The Survivors, стр. 60

Chapter 23

The ascent to the surface felt like the longest one Kieran could remember. They had found Sean and immediately begun the slow crawl upwards. Kieran could tell Sean was considering pulling ahead, calculating how far he could push the safety standards. He was starting to drift up, and Kieran had reached out and caught his wrist. Don’t. Stay. Kieran could see the effort it took him to slow down, but he did, and the four of them moved towards the surface together. Another minute, another nine metres.

Liam was on the boat.

He was sitting cross-legged, hunched over as he stared across the sea to the caves on the shore. He had stripped off all his equipment including his wetsuit and was shivering in just his shorts, a towel draped around his shoulders. He looked up as they emerged.

‘What happened?’ Sean was the first on board, his fear visibly waning at the sight of his nephew alive, if perhaps not completely well. Sean waited, but Liam wouldn’t meet his eye.

‘I dunno.’

‘You don’t know?’

Kieran had not often seen Sean angry, but he was fast getting there now.

‘Liam?’ Sean tried again. ‘Oi. Hey. You listening? What’s going on?’

‘I said. Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘I’d had enough, all right?’

Sean stared at his nephew. ‘Are you serious? So, what, you just decided to come up? Didn’t bother telling anyone?’

‘George saw me.’ He didn’t glance at the writer, who was watching Liam closely, his brow creased.

‘That’s not what I bloody meant,’ Sean said. ‘And leaving George is a whole other thing for you and me to have a very long chat about, by the way.’

‘Yeah, okay. I can hear.’ Liam shook his head. ‘I don’t know what I can tell you. I’d had enough of being down there so I came up.’

Sean looked at him, shivering on the deck. ‘Did you even ascend properly?’

A small nod. The only sound was the water lapping against the boat.

‘All right,’ Sean said, finally. ‘Let’s get back. We’ll talk about this later. You got anything you want to say to everyone?’

No answer.

‘Liam? Jesus, you’re still not even listening –’

‘I am. Sorry. It’s just –’ Liam was frowning now, his eyes focused on the shore.

‘What? What’s going on, mate?’

‘There’s something wrong out there, you know.’

Sean blinked. ‘Down at the wreck?’

‘No. Out there.’ They all turned to follow Liam’s gaze, towards The Survivors and the cliffs and caves beyond.

‘What are you on about?’ Sean frowned.

‘The birds have been all riled up lately.’ Liam’s voice was still flat. ‘On and off. Something’s been scaring them.’

George tilted his head, squinting. Above the cliffs, the sky was mostly still and clear. ‘They look fine now.’

‘And what would you know about how things are around here, mate?’ Liam snapped. ‘You don’t even know how to kick properly.’ He sighed, his energy spent. ‘They’re fine right now, but they’ve been getting worked up about something.’ He jerked his head in Kieran’s direction. ‘It happened the other day when he and his baby were messing around down there, and the day before that.’

‘You went down to the caves?’ Verity said sharply, fixing Kieran with a gaze that made him squirm. ‘With Audrey?’

‘Yeah. Only once though. And not for long.’

His mother did not look away. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘I hadn’t planned to, I –’ Kieran stopped. He couldn’t explain. ‘The tide was out. It was fine.’

Verity didn’t answer, but continued to stare at him in a way that set him on edge.

‘What, Mum?’ he said. ‘For God’s sake, she’s my child.’

Verity still didn’t reply. Kieran could feel the others watching and he turned away, annoyed.

‘Perhaps it was a sea eagle,’ George said out of nowhere, and they all looked over. He shrugged at Liam. ‘Upsetting the birds. Could there have been a sea eagle around? Trying to get at the babies?’

Liam blinked at him. ‘I don’t know.’ He looked very tired. ‘Yeah. Maybe.’

There was a roar as Sean fired up the engine. ‘Jesus. Let’s just get back to land.’

If the journey out to the wreck had been quiet, the journey back was silent in a different way. The mood was still sombre as they disembarked.

George was off the boat as soon as they docked. He stripped off his wetsuit, pulled on a t-shirt from his bag and with a thank you that managed to sound at least partly sincere, he disappeared through the marina gate, shaking his head.

As Liam took the wetsuit away to rinse it down, Sean turned to Kieran and Verity.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, rubbing a hand over his face. ‘If you want to go out again another time –’

‘It’s fine, Sean. I wanted to see the wreck once more, and I did,’ Verity said as they headed to the shed to get changed. ‘So, thank you. Really.’

Kieran had less trouble getting out of his wetsuit than he’d had getting into it, and this time it was him waiting outside the shed for Verity. Still a little cold from the water, he moved around to stand in the sun and leaned against the wall, feeling tired suddenly. Over the sound of equipment being hosed down around the back, he could hear Sean’s voice.

‘– know you’re not having an easy time but –’

Liam gave a short hollow laugh at that. Sean ignored it.

‘– but you can’t leave people in the water. It’s bad enough now, but you do that with the real clients and I could lose this business. Or