. . I suppose. Like your fox and hounds hunting.’
Jacob nodded. ‘Yeah . . . that’s what it looked like.’
‘I would be dead now,’ Valérie added, looking up at Jacob and Walter, ‘if not for you. Thank you.’
Walter shrugged. ‘That’s okay.’
It was quiet for a moment, save for several whispered exchanges amongst the crowd.
‘So,’ Jenny sighed, ‘that’s how it still is, then.’ She was tempted to turn around and say I told you so. To direct that at Alice and her small circle of nay-sayers. Even to direct that at her own son, who seemed so certain the world was putting itself back together without him. She could have scored some cheap and easy points saying those things right now. Instead she shrugged. Valérie Latoc’s story argued her point - that the world beyond their little island was still a dangerous place.
‘I . . . I would very much like to stay here,’ said Valérie. His voice strained and stretched, the voice of a man not too proud to plead. ‘I do not want to go back. I have seen enough of . . . of . . .’ A pitiful tear rolled down his sallow cheek and lost itself in the dark thatch of bristles. ‘Please . . .’
Jenny found herself reaching across the table again and gently patted his thin forearm. The gesture seemed to weaken his resolve and more tears rolled down into his thick beard.
‘Okay,’ muttered Jenny. ‘Okay, that’s enough for now.’
‘Please may I stay?’ he asked.
Jenny glanced back over her shoulder, keen to get a feel for what the others felt. She could see eyes that regarded him with pity, eyes red-rimmed with sympathetic tears. Heads that silently nodded their approval at her.
Let the poor sod stay.
She turned back to look at him. ‘We’ll see, Valérie. You can stay for a while, whilst I give it some thought.’
‘For a while?’
‘A probationary period. We’ll see how things go, okay?’
His face crumpled. ‘Oh, thank you!’ he sobbed, grasping her hand. ‘Thank you!’
She smiled awkwardly and pulled her hand back. ‘All right.’ She turned around in her seat. ‘Right, the show’s over, folks. We’re done here.’
Walter clapped his hands together. ‘Come on then, ladies and gents! Come on! You heard her, jobs to go to!’
‘You like him,’ said Leona softly, ‘don’t you?’
Jenny turned on her side to face Leona across the narrow floor space, the cot’s springs squeaking noisily beneath her. She could hear Hannah’s even breathing in the darkness, coming from the other end of Leona’s cot.
‘I suppose I feel sorry for him.’
Despite her initial knee-jerk reaction at the first sight of him, the poor man didn’t seem to have either the masculine swagger of a predatory male nor the dangerous glassy-eyed stare of a nutcase. He seemed beaten, tired, dispirited . . . perhaps even broken. Years of travelling, he’d told them, years of bearing witness to what was left: the ruined shell of the old oil world had taken its toll on him.
Jenny could only imagine how much worse conditions must be on the continent. She’d been hoping he had a more heartening tale to tell but deep down she’d always suspected it was every bit as bad as he’d described.
Poor bastard.
She’d seen some awful things over the last ten years; once, the blackened and twisted carcass of someone tied to a stake in the middle of the ash-grey mound of a bonfire; someone she could only hope had been dead long before being burned. Once, a row of desiccated corpses lined up along the bottom of a wall riddled with bullet holes. Perhaps they’d been looters shot by soldiers or an armed police unit.
She could only imagine what other sights this poor man could add to that. Many more, no doubt.
She realised that there were also a few selfish reasons to let the man stay. Perhaps Valérie Latoc might be someone that Jacob would actually listen to. Perhaps in time the man would be ready to talk about what he’d witnessed in greater detail and maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to convince Jacob that there was nothing out there but empty towns disappearing beneath spreading weeds . . . and dangerous, armed people.
‘You going to let him join us, Mum? We could do with a few more men here who, you know, aren’t old age pensioners.’
‘We’ll see, Lee.’
Mr Latoc had been found a space out on the drilling platform. Howard and Dennis lived over there. David Cudmore and Alice Harton - who