Silver Bay(69)
Author: Jojo Moyes

‘Hannah!’ I yelled.

I ran towards the jetty, the thin beam of the torch scanning the ground in front of me. A hundred feet back I found two men pushing a small motorboat towards the water. Both were wearing lifejackets. I could barely make out their faces. ‘I need your help,’ I gasped. ‘There’s a child, a girl – I think she’s gone out on the water.’

‘What?’ One of the men stepped forward, and I recognised him as a dog-walker I had met during my previous stay. ‘You’re going to have to shout, mate. I can’t hear you.’

‘A girl.’ I gestured towards the bay. ‘I think she might have taken a dinghy out by herself. She’s only a kid.’

The two men looked at each other, then at the boat. ‘Grab a jacket,’ one shouted. I couldn’t think where to leave the dog, so I shoved her in too, and helped them push it out on to the water.

‘Hannah McCullen,’ I yelled, as the engine roared into life. ‘Little girl from the hotel.’ The other gestured to me to point the torch out to sea. As I grabbed the side with my other hand, trying to hang on, he took his own light and hooked it on to the front of the boat, scanning the waves.

If I hadn’t been so concerned for Hannah’s safety, I would have been afraid. I have always tended to avoid risky situations, and as the boat bounced off the waves, then hit them with a smack, jarring me, I would rather have been anywhere in the world than out on that sea.

‘See anything?’ the man in the blue cap yelled. I shook my head. I was shivering now, which made it hard to keep Milly wedged safely between my legs. I tied her lead to the side rail – I had to focus on finding Hannah.

‘Got to watch out for the nets,’ one shouted. ‘If we get the propeller caught up we’re really stuck.’

I worked out their plan – to start at the jetty end and do a sweep of the bay taking in all of the boats we could see, making sure she was not among them. I sat braced against the side, stomach lurching as we negotiated the waves, my torchbeam swinging out, showing nothing but the dark, churning waters beneath us. As we drew closer to the other boats it seemed that half of Silver Bay had turned out in huge cruisers and little motorboats. I caught sight of bodies in wet-suits, others in oilskins handing down shears. They didn’t notice us. They were focused on their own task, and trying to keep their boats stable.

‘It’s a bugger of a size,’ yelled one of the men. I assumed he was talking about the net, but I couldn’t see it. We ploughed on through the waves, up to the next boat. Hannah was not there. I wondered whether I’d got it wrong – perhaps the little boat no longer lived in Greg’s lock-up. Perhaps she was still at home and I had misunderstood. But then I remembered Milly’s reaction: her face was tense and watchful, and I decided to trust her. I couldn’t risk believing that Hannah was not out there.

As we passed the sixth or seventh boat, and headed for the mouth of the bay, I became aware of the ghost nets. We passed between one of the Mobys and another cruiser and, with the greater illumination their lights shed, I glimpsed what looked like a tangled web, just visible at the top of the floodlit waves. In it I could see unidentifiable shapes, and struggled to work out what it was I was seeing.

Then Milly barked, great anxious gulps, and I heard screaming.

The dog sprang up, straining at her lead. I swung my torch, and shouted to the men, ‘Cut the engine!’ As it stalled, I could hear Hannah – a thin, terrified shriek. As the men started the engine and steered towards my pointing arm, I saw, briefly illuminated by my weak beam, a little boat rocking dangerously, a small figure clinging to its side.

‘Hannah!’ I shouted, and the motorboat swung towards her, its engine almost drowned by the noise the dog was making. ‘Hannah!’ The boat’s light was on her then, and I could see her clearly: her face contorted with fear, her hands gripping the side, her hair plastered over her face as the rain beat down on her.

‘It’s okay!’ I shouted, but I wasn’t sure if she could hear.

‘Help me!’ she was sobbing. ‘The nets are all caught up in my rudder. I can’t move.’

‘It’s okay, sweetheart.’ I wiped rain out of my eyes. ‘We’re coming.’ I turned as I felt the engine slow beneath me. ‘Closer!’ I yelled to the men. ‘We’ve got to get closer!’

One swore loudly. ‘I can’t go any nearer,’ he yelled. ‘We’ll get stuck in the nets ourselves. I’ll radio the lifeboat.’

‘Can we throw her a rope?’

‘If her rudder’s caught in the nets it won’t help her.’

Hannah’s scream as a huge swell hit galvanised me. ‘I’ll get her,’ I shouted, kicking off my shoes.

‘You sure you’ll be okay?’

‘What the hell else are we going to do?’

One man handed me a pair of cutters as I pulled off my jacket. The other was hauling the front of my lifejacket together, securing the ties. ‘Just watch you don’t get caught in the nets yourself,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll try to keep the light on you. Swim where I’m pointing it, okay? Follow the beam.’

Even with the lifejacket the force and cold of the sea struck me like a blow. I gasped as another wave crashed over me, salt water stinging my eyes. I fought my way to the surface and squinted towards the light, trying to work out which direction I should be headed. I looped the cutters round my wrist, and then, as another wave hit me, began to swim.

She can have only been thirty or forty feet away, but that swim was the most arduous I have ever undertaken. The waves and current pulled me away from her, and the sound of her cries kept disappearing as my head was swamped by the swell. I took a breath when I could, stuck my head down and ploughed towards where I thought she was, hearing the cries of the men behind me, Hannah’s own cries growing gradually louder. There was no time to be afraid. I became a thing, hauling each arm in turn out of the dragging water, riding each oncoming wave, telling myself that with each stroke I was, against visible evidence, getting closer to the little boat.

I was about ten feet away when I saw that she was wearing a lifejacket, for which I thanked God. ‘Hannah!’ I yelled, as she hung over the side towards me. ‘You’ll have to swim.’

And then I saw it. As the beam of the men’s boat swung round, stronger, perhaps closer than it had been before, the swell lifted the net wrapped round Hannah’s rudder, and suddenly, illuminated in the dark water, I saw something I shall never forget. Caught up in the fine filaments of the tangled net, visible only for the briefest moment, the bodies of fish, seabirds, pieces of creatures that might have died weeks previously, all suspended in the near-invisible web, the floating wall of death. I saw, in that instant, a baby turtle, a huge gull – an albatross, perhaps – its feathers half torn away, and worse, near the surface, a dolphin, its eye open, its body bound tight in netting. I am no expert when it comes to sea creatures, but I knew it was alive. And Hannah, hanging over the edge, had seen it too. I heard her piercing scream, and then, as I reached for the side of the boat, I saw in her huge eyes the reflected horror of what I, too, had seen. I reached up a hand, praying with a shudder that my limbs were not going to come into contact with the rotting bodies below.