“I don’t need you to. We’re not going back to sea, remember?” Not together, in any case.
She drops her eyes.
When I get to my feet she follows suit, so I have to say, “I just need a minute alone, okay? Sorry. I’ll be fine after a walk. See you back there.”
To get out of the pub I have to go past the gambling area, and there, sitting at a slot machine, is Ennis. I hesitate, then walk over to him.
“Hey.”
He presses the button, over and over, like he’s a machine himself.
Malachai mentioned Ennis has a gambling problem. I can see it now. “Want to get some fresh air?” I ask.
He grunts something like a no and finishes his rum and Coke in one go.
“How long have you been here, Ennis?”
“Not long enough.” He sounds very drunk.
“Have you … won anything?”
No response.
“I think you should come back to the hotel with me—”
“Fuck off, Franny,” he says flatly. “Just fuck off out of my life.”
I oblige.
* * *
Outside it’s grown colder. I head for the sea, but I’ve only made it half a block when I register unease and stop. I have no idea what’s changed between now and two seconds ago, but suddenly this doesn’t feel right and I need to get back to the hotel, I can’t get there fast enough. I can see its light in the distance as I pick up my pace.
Instinct, always. The body knows.
A man steps into my path.
“Riley Loach?”
I recognize him. The protester who was wearing the striped beanie and looking inside me. I don’t say anything but my heart thunders because how did he get that name?
“You part of the Saghani ’s crew?”
“No.”
“Fuck off.”
“Okay.” I make to walk past him but his hand lands on my arm. It sets my hairs on end.
“You know what you and your friends are doing to the world?”
“I agree with you,” I say quickly. “It’s wrong. But the sanctions have put an end to it.”
“You think that’s enough? To let the lot of you get away with what you’ve done? It’s bullshit!” He’s so angry. I don’t know what to do, how to defuse this.
“Look, I’m not one of them. I’m trying to—”
“I saw you, bitch. So tell me where your captain is. I can’t let this go unpunished.”
The animal rears within me. “No fuckin’ idea.”
He is a large man, at least double my size, so when he pushes me back into the wall I feel the presence of his strength. I feel it in those same ancient instincts, given to me by generations of women, the adrenaline I inherited flooding my system, I feel it in the punch kick fight fuck kill of my body and I want to hit him right now, I do, but instead I hold myself very still, sensing it all, knowing I could be a hair’s breadth from a great deal of pain or worse, some violation of my body or even death and without warning I snap my teeth at him, so fucking furious I could goddamn burn the world down.
He jerks back, surprised by my strangeness. Then he laughs and presses me by the throat to the wall, blocking my air, slamming my skull. Pain lances down my spine.
“Just tell me where they are.”
But I don’t, and so he drags me painfully around the corner and into a darker street, and whatever noble quest he’s set himself on has been poisoned by hate; I see it the second before he does it, the way in which he’ll make me pay for his hatred. His hand gropes my crotch, going for the buttons of my jeans, but by then I’ve well and truly had enough.
I scream at the top of my lungs and with a silent prayer of thanks to Beth I send a left jab to his guts, and a second and a third, and as he loosens his grip in surprise I slam a right cross to his throat, another to his jaw. Hard, harder than any punches I’ve thrown, hardened by fear and rage and how dare you touch me—a cross to the bridge of his nose, a hook to his ribs, I have to land as many as I can before he gathers himself, and he isn’t expecting any of them but in his pain he manages to fling out his own fist and I try to block it but I’m not strong enough and it takes my forearm and head at once. The world spins. I sink to one knee and go for his groin, but he’s expecting it now and he blocks me, grabs my right hand and twists it up until I scream in pain. No one is coming I can’t believe no one is coming I’ve made so much damn noise. I’m alone here, and he’s about to break my arm and I can feel the breathless throbbing rage of refusal and as it fills my body I reach with my left hand for the pocketknife I keep tucked into my boot and I think, Fuck this: I refuse, and so I twist and rise and stab the blade up into his neck.
He gasps in shock. His hands loosen.
Blood is a cascade upon us both.
People arrive, I think. There is movement around us.
“Holy fucking shit—” someone is saying and someone else is demanding the police be called and someone is telling them all to shut the fuck up and arms are holding me upright. The knife drops from my hand. “It’s all right,” someone says against my ear. But the man is still looking at me, looking and looking, and clutching at his neck, trying to stop the bleeding and sinking to his knees, and I think he’s hardly in his body anymore and I think I’m hardly in mine.
“Easy,” the voice says, and it’s Ennis holding me upright.
He walk-drag-carries me somewhere. Back to the hotel? I am dull with shock.
The others are here now, pulling us faster and it’s not the hotel at all but the boat we’re rushing toward, and I think it’s because there are people following us. We run, an adrenaline-fueled blur, feet slapping on boards and low voices giving urgent commands. I blink and I’m on the boat and the guys are working like madmen to get it moving. I blink and the Saghani is smoothly away from the shore and out into the ocean. I blink and I am in a room I don’t know, some part of me thinks it must be Ennis’s cabin, maybe, I don’t care, and from far away he is speaking.
“You’re not alone, love,” he is saying. “Be easy. You’re not alone.”
Does he think that’s true?
“Is he dead? Did I kill him?”
“I don’t know.”
I give in. A dam breaks and weariness floods in. It’s all I can do not to pass out. I blink and I’m in a bed.
“Are we leaving?” I ask.
“We’re already gone,” Ennis says. “Sleep.”
“Did I mess things up for us?”
“No, love,” he says. “You got us free.”
But I’ll never be free. I wonder if this was how my father felt the day he killed a person.
17
SOUTH COAST OF NSW, AUSTRALIA NINETEEN YEARS AGO
Edith is out with the lambs tonight, hunkered down with her rifle to watch for the reflective eyes of hungry foxes. She makes me do this some nights, despite my protests—I’ve told her a thousand times I refuse to kill any animal, even to protect our livelihood, and anyway protecting the lambs is what Finnegan is for, but still she sends me out into the cold on watch duty, the rifle awkward in my unwilling hands. “When it comes time, you’ll do what you have to,” she says in that way of hers, the way that brooks no argument, and I’ve yet to spot one of the predators so I don’t know if she’s right.