The Quality of Silence Page 13

  While obsession was about ownership, a narcissism reflecting on the person who felt it, she knew now that passion was love, at its most extreme edge, that made you cross an Arctic wilderness in winter; and this, here and now, was where it could lead you.

  Suddenly the blackness lightened. The clouds, blown by the harsh wind, had separated and illuminated the mountains. In the half-light, she saw how high they were and the sheer drop down a precipice, barely three feet from the left side of the road. She wished it had remained dark so that she didn’t have to see the violent terrain, a scene from a gothic tale, nothing soft or hospitable, which dwarfed her into nothing.

  She looked up at the night sky, a long-forgotten reflex from childhood when she’d felt small and afraid.

  She saw three moons. She felt reality tilting.

  She realised that two of the moons were paraselenae. They were rare and beautiful; she’d never seen them before.

  She pointed at the sky for Ruby.

  ‘There are three moons, Mum!’

  ‘They’re called “moon dogs”.’

  ‘Why are they there? Why don’t we have moon dogs at home?’

  ‘They’re not real. They’re made by moonlight.‘

  ‘How? Tell me!’

  ‘Up there, really high in the clouds, are ice crystals. The moonlight bounces against the crystals and makes the moon dogs. Their proper name is paraselenae.’

  She stopped the truck for a few moments so she could finger-spell ‘paraselenae’. It occurred to her that the only thing she ever taught Ruby that really mattered to her was to try to talk; more surprising was her realisation that the paraselenae mattered to her.

  ‘Paraselenae,’ Ruby finger-spelled back to her.

  Then the clouds covered the moon and the paraselenae and it was dark once more. She continued driving.

  The illuminated clock on the dashboard showed it was 3 a.m. The black heart of the night, Yasmin thought, but there was no heart to this night because there’d be no daylight to end it. It was snowing again, the flakes only appearing when they were in the headlights, as if they’d been suddenly formed in the darkness. Her limbs were heavy with tiredness. Outside the cab it was minus thirty.

  Ruby tapped on her arm.

  There was another email.

  She wanted to prevent Ruby from looking at the photo, but Ruby had already scrolled down. She checked her mirror – the blue headlights were still a long distance behind them – and stopped the truck

  A blackly shining dead bird filled the screen, even its beak and feet black, the feathers with a metallic glint, its ghastly eyes protruding. Yasmin found it demonic and recoiled.

  A school trip to the Tower of London, recalled in ugly detail. Ravens devouring biscuits soaked in blood and a whole rabbit, tearing it up. Other girls screaming, Yasmin silently appalled.

  Through centuries of western literature, ravens were associated with death, carrion birds, feeding off corpses on the battlefields.

  She studied the photo, searching for a clue about the man who’d taken it and where he was. The dead bird was lit by a torch, but was too faint to see how it had been killed. She couldn’t see any blood on the white snow around it. No landmark was visible. The subject was DSC_10021; 69051605 150116989 was under the photograph.

  Behind her, she saw that the blue lights truck had also stopped. She was sure that he must be connected to the man sending the menacing photographs. She could no longer explain away either man as the product of her own exhausted paranoia.

  Surely she could go to the police now. Someone didn’t want her to reach Matt and Anaktue – therefore he had to be alive. But what did she have? Macabre photos of dead creatures from a man who might, or might not, be called Akiak. The police could well dismiss the emails, as she had done the first time, as a crank or spam. This road was northern Alaska’s only highway, so how could she prove the lights behind her were malevolent without sounding like she was neurotic and deluded? But Ruby and she were under threat; she felt that acutely now.

  Unless she could find a way to convince the police Matt was alive, and to rescue him, her terrible choice was coming closer. She felt the terror of abandoning him, which had first haunted her mind, become a presence somewhere on the dark road ahead.

  ‘You can tell the police that Dad’s alive!’ Ruby said on Voice Magic. ‘Now Dad’s sent us two emails.’

  ‘Ruby—’

  ‘Dad loves ravens. They’re super-coolio.’

  Had she not realised that the raven was dead?

  ‘There’s an amazing Inupiaq story about a raven.’

  Yasmin, afraid and exhausted, couldn’t stand the machine voice any more. Couldn’t stand it that Ruby wasn’t trying to use her own voice; couldn’t stand it that Ruby’s future sounded so lonely.

  ‘Please, darling, please use your proper voice. Just try to. Please.’

  Ruby turned away from her.

  Mum still doesn’t think it’s Daddy sending us the emails. And so the police wouldn’t think so either. But I KNOW it’s him. I’m going to write about ravens on our blog, because it will feel a bit like Daddy is with me. I think he’ll be pleased I’ve started already, then when he’s with me we can publish it together. So I’m uploading the photo and all the numbers, because they must be important if Dad sent them.

  We decided to do a blog just before we went on holiday to Scotland, because after Scotland Dad was going straight off again to Alaska.

  I was crying on my bed and Bosley was trying his wagging tail thing but it wasn’t really working and I was just making his fur all damp, then Dad came in.

  ‘School?’ he asked and he sat down next to me.

  I nodded.

  ‘Not so great starting Year Six?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Friends or foes?’

  The thing with Dad is he knows it’s worse when friends are mean than foes.

  ‘Friend,’ I said. ‘Jimmy.’

  ‘Has he been mean to you?’ Dad asked, and he looked really surprised, because Jimmy had been my best friend since always.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ he said. And when I just kept stroking Bosley, kind of tugging at his ears which he really likes, Dad said, ‘Better out than in,’ which is this joke, because he first said it when I was sick with food poisoning and I thought it was gross, and funny too, and ever since then he says it when he thinks I’m bottling something up and he wants to make me smile.

  I stopped stroking Bosley, though Bosley kept lying with his head on my lap, and I told Dad that people were teasing Jimmy about me being his girlfriend. So he didn’t want to be seen with me any more.

  ‘Does Jimmy want a girlfriend?’ Dad asked

  ‘Don’t think so. We don’t talk about that kind of thing.’

  ‘Would he be embarrassed if people thought he had a girlfriend?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I think he just doesn’t like being teased. Most people don’t,’ Dad said and I

  could tell he was thinking about it really carefully. ‘Especially about having a girlfriend. Any girlfriend. It’s nothing to do with you.’

  I started stroking Bosley again because even if it’s nothing to do with me, it is

  because Jimmy was my friend and now he isn’t. And because I love him, in a friend way, but now I can’t any more but I still do. And because I don’t know how to tell him that you can love someone without being their boyfriend or girlfriend; because we don’t talk about things like that.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit young to be starting boyfriends and girlfriends?’ Dad said. ‘Ten?’

  ‘Ten and a half and lots of people do,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry. I’m out of touch.’

  The thing with Dad is that he waits for you to talk again. Bosley’s tail was wagging really fast, but it still couldn’t make me happy.

  ‘I don’t have any other friends, Dad.’

  I didn’t look at him when I said that; it�
�s a fail thing to say.

  ‘You know you’re coming to Alaska for Christmas?’ he said.

  I nodded. It was me that had wanted to go and be with Dad in Alaska rather than him coming home, but it was ages and ages away.

  ‘We don’t have to stay put in the hotel, we can go off and do some proper exploring. And you and I can do a blog together about all the animals we see.’

  It was a super-coolio idea and Dad could tell that’s what I thought.

  ‘We can take photos and post them on our blog and we’ll write it together. You can tweet a link to it. We’ll be trending.’

  Since I started Twitter, Dad knows all about it, so he knows it’s silly to say we’d be trending, only pop stars and film stars and people like that trend, but it was funny to think we could.

  Then we started designing our blog and Dad showed me all these animals and birds on his iPad that we could put in. And then when we went to Scotland we practised together.

  And I know the emails are from him. I know they are.

  When I close my eyes, I can see Dad in Scotland really clearly: his Superman T-shirt and his smile and he hadn’t shaved so his face was all stubbly. But I can’t see him sending the photos here. I imagine his Inupiaq parka with the furry hood, but when I look at his face I can’t see him. It’s hard because he’ll be wearing goggles. But it’s not really that. Because inside the big hood, under the goggles, it’s not Dad’s face, but a frightening one. It’s that creepy slimeball’s face, the one with the blond hair and grey parting and jellyfish hands.

  Mum says that horrible thoughts sneak up on you when you’re too tired to fight them off. She says that on school nights. And I think she’s right. Because even if I can’t imagine his face properly I know it’s Daddy sending us the pictures.

  There’s little blue lights behind us, like they’re following us in the dark.

  Outside the temperature had dropped to minus thirty-five and the snowfall was getting heavier. Yasmin longed to sleep, just for few minutes to close her eyes and give way. She’d be useless at being tortured, two nights without sleep and the sensory deprivation of light and she’d tell everything. A bright bulb as an instrument of torture seemed rather attractive to her.

  ‘Gutsy lady’ Coby had called her. It had been a long time since anyone had thought her gutsy. But she’d felt the change in herself; had heard it in her voice as she spoke to Coby and the other drivers. It wasn’t new, this voice, this self, that was the thing: it was deeply familiar to her. And she recognised that it was herself as she used to be – determined, stubborn, brave even, more than a little mad.

  It shocked her to realise that for years she’d felt bland, dull even to herself. Around her, everyone else’s characters were clearly defined, the borders of their personalities etched sharply, but not hers. She’d had tasks and chores and love for Ruby, huge love for her, but how would she have described herself? Somewhere along the line she’d lost the idea of herself.

  She saw herself back in the kitchen on the other side of the world, and the contrast between the woman in the kitchen and where she was now was giddying. Out here in the immense Alaskan wilderness, she saw the claustrophobia of their house, the claustrophobia of herself. And she knew she had been lonely not because of long-ago but still-felt grief for her mother, or because of the distance between her and Matt, either literally or figuratively, but because she had been missing herself as she used to be.

  It was only now, in this monochromatic land at the very top of the planet, that she could start to understand herself; as if the distance and difference to her life on the other side of the world allowed her to see her story.

  And she wanted to tell Matt; she wanted to explain.

  I kissed her because I missed you.

  She pushed her foot harder down on the accelerator. She would reach him.

  Chapter 12

  The blue lights are still behind us. Mum looks at them in her mirror. She’s done that quite a lot. I’m worried that it’s the slimeball man behind us and it’s all my fault. He found Mum at the truck place in Fairbanks, but she didn’t know. I should have told her, because when we were still in Fairbanks Mr Azizi was with us, and lots of other too, but now we’re all on our own.

  His face was really close to mine, just glass between us.

  I put on Voice Magic.

  ‘The blue lights behind us,’ I say and I can tell she’s a bit surprised that I know about the blue lights. ‘Do you know who it is?’ I ask.

  I’m really hoping that she does. Or that she doesn’t mind who it is behind us.

  She shakes her head and I can tell she’s worried, even though she’s trying to hide it. I have to tell her.

  ‘It might be the slimeball man,’ I say and I do the gross finger-up-the-nose sign so she’ll know who I mean.

  ‘I agree he was creepy,’ she says, ‘but it’s not him behind us. It’s nothing to worry about, just a driver.’

  But she’s just trying to make me not worry.

  ‘When we were at the truck place with Mr Azizi,’ I say. ‘The slimeball man was there too. He wanted to talk to you. But we drove away from him.’

  ‘He was at truck place when we left?’ she says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think he saw us leave?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes. He did. He wanted to talk to you. But I didn’t want you to worry. As well as worrying about Dad.’

  ‘That was very, very kind of you,’ she says.

  But she’s the one being kind. She wishes I’d told her.

  ‘He’s just a slimeball,’ Mum says, doing the gross sign to cheer me up. ‘And we don’t need to worry about slimeballs. Go to sleep now.’

  She really does want me to go to sleep so I close my eyes. I think about Scotland and all of us safe and warm and happy. I can see the hummocky grass that was springy as a trampoline and loads of purple heather, like someone had flicked purple paint all over the place, and Mum and Dad smiling.

  Yasmin had wondered about Silesian Stennet before, but the idea that he could be following her out of some kind of menacing obsession had become more far-fetched the further she’d driven along this treacherous road.

  Maybe, however, he had a link to the fire.

  If Matt knew something about the fire at Anaktue it could be Silesian Stennet, rather than a fracking company, who wanted to stop her from reaching him; Silesian Stennet who had something to hide.

  Right away he had known where Anaktue was. And yes, he’d given a rationale for that, but even so. He’d blamed fracking for the fire not realising how absurd that was – fire leaping across miles of snow and ice in freezing winds; now she was here herself that idea seemed even more ridiculous.

  But Silesian Stennet was frightening not ridiculous.

  ‘Better a small village in Alaska has everyone die, than a highly populated area. So yes, if wiping out a village is what it takes to stop this madness, then yes.’

  And he’d looked stimulated by it; that’s what had repulsed her. Perhaps he had started the fire, thinking idealistic ends justified terrible means. And it hadn’t worked out as he’d hoped. No one had believed him that it was fracking that had burned down the village. If he’d gone to the police or the media, they’d have laughed at him as the men at the airport had done. But perhaps he hadn’t foreseen that. And the police investigating in the literal dark might not have seen the signs of arson so wouldn’t have known it was murder or why.

  He had worked for an oil company; been a director. He must still have contacts; he could have got a lift in a truck, or even be driving one himself.

  She remembered his offer to take care of Ruby – ‘I’ll look after the girl. Keep her safe for you.’ Was that so he’d have Ruby as some kind of collateral?

  Ruby had fallen asleep beside her. She felt her body rhythmically rising and falling.

  Exhaustion was battering at her in waves. She thought of all those English seaside towns with their stalwart Victorian seawalls, and hoped he
r defences were as robust because she couldn’t sleep, not yet. She longed for dawn, at least for the knowledge that it was coming, not driving into an endless night.

  She couldn’t see the blue lights, he must have fallen a distance behind them, but she was sure he was still following them.

  She drove up a steep incline, her right leg aching, unable to sustain the unnatural angle of reaching for the pedal for much longer. Ruby’s hand brushed against her as she signed in her sleep. It was only adrenaline that was keeping her awake.

  At the top of the incline she saw a halo of light as if the sun was rising. She knew it couldn’t be true, that it was like a mirage of water in the desert; that she was hallucinating the sunrise out of exhaustion and primal need for light. She reached the top of the hill and beneath her was a collection of buildings, with orange sodium lights and floodlights and flickering neon. Coldfoot.

  She drove into Coldfoot, Ruby still asleep. It was a tiny place; basic low-rise buildings lined the road. She slowed to a crawl as she passed them. Through windows honey light filtered out onto the snow. The pull towards company and safety was physical, each lit building exerting its own drag.

  There was a gas station, flooded with bright lights, showing pumps purpose-built for trucks and beside it was a rudimentary large truck park. There was a ranch-style café and a motel, built out of the same modular unit as the house on her rig. She’d lived in one of the most metropolitan cities in the world but she’d never before felt civilisation so acutely.

  Perhaps she could leave Ruby here. Perhaps she would be safe. But the blue lights driver would arrive, looking for her. She imagined him hunting for her in the café, the motel, and instead finding Ruby.

  Coby would look after Ruby, she was sure. And there’d be other decent men here to protect her. But she’d need to ask Coby, check that the other men were trustworthy, and as soon as they clapped eyes on her they’d stop her from leaving again. She was sure of that. And she couldn’t ask Ruby to find Coby herself while she drove off again because how would Ruby find him? Who the hell would understand sign language out here in the middle of nowhere? She’d be utterly vulnerable.