She’d written this nine days ago and sent the computer up in the bucket. The hunger cramps in her stomach were unbearable, but a few hours later no food came, only the laptop with the spider’s answer:

‘That’s NOT the worst thing you’ve ever done.’

And right below it:

‘Every wrong answer will be punished.’

Two hours later came the bowl with the rice and the label: Spirometra mansoni.

She’d had to eat it. She would have starved to death otherwise. At the time Naomi reckoned that instant death was the worse of the two.

But it wasn’t.

To know that you were carrying a parasite – the nastiest sort of tapeworm – and were slowly being devoured from the inside, that was the worst thing that could happen to you.

Naomi was sure the spider knew this.

It wanted answers, a confession, and it would only get these if its victim’s survival instinct was broken.

Till now the thought of her daughter had kept Naomi alive. But now the horror beneath her skin that was gradually making its way to behind her eyeball was eliminating all desire to live.

‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’

‘I’m so sorry, Anouk,’ Naomi whispered, taking hold of the computer. With fingers whose nails hadn’t been cut for weeks she typed her second confession:

‘I committed adultery. In the most despicable way possible. I had sex for money.’

She flipped shut the laptop, put it inside the bag and placed it in the bucket. She tugged several times on the rope and, as she scratched herself again until she bled, waited for the spider to pull it up, satisfied with her answer.

So finally she could die.

29

By now Martin was virtually the only person on deck where – appropriately enough for October – it had turned quite chilly. Everyone else in his evacuation group had hurried to leave the assembly point by the diving station once the thick grey clouds, which had gathered soon after the end of their emergency drill, started emptying themselves – fine drizzle, but enough to soak all clothes through.

Martin wasn’t bothered. He didn’t have a hairstyle to worry about and was wearing clothes that needed washing anyway. In comparison to how he felt at the moment, a cold might even be an improvement.

He felt terrible, although this wasn’t a consequence of his tiredness or the sea swell, which for true seadogs was probably no more than a bubble in a whirlpool. But Martin had reached the stage where he was going to ask the on-board pharmacy for Vomex.

As if responding to a telepathic command, Elena Beck joined him by the parapet. With a transparent rain cape over her head and uniform, she was wearing far more suitable clothing than him. In one hand she held a life jacket, in the other a black doctor’s bag, which looked coarse in her slim hand.