Afterlight Read Free Page A

room.
    Four long scuffed Formica-topped tables all but filled the mess; utilitarian, unchanged from the days when gas workers wearing orange overalls and smudged faces took a meal between shifts.
    Busy right now. It always was with the first breakfast sitting of the day. There were nearly a hundred of them sitting shoulder to shoulder; those on the rota for early morning duties. Potato and fish chowder steamed from plastic bowls and the room was thick with chattering conversation and the chorus of too-hot stew being impatiently slurped.
    Jenny spotted her daughter. She grabbed a plastic bowl, ladled it full of chowder and squeezed in beside her.
    Leona looked up. ‘Mum? You okay?’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘You were whimpering last night. Bad dreams again?’
    Jenny shrugged. ‘Just dreams, Lee, we all have them.’
    Leona managed a supportive half-smile. ‘Yeah.’ She had her nights too.
    Jenny cautiously tested a mouthful with her lip. ‘I noticed it’s a good sea and fair wind out there today. We’re overdue a shore run. Could you get together a shopping list and I’ll grab it off you later?’
    ‘Yeah, okay,’ Leona replied, picking an escaped chunk of potato off the table and dropping it back into Hannah’s bowl. Nothing wasted here. Certainly not food.
    ‘Anything you want to put on the list?’
    Jenny’s mouth pursed. ‘A couple of decent writing pens. Some socks, the thermal ones . . . oh, and how about booking me in at a posh health spa for a weekend of pampering.’
    Leona grinned. ‘I’ll join you.’
    Jenny hungrily finished her breakfast before it had a chance to cool; too much to do, too little time. She clapped her hands like a school-teacher and the hubbub of conversation slowly, reluctantly, faded to silence.
    ‘It looks like a good day for a shore run. The sea’s calm and we’ve got a westerly wind. So Leona’s going to be coming round this morning to get your “wants and needs”.’ She picked out a dark-skinned and broad-framed woman halfway down the table. ‘And, Martha Williams, let’s try and keep George Clooney off the list this time.’
    There was a ripple of tired, dutiful laughter across the canteen and a loud cheerful cackle from Martha. Her grin and the musical lilt in her accent still hung on to a fading echo of Jamaican beaches.
    ‘Aye, Jenny, love. How ’bout me ’ave some Brad Pitt, then?’
    Martha got a better response; popular with everyone.
    Jenny grinned; to do less would be disingenuous. She gave the room her morning smile; even those who she knew sniped at her behind her back, those who muttered and complained in dark corners about Jenny’s Laws. A smile that assured them all she’d weathered far worse than sticks and stones and whatever bitchiness some of them got up to out of her earshot.
    ‘Busy day today. We’ve got seedling propagators to transfer from Drilling to Accommodation, slurry from the digesters to bring out and spread; we had some rain last night so all the water butts and catch-troughs to check.’
    There were some groans.
    ‘First teatime sitting will be at four-thirty; a little later since we’re getting more evening light now.’ She nodded. ‘Okay?’
    Chairs and benches barked on the scuffed floor as everyone rose to go about their morning duties. The mess door opened, letting in a lively breeze. Outside on the deck, those waiting to come in for the second breakfast sitting rubbed their hands and shuffled impatiently.
    Jenny felt her sleeve being tugged and looked down to see Hannah cocking a curious barrister’s eyebrow. ‘Who’s Brad Pitt?’

Chapter 3
    10 years AC
    ‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
     
     
     
    T he catch bell jangled. Jacob looked up from his pack of weathered and faded Yu-Gi-Oh cards to the net cables tied off along the platform railing. They were both as taut as guitar strings and twitched energetically - a sure sign there was enough squirming marine life in the net to make it worth his while