steps towards Jenny’s cabin. Jenny looked at Martha’s face in the mirror.
Fast-approaching footsteps . . . something’s up.
It was Rebecca who stuck her head in. She looked pale.
‘It’s Hannah.’
Chapter 19
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
Jenny felt her insides turn instantly to stone. ‘What’s happened?’
Rebecca’s mouth hung open, panting for a few seconds, gathering breath to speak, but also the words she should use. ‘She’s missing, Jenny. She’s missing. She never turned up for the start of Leona’s class.’
Jenny looked at the watch on her wrist; a clunky man’s watch with a winder and no need for batteries. It was 10.37 a.m.; classes began at ten.
‘Leona waited a while,’ Rebecca continued, ‘said Hannah woke up cranky this morning and was moaning about going to school today.’
Jenny nodded. She most definitely had awoken in a funny mood. Very quiet and sulky.
‘Where is Leona?’
‘I don’t know. She’s out looking for her. I don’t know where exactly.’
Missing. The word had a deadlier meaning out here on the rigs. ‘Get everyone looking,’ she said, getting up and pushing past Rebecca into the hallway, ‘everyone!’
Outside, on the top deck of the accommodation platform, she could already see the flitter of anxious movement, people leaning over rails and scanning the sea below.
Oh, God, no, please . . . not that.
Word was already spreading. She could hear distant voices calling her granddaughter’s name over and over. Martha, standing beside her, instinctively followed suit calling out for her.
Below, spreading out amongst the winding pipes, scaffolding and a mess of stacked Portakabins on the compression platform, she could see the children of both Leona’s and Rebecca’s classes crouching, ducking, calling, stretching, looking into every awkward recess for their missing classmate.
‘She knows to be sensible,’ whispered Jenny. ‘She knows not to play near the edges.’
‘Didn’t Lee say she could play on the tomato deck?’
Jenny turned round to look up at the overhanging helipad. She could see movement up there. Could hear someone calling Hannah’s name.
‘Oh, God, Martha,’ she whimpered, ‘what if she’s—’
Martha put an arm around her. ‘She’ll turn up, love. She just playin’ silly buggers.’
Jenny heard the bang of a doorway below and then Walter emerged from the canteen onto the gantry beneath them. He turned round to look up at her.
‘There you are! Someone said Hannah’s gone missing!’ he called out.
Jenny nodded, unable to speak for the moment.
‘I saw her earlier,’ he said quickly. ‘Not long after breakfast.’
‘Where?’
‘I saw her with Latoc.’
Their eyes met and wordlessly exchanged between them was every conversation ever had over a kitchen table on the subject of a missing child, taken . . . the type of monsters that prey on children and the punishment creatures like that deserved.
She felt her blood flush cold, her scalp prickle at the thought that she might have stupidly allowed a monster in amongst them; that Hannah . . . ?
‘No,’ she uttered. Her freshly cut hair suddenly felt like a badge of betrayal, a dunce-cap of stupidity. If she believed in such things, why not a punishment from God for allowing herself a foolish moment of vanity? Whilst she’d been preening, outside, somewhere, the man whose eye she’d been hoping to catch had been busy doing God-knows-what with her granddaughter.
‘Where is Latoc?’ she barked.
Walter shook his head. ‘I’ve not seen him since.’
Then she saw it, half a mile away, the white blob of a sail. She leaned forward over the rail and looked down at the davit winches on the neighbouring compression platform. The chains dangled and clinked idly against the spider deck: one of their two boats was gone.
Oh, God . . . he’s taken her.
She sheltered her eyes from the glare of sunlight and the glints on the sea, beautifully blue this morning and reflecting the azure sky. The boat was turning lazily, only the mainsail up, no jib. It seemed in no particular hurry to put distance between itself and the rigs.
A spark of hope ignited inside her. Perhaps Latoc had taken Hannah for a go on the boat? An innocent, but ill-judged kindness. That being the case, she decided she’d give him a very public bollocking for lowering the boat into the water without getting permission first. It wasn’t there for joyrides.
They watched in silence for a few moments as the vessel slowly came about, the boom gently swinging across. Jenny squinted, trying to make sense of the distant flicker of movement in the cockpit.
‘I think the boat’s comin’ back now,’ said Martha.
They were waiting down on the