The Woman in Cabin 10(83)

“It’s the only way.” She pulled off the headscarf, revealing her shaven head beneath, bristly with regrowth, and then began to strip.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re going to walk off this boat as Anne and get on a plane as me. Understand?”

“What? You’re crazy. Come with me!”

“I can’t. How the f*ck am I going to explain this to the crew? Here’s my friend who’s been hiding out in the hold?”

“Tell them! Tell them the truth!”

She shook her head. She was down to her underwear now, shivering in spite of the fuggy heat of the stale air in the cabin.

“And say what? Hi, I’m a total stranger, the woman you think I am got pushed off the boat? No. I have no idea if I can trust any of them. At best he’s their employer. At worst . . .”

“So what then?” I was half hysterical. “You’ll stay here and let him kill you, too?”

“No. I’ve got a plan. Just stop arguing and take my clothes.” She held them out, a bundle of silks that felt featherlight in my hands when I took them. Her skinniness was shocking, her bones practically poking through her skin, but I couldn’t look away. “Now give me yours.”

“What?” I looked down at myself, at the stained, sweaty jeans and the T-shirt and hoodie I’d been wearing for almost a week now. “These?”

“Yes. Hurry up!” Her voice was edgy. “What size are your feet?”

“Six,” I said, my voice muffled as I stripped off my T-shirt.

“Good. Mine, too.” She pushed the espadrilles she was wearing towards me and I kicked off my boots and began to peel off my jeans. We were both down to our underwear now, me awkwardly trying to cover myself, she completely focused as she began to pull on my discarded clothes. I pulled the silk tunic over my head, feeling the expensive fabric whisper cool against my skin. She pulled an elastic band off her wrist and handed it silently across.

“What’s this for?”

“Pulling back your hair. It’s not ideal. You’ll have to be very careful with the headscarf, but it’s the best I can do. We don’t have time to shave your head, and in any case, if you’re going to skip the country under my passport, it’s probably better that you have real hair for passport control. We don’t want to give them a reason to look twice at the photo.”

“I don’t understand. Why can’t I just go as me? The police must be looking for me, surely?”

“For starters, Richard has your passport. And he has a lot of friends around here—not just in business, he knows people high up in the Norwegian police force as well. We have to get you far away from him before he puts two and two together. Get out. Get away from the coast. Cross the border into Sweden. And when you do get on a plane, don’t fly to London. He’ll be expecting that. Go via somewhere else—Paris, maybe.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” I said, but her alarm had infected me. I shoved my feet into the espadrilles, and the passport into the pocket of the kimono. Carrie was zipping up my vintage leather boots. I felt a faint pang of regret—those boots were the single most expensive piece of clothing I owned. It had taken me weeks, and a fair amount of encouragement from Judah, to pluck up the courage to shell out for them. But the boots felt like a small sacrifice in exchange—potentially—for my life.

At last we were almost fully dressed—just the headscarf lay on the bunk between us.

“Sit,” Carrie said brusquely, and I sat on the edge of the bunk while she stood beside me and swathed the beautiful printed scarf around my head. It was green and gold, blazoned with a pattern of intertwined ropes and anchors, and I had a sudden, distracting flash of Anne—the real Anne—floating down into the blue-green depths, her white limbs tangling in the detritus of a thousand wrecks, caught forever.

“There you go,” Carrie said at last. She slid in a couple of pins, holding the edge of the scarf in place, and then looked at me critically, up and down. “It’s not perfect—you’re not thin enough—but you’ll pass in poor light. Thank God I’ve not met most of the sailing crew.”

She looked at her watch and then said, “Right. Last thing. Hit me.”

“What?” Her words made no sense. Hit her with what?

“Hit me. Hit my head against the bunk.”

“What?” I was starting to sound like an echo—but I couldn’t help it. “Are you crazy? I’m not going to hit you!”

“Hit me,” she said furiously. “Don’t you get it? This has to be convincing. This is my only chance of Richard believing I wasn’t in on it. It has to look like you attacked me, overpowered me. Hit me.”

I took a deep breath and slapped her on the cheek. Her head whipped back, but it wasn’t hard enough, I could tell it wasn’t, even as she looked sourly round at me, rubbing her cheek.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Do I have to do everything?”

She took a deep breath, and then, before I realized quite what she was about to do, she smacked her head into the side of the bunk.

I screamed. I couldn’t help it. Blood started welling from the shallow cut the metal edge had made, dripping down her—my—white T-shirt and puddling on the floor. She staggered back, gasping in pain and holding her hands to her skull.