‘There’s a look you get, like you’ve remembered something you want to tell him when he gets home.’
Emory smiles, wistfully. ‘I’d have thought I’d stop missing him by now, but …’ She trails off, shrugging. ‘I must think about him ten times a day. If he was here, right now, I’d tell him everything we’ve done and he’d say something that was just …’ She shakes her head, laughing. ‘Stupid. Honestly, so stupid, but it would help make things clear.’
‘I miss him, too,’ says Clara. ‘Can you imagine how much fun he’d be having racing around the island?’
‘Can you imagine the facts!’ declares Emory, making Clara laugh. ‘He’d be pointing out every animal he saw, and telling us their Latin names, and migratory patterns.’
‘He really loved a fact, didn’t he?’
‘Couldn’t get enough,’ replies Emory, delighted to recall this forgotten habit of her husband’s. ‘I think that’s why he loved being an apprentice so much.’
‘How did you … I mean, you’re not exactly … ?’
‘How did a sceptic like me fall in love with a true believer?’ asks Emory, as Clara struggles to guide them through a strong current.
‘Your father was an apprentice, but he was also kind and loving, carefree and silly. His faith in the elders was only a fraction of his personality. He wasn’t like my dad. It didn’t shove out everything else he was. He understood that I had my questions, but he admired that about me. We loved each other, which made it easy to live with each other’s doubts.’
‘If you could do that for him, why couldn’t you do it for me when I became an apprentice?’ asks Clara, in a small voice.
For years, the best she could hope for from her relationship with Emory was uneasy quiet. After she started making decisions about her own life, it felt like her mother washed her hands of her. There seemed no middle ground they could exist on, so they tiptoed around each other being excruciatingly polite, and entirely superficial, for fear of bumping into any topic that would start an argument.
But today they’ve felt like a team. Emory has listened to her, and trusted her, and depended on her.
And she, in turn, has seen every flaw in her mother turned to a strength. Clara’s never been so proud of her. She can’t believe they may only have less than two days left together.
Emory’s quiet for so long that Clara almost apologises for upsetting her, but when she speaks again her words are laden with emotion.
‘I should have,’ admits Emory. ‘I wanted to, I was just so … angry.’
She swallows, trying to hold herself together. Her head’s lowered, and she’s fidgeting with her fingers.
‘Jack and the others died because they wouldn’t question Thea. They went into that storm because she told them to, even knowing it could be dangerous. But the more I pointed that out, the more isolated I became. Truthfully, I think I liked that because it kept me angry, and while I was angry I could concentrate on something that wasn’t being said.’
She meets her daughter’s gaze, seeing her at every age, right back to the eight-year-old girl Thea brought down in the cable car. Emory and Clara have the same eyes. The same reckless courage. The same big heart, so easy to hurt.
‘After you applied for the trials, it felt like … like you’d sided with Thea, and with the village. And, then I was angry with you.’
‘That’s not what I intended, Mum.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ says Emory, her anger causing Clara to flinch. ‘It was my job to support you, whatever you did. I hated you working for Thea, but I should have told you I was proud of you for getting there. I really was, Clara. I saw how hard you studied.’
Emory hangs her head.
‘I let you down,’ she says, fidgeting with her fingers. ‘The way my father let me down. I didn’t realise you could stay with somebody and still abandon them, but that’s what I did. I’m so sorry, my love. It won’t happen again.’
Clara hurls herself across the boat, hugging her mother fiercely.
FORTY-TWO
The bay rears up in front of them, a small sandy beach fenced in by craggy cliffs, hundreds of birds circling overhead.
Clara leaps nimbly out of the boat, then pulls it a few feet out of the lapping water. From this vantage, the bay appears completely sealed off from the rest of the island, but there are sixteen cows lying on their sides, their ears flicking madly as flies buzz around their heads. They’re fat and healthy, and clearly not trapped on this beach.
‘Where was the bunker?’ asks Clara, massaging her palms. The oars have worn the skin away, leaving them raw and painful.
‘We need to follow the curve of the bay to the right.’
The sand slides from under their feet as they stagger up the beach, disturbing a cast of crabs feasting on a dead turtle. The crabs scuttle out of their way, snapping and chattering, only to re-form immediately when they’ve passed.
‘Those injuries to your palms are similar to the ones Thea woke up with,’ says Emory. ‘I think she took a boat out somewhere last night.’
‘The elders don’t row,’ scoffs Clara. ‘Not ever. Grandfather takes them everywhere they want to go.’
‘Maybe he was busy last night.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I have no idea, but I’m telling you, Thea rowed somewhere. And she must have been doing it for a long while to leave her palms like that.’
They arrive at the bunker, which juts out slightly from the rock face, its angular concrete surface covered in graffiti. On the exterior the colours are faded, the names and declarations of love scrubbed away by the saltwater being thrown up by the waves. Stairs have been cut out of the rock, leading to an iron door, eaten away by rust. It’s loose on its hinges, the bottom scraping the ground as they push it open.
It’s dark inside, miserable and damp, the only light coming through three slitted windows with sight lines across the ocean. There are puddles on the floor and a fine haze of sea spray in the air that immediately settles on Emory’s arms.
‘Who’d choose to live somewhere like this?’ she wonders, walking over to a folding metal table, which has been placed under the centre-most window. It’s covered in charts and stacked books, curled up at the edges with damp.
Clara’s peering through a second door, leading into a smaller room. Metal shelves have been knocked over, hundreds of salvaged machinery parts scattered across the floor. A huge chunk of concrete has been dislodged from the wall.
Clara wrinkles her nose in disgust.
There’s no sunlight back here. No fresh air. Damp drips from the ceiling into dirty puddles, and it stinks of rust, oil and sweat.
‘What are we looking for?’ she asks, throwing a glance at her mother.
‘A confession would be nice,’ replies Emory, as she leafs through the books on the table. ‘Preferably in big letters with a signature.’
The books are classics for the most part, Moby-Dick and Tennyson. Greek myths. A Bible. Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. Sammy Pipps and Arent Hayes. Hephaestus appears to love murder mysteries as much as she does.
‘What’s this?’ murmurs Emory, removing a crushed memory gem from under a sheet of paper, its black circuitry visible through the cracks in the case.
She’s never seen one damaged before.
Before I can warn her about the effects, she touches it to her temple, the jumbled fragments of a life flying by much too quickly to discern. Normally, there’d be sound, thoughts and emotions, but everything’s silent, the scenes flying at her without context.
She sees the old world, crowds, applause, awards. There’s a street, people staring at her, clamouring for her attention. Their faces are all completely different from one another. Their clothes are unique, their hair arranged a thousand ways, their faces painted, their bodies adorned and impaled with decoration.