in his pocket. He pulled the raft close in to the stern and clambered aboard it. As it heaved over a wave he lost his footing and rolled over in the bilge water. He crawled towards the far end where the bundle of cloth lay in a disordered heap and began to inspect it with his flashlight. Underneath he found a waterproof bag that contained some leak stoppers, a hand pump and a pair of woman’s leather shoes sodden with water.
He stuffed everything back into the bag except the shoes and gazed thoughtfully at his yacht. He could see her, a vague shape moving about in the light of the saloon windows. Perhaps she would cut him adrift when he was in the life raft. In a moment of panic he began to crawl back to the yacht before he remembered that already she could have killed him and shoved him overboard.
He took a deep breath and crawled more carefully back to the yacht, threw her shoes on board and then climbed over the stern and peered in through the window. She was sitting on the saloon wrapped in a couple of towels gazing down at the cabin floor. She had washed her hair out and combed it into a damp curtain that hung across her shoulders. He wondered what she looked like when she was not bruised and suffering from exposure. She had a straight nose, a hint of cheek bones a wide brow with the lines of early middle age etched across it. Her shoulders and arms reminded him of the Russian pole vaulter from the Olympic Games. He opened the door and she turned round and gave him a faint smile that was spoilt by the missing front tooth and abruptly turned into a wince; she fingered her cracked and swollen lips.
‘Do you feel better now?’ he asked by way of starting off a conversation.
‘Yes, thank you. I look awful, though, but it’s mostly superficial. This is your yacht then?’
He realised that this statement of the obvious was her way of inviting him to continue the conversation.
‘Yes it is. I’m sailing it across the Atlantic to Florida, and then I’m thinking about going on all the way round. A circumnavigation.’
‘You obviously don’t mind being alone then.’
‘No I don’t.’ He paused a moment. ‘Not now, anyway.’
She nodded as if she understood what he meant. And then with an embarrassed reluctance to meet his gaze she added, ‘I looked you up on the internet I found out your wife died five months ago… but don’t you miss your daughter?’ She stared at him curiously as if the answer was important.
‘I will miss her, but not her ghastly boyfriend.’
‘Oh! What’s wrong with him?’ she asked, eyebrows raised.
‘I don’t like the way he makes his money.’
She considered him for a moment. ‘Does he approve of the way you made some of yours? Or perhaps he doesn’t know.’
Steven stared at her in silence, wondering if she had discovered his past as a mercenary after he left the marines.
‘So why is your boat called Surprise?’
‘Patrick O’Brian is my favourite author,’ he replied, glancing toward the shelf of books where the familiar twenty-one book spines were lined up.
‘Never heard of him,’ she said with a dismissive shake of her head.
‘Well we won’t make Fort Lauderdale for a few weeks, so you’ll have plenty of time to read him… On second thoughts we could go to Bermuda first. I could leave you there.’
‘Ok. Thank you. That would be fine. British territory,’ she added after a moment.
Steven stared at her. She seemed strangely uninterested in their possible destination, and how long it would take for them to reach it. But he had much more to be curious about. ‘So how come you were floating in a life raft in the Atlantic?’
‘Do you mind if I get dressed first? Then I’ll tell you.’
Steven summoned up a mental inventory of the clean part of his wardrobe. The weather was warm enough for her to wear shorts. He had some fairly new ones that had not been repeatedly washed in salt water, and he had some new tee shirts and some sweaters of various degrees of cleanliness. He could punch some extra holes in one of his belts. ‘Come on I’ll show you what you can borrow.’
He waited on the deck while she got changed in the main cabin. The sky had largely cleared and he looked around at the familiar constellations and glanced at the navigation system. He felt the lump on his head where she had hit him. The swelling was painful, but the associated headache had eased off, so presumably there was no underlying injury. The time was coming up to 0200 hours GMT, approaching local midnight in the western Atlantic. The cabin door opened. ‘I’m ready,’ she called through the gap. He climbed through and fastened the storm latches, and when he turned round he saw her studying her reflection in the mirror above the bookcase. He saw her feeling around her missing tooth with her tongue.
‘I’ve got some painkillers if you like; paracetamol, ibuprofen, or something stronger from the emergency kit,’ he offered.