glow of Raymond’s iPod in a docking station beside the cabin’s double bed. And there they were, huddled together, like lifelong sweethearts, like two spoons in a cutlery drawer.
‘Oh no,’ she whispered.
Both quite clearly dead, mottled with purple blotches where stilled blood had settled under the skin. Dead for a few days, a week maybe.
She stepped a little closer and saw that they’d gone peacefully; their eyes closed as if they were napping, Raymond’s arm draped protectively over Helen’s narrow shoulders.
‘Oh why, guys?’ she muttered. ‘Why?’
On a chest beside the bed she saw half a dozen pill bottles, opened and emptied, and a folded sheet of paper pulled from a pad and scribbled on. She saw her name scrawled on the corner.
Leona
this is wot we both wanted. raymond and me. he’s been very kind to me. i can’t really explane why we decided to do it like this. but just in case u came back, i just wanted u to know we both wanted this. raymond told me you were planning to do the same. if u reading this, then i’m glad u didn’t do it.
love helen xxxx
ps. i hope jacob and nathan found their lights in london.
Leona emerged into the sunlight five minutes later and carefully replaced the trellis barrier behind her so that the entrance was once more all but invisible.
‘Well?’ asked Adam. ‘Did you find your friend?’
‘No one’s home,’ she replied, handing the gun back to Adam. She picked up her bike and nodded down the long straight road, flanked on either side by the evergreens of Thetford Forest. ‘Another couple of hours will get us to Norwich. Then tomorrow, I guess, if we start early we’ll be in Bracton before it’s too late.’
She led the way.
Chapter 75
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
Martha gathered his dirty laundry. Valérie hadn’t asked her to do that; she did it because it was a pleasure to do something for him. Because she felt closer to him than any of the others. She connected with him in a way she was sure no one else did; the others merely followed him but she actually cared for him - brought him meals and water. To do this as well . . . to take what few clothes he had to the ladies up on the top deck doing laundry duty and see that they were properly soaked and scrubbed, it was a small gesture really. After all, his time was stretched so thin now between the prayer meetings and giving instruction to the newcomers, explaining his message. He had precious little time for such banal things as seeing to his own comforts.
Just like Jenny used to be, she mused, always hurrying from one task to the next, worn down with the endless attrition of having to attend to a million different things.
She felt a soft stab of guilt for her friend.
Why didn’t I see that coming? That nervous breakdown? That’s what it was, wasn’t it? A breakdown?
Jenny had just walked into their prayer meeting like that and fired a gun at him, point blank. Like some kind of automaton, no expression on her face at all. No anger. Just the empty, set, expression of someone who knows exactly what’s coming next. It wasn’t the scarring that made her look so unlike the Jenny she knew, it was those dead eyes. She thought she knew Jenny; never would have thought in a million years that she could do something like that out of spite because . . . what? Because they’d decided to vote someone else as the leader?
Crazy.
That wasn’t like Jenny. Not like her at all.
How many times had she heard Jenny moan about being the boss? How many times had she half-seriously suggested walking away from the responsibility and letting someone else have a go at doing better? The carping from every quarter, the bitching, the complaining, trying to keep everyone happy? It wore her out. She never imagined Jenny would do what she did because . . . simply because she got voted out?
A breakdown, that’s what it was, she decided. The accumulation of stress, the grief from losing Hannah, endless worry about her kids - and God knows, Martha knew what that felt like. There wasn’t a morning she didn’t wake up with a prayer on her lips for Nathan’s safe home-coming or didn’t send herself to sleep at night muttering the very same prayer.
Martha scooped up Latoc’s shirt from the tangle of blankets,