wind tossed them both about like they were paper bags.
‘Have you got him?’ Mats yelled, checking she had a hand on Emil’s lifejacket before he freed his harness from the steering column. Linus was crying now. Bell tried to drag Emil towards her, out of Mats’ way, but he was out cold and a dead weight. He was unsecured to the boat except by her left hand. One large wave would be enough to wrench him from her grip, free-falling in the boat, overboard . . . She looked up desperately. The crew were leaping across the nets again, in full defence mode as the swell grew. There was no one to help.
‘Look out!’ Mats yelled, and she tightened her grip as hard as she could while a large wave rocked them, the forward momentum pitching the boat – and Emil – forward. She strained to hold on to him, giving a cry as his full body weight was held in place by her one hand – then, in the next instant, the wave passed and the boat rocked back, sliding him straight towards her, limp and inert.
‘Oh my God!’ she gasped, immediately clipping him to their rails and stretching out her legs so that she could lay his head in her lap, to protect him from any further impacts. She checked him for signs of injury. He wasn’t bleeding, that she could see. No open wounds. But he was unconscious again, from a head injury. Oh God. Oh God.
Linus was sobbing.
‘Emil, can you hear me?’ She shook his shoulders. ‘Emil? Wake up. You’ve got to wake up. You hear me? Linus is here. You son needs you.’ She looked across at him. ‘Linus, talk to him. Let him hear your voice. He needs to hear your voice.’
Linus stared down at the unconscious man. ‘Em–’ He stopped. ‘Dad? Can you hear me?’
Emil groaned, his eyes flickering.
Linus gasped. It had worked? He was coming round? ‘Dad!’
‘Emil?’ Bell asked. He looked up at her, clearly stunned. ‘What’s my name, Emil? Tell me my name.’
He hesitated, seconds ticking past as nothing came. Then: ‘. . . Ding-dong.’
It wasn’t supposed to be a joke, clearly, but a laugh escaped her anyway, the relief tangible. ‘Yes, that’s right. Ding-dong Bell.’ What he’d called her that first night together. He remembered that?
Linus was gripping her arm, and she looked into his frightened eyes. ‘Is he going to be okay?’
‘Yes, he’s going to be okay. It’s probably just a concussion.’
‘But –’
She knew what he couldn’t say – that this had to be worse than that. He’d only just emerged from a seven-year coma; he couldn’t sustain another traumatic head injury without devastating consequences, surely?
‘I know, but he’ll be okay,’ she lied; she knew nothing of the sort. ‘He’s only just got you back, Linus. He won’t leave you now.’ She looked at Mats’ back, seeing the strain in his shoulders as he struggled against the wind. It was beginning to rain now, the deck becoming slippery. ‘How long?’ she called over to him.
Mats turned, seeing the patient dazed on the ground. He shrugged, helpless to do more. ‘An hour?’
An hour before he could see a doctor. She looked down at Emil – his head in her lap, staring back at her with a bewildered blankness – and tried to smile.
Chapter Twenty-One
The helicopter had well and truly destroyed what remained of the flowerbeds, the gardener given no time again to deploy his defensive measures. Bell watched as he went round the garden, muttering to himself while he stooped to stake the heavier-headed blooms, sweeping up the petals bellowing around like confetti. She thought it looked rather pretty.
She turned away from the window and back into the hall, her eyes returning to the closed bedroom door. They had been in there for at least forty minutes now. What could be taking so long?
She sank into the beige gingham settle and pulled the towel closer round her shoulders. She kept shivering, the chill having set into her bones. She knew she should run to her room and get out of these wet clothes – and yet she couldn’t leave, not even for a minute, in case they came out with word on how he was doing.
Linus was in his bedroom at the far end of the corridor. His door was open, and she could see his legs as he lay on the bed, the little red Corvette car beside him. Poor child; he had fallen into an exhausted sleep, the