‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,’ he wanted to reply, wondering why he couldn’t hear his own voice even though his lips were moving.

Then he wondered why he wasn’t fainting.

The pain behind his eyes had returned, this time with a run-up and twice the momentum.

Martin sank to the floor and felt it getting worse. Anouk had stepped over him and turned the overhead light on again. He felt as if a ghost had swapped the bathroom light for a blowtorch. Its blazing light was attempting to bore into his eyes. Unlike last night in the captain’s suite, however, he didn’t feel as if he was losing consciousness. But he could barely move his extremities.

He felt Anouk, who was suddenly kneeling above him, open his fingers. He could do nothing to stop her taking the torch from his hand. ‘What are you doing?’ he mumbled.

‘Yes,’ she said, which was probably related to the fact that she’d discovered the key in his breast pocket.

Which she could open the airlock with. Which she could get out of here with.

‘Hey, wait please. Wouldn’t it be better if I came with you?’

Wherever you want to go.

With the greatest effort of will, Martin managed to shift onto his side. He saw her bare feet toddle out of the bathroom. Heard her say ‘Yes’ again, loudly and clearly, which made no sense as there were no signs she was going to wait for him.

‘Where are you going?’ he wanted to call out, but he could muster barely more than a whisper.

Anouk turned briefly towards him. Saw her lips say, ‘To the blue shelf,’ and heard the words too, which came to him with a slight delay, as if the distance between them had already reached a range where sound took noticeably longer than light.

To the blue shelf?

Martin hauled himself to his knees, supported himself on the balls of his hands and crawled behind Anouk on all fours.

He’d heard that term somewhere before.

But where? Where?

Unable to crawl out of the bathroom any quicker than in slow motion, he watched helplessly as Anouk opened the cabin door and left without turning back to him.

54

Naomi

The familiar creaking. Was she hearing it for the last time?

The noise that heralded the opening of the gap sounded to her like an overture, a fitting introduction to her farewell song.

Naomi Lamar stood up and, on wobbly legs, watched the bucket swinging down towards her.

She was so nervous that she could feel her bladder, even though she’d just been in the circle. There wasn’t a corner in the well, but she’d found a spot where she reckoned the urine ran most rapidly into the crack in the floor.