experience and knowledge base, better honed survival skills, better able to care for a younger partner than some sleek young strip of a lad.
All very tribal, very Darwinian. But it made sense.
She looked at the dark outlines of the others around the table; at Jacob, laughing, fidgeting in his bamboo chair, so full of hope that things were on the cusp of getting better, that London was waiting for him. Nathan too. And Helen flirting shamelessly with Raymond, distancing herself from the boys, pretending to be so much more grown up, clearly rather keen to make an impression on Raymond.
We’ve all got our little goals, and none of them involve returning to the North Sea.
She smiled, knowing no one would see her face in the fading light of dusk and ask her what she was thinking. Leona hoped they’d all find what they’d come along for. Most of all, she hoped her little brother would find what he wanted in London. His street lights.
Chapter 31
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
‘How is she this morning?’ asked Walter.
Dr Gupta sipped on her breakfast chowder. ‘The infections are clearing up. The dressings are coming off dry. I cannot tell you how relieved I am about that.’
Walter nodded. So was he.
‘Basically, she has finished fighting off secondary problems, now she is busy healing.’ Dr Gupta made a face. ‘There will be a lot of scarring, however. She will have it up her neck and across her right cheek. I just wish we’d had a few pressure wraps to minimise the hypertrophic scarring on her face. Stupid really, in all our trips ashore for medical supplies I never really thought there would be a need for me to treat burns.’
He nodded and glanced around the mess. It was mostly empty now, most of the third sitting had finished and left for their morning chores to make way for the fourth sitting and the four long tables were empty save for five small children still eating at the far end, urged to get a move on by an exasperated mother. Walter knew them all by name, but since they’d only joined the community seven months ago, he’d yet to get to know them well. That was something Jenny was much better at - finding time to sit down and talk to people.
Walter knew he wasn’t a popular choice of stand-in leader. Tami would probably have been more welcomed in the role.
She was looking at him as he thought that; reading his face like a book. ‘You know, Walter, no one can really blame you for that explosion,’ she replied. ‘That is not fair.’
‘But they are, aren’t they? I’ve heard what’s being said.’
He sometimes even wondered himself whether he was to blame. Even something as simple as those £30 cooking stoves you used to be able to buy at any camping store had a bayonet fitting as well as a screw valve. Safety should have been more on his mind than haste; haste to get something up and running for Jenny. And his allowing Jenny to bring Hannah down into the generator’s back room with those methane digesters, when no children, under any circumstances, should have ever been allowed in there . . .
Stupid. Stupid.
What was Hannah doing down there on her own, though? She knew she shouldn’t play there, she knew that very well. So why? And the feed pipe lying on the floor, the G-clamp lying beside it.
Did Hannah do that? Did she pull it loose by accident?
There’d only been a fleeting few seconds down there in that dark room before the explosion. He’d caught the briefest glimpse of her feet protruding from behind the generator and the rubber hose dangling from the roof softly hissing gas. That’s it. That’s all he saw. But she would have had to have been climbing over the top of the casing to pull that hose free, surely? If she’d had an urge to climb on something, for crying out loud, there were plenty of other places she could have done that. It just didn’t make sense. Hannah was a good girl. She knew she’d have been out of bounds. She knew the generator was dangerous; not a climbing frame. It just didn’t make sense to him.
Dr Gupta interrupted his wool-gathering. ‘So, what are you going to do with Mr Latoc?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is he staying or going?’ She slurped a spoon of chowder. ‘You cannot leave the question unanswered for much longer,