'I doubt it.'
Both of them seemed to have forgotten Amy. He said desperately: 'I know that you lied about your mother being ruined by Hilary's father. That wasn't true, any of it. Look, if you're in trouble I want to help. We've got to talk. I can't go on like this.'
'I'm not in trouble, and if I were you'd be the last person I'd turn to. And take your hands off my boat.'
He said, as if it were the most important thing between them: 'Your boat? You never told me you had a boat.'
'There are a great many things that I didn't tell you.'
And then, suddenly, he knew. There was no longer room for doubt. 'So it wasn't real was it, any of it? You don't love me, you never did love me.'
'Love, love, love. Stop bleating the word, Jonathan. Look, go home. Stand in front of your glass and take a good long look at yourself. How could you ever have supposed that it was real? This is real, Amy and me. She is why I stay at Larksoken and I am why she stays. Now you know.'
'You used me.'
He knew that he sounded like a querulous child.
'Yes, I used you. We used each other. When we went to bed I was using you and you were using me. That's what sex is. And, if you want to know, it was bloody hard work and it made me sick.'
Even in the throes of his misery and humiliation he could sense an urgency in her that had nothing to do with him. The cruelty was deliberate but it had no passion in it. It would have been more bearable if it had. His presence was merely an irritating but minor intrusion into more important preoccupations. Now the end of the rope had whipped clear of the bollard. She had started the engine and the boat was edging away from the quay. And for the first time he really noticed the other girl. She hadn't spoken since he arrived. She stood silently beside Caroline in the cockpit, unsmiling, shivering slightly, and somehow vulnerable, and he thought he saw on her childish face a look of puzzled compassion before his tears began to sting and the boat and its occupants became an amorphous blur. He waited until they were almost out of sight moving on the dark water, and then he made another decision. He would find a pub, have a beer and some food and be there when they returned. They couldn't be away long or they would miss the tide. And he had to know the truth. He couldn't spend another night in this uncertainty. He stood on the quay staring out to sea as if the little boat with its two occupants was still in sight, then turned away and dragged his feet towards the nearest pub.
The throb of the engine, unnaturally loud, shook the quiet air. Amy half expected doors to open, people to come running down to the quay, to hear protesting voices calling after them. Caroline made a movement and the noise died in a gentle murmur. The boat gently moved away from the quay. Amy said angrily: 'Who is he? Who is that creep?'
'Just a man from Larksoken. His name's Jonathan Reeves. He's unimportant.'
'Why did you tell him lies? Why did you tell him lies about us? We're not lovers.'
'Because it was necessary. What does it matter anyway? It isn't important.'
'It's important to me. Look at me, Caroline. I'm talking to you.'
But still Caroline didn't meet her eyes. She said calmly: 'Wait until we get clear of the harbour. There's something I have to tell you, but I want to get into deep water and I need to concentrate. Get up to the prow and keep a lookout.'
Amy stood for a moment irresolute, and then she obeyed, working her way carefully along the narrow deck, clutching the rim of the low cabin roof. She wasn't sure she liked the hold that Caroline apparently had over her. It was nothing to do with the money, which was paid irregularly and anonymously into her post office account or left hidden in the abbey ruins. It wasn't even the excitement and the secret sense of power which she gained from being part of a conspiracy. Perhaps after that first meeting in the pub at Islington which had led to her recruitment to Operation Birdcall she had subconsciously made a decision to give her loyalty and obedience and, now that the test had come, she was unable to shake off that unspoken allegiance.
Looking back she could see that the lights in the harbour were growing fainter, the windows becoming little squares of light and then pinpricks. The engine stuttered into greater life and, standing on the prow, she could feel the great power of the North Sea beneath her, the hiss of the parting water, see the unbroken waves smooth and black as oil emerging out of the mist, could feel the boat lifting, shuddering, and then settling. After ten minutes of watching she left her post and made her way back to the cockpit. She said: 'Look, we're well away from land now. What's going on? Did you have to tell him that? I know I'm supposed to keep away from people at Larksoken, but I'll find him, and I'll tell him the truth.'
Caroline was still standing motionless at the tiller, looking straight ahead. In her left hand she held a compass. She said: 'We won't be going back. That's what I have to tell you.'
Before Amy could even open her mouth she said: 'Look, don't start getting hysterical and don't argue. You're entitled to an explanation and if you keep quiet you'll get it. I've no option now; you have to know the truth, or some of the truth.'
'What truth? What are you talking about? And why aren't we going back? You said we'd only be gone about an hour. You said we were going out to meet some comrades offshore and get some new instructions. I left a note for Neil saying I wouldn't be long. I've got to get back to Timmy.'
But still Caroline didn't look at her. She said: 'We're not going back because we can't. When I recruited you from that London squat I didn't tell you the truth. It wasn't in your interest and I didn't know how far I could trust you. And I didn't know the whole truth myself, only as much as I needed to know. That's the way the operation works. Operation Birdcall is nothing to do with taking over Larksoken in the cause of animal rights. It's nothing to do with animals. It's nothing to do with threatened whales and sick seals and tormented laboratory animals and abandoned dogs and all the other spurious miseries you agonize about. It's to do with something far more important. It's to do with human beings and their future. It's to do with the way we organize our world.'
She was speaking very low and with an extraordinary intensity. Amy said above the noise of the engine: 'I can't hear you! I can't hear you properly. Turn off that engine!'
'Not yet. We've still a long way to go. We're meeting them at a precise spot. We have to sail south-east then take a bearing on the power station offshore structures and the Happisburgh light: I hope this mist doesn't thicken.'
'Who? Who are we meeting?'
'I don't know their names and I don't know their place in the organization. As I said, we are all of us told only as much as we actually need to know. My instructions were that if Operation Birdcall was blown I was to ring a number and activate the emergency procedure for getting me out. That's why I bought this boat and made sure it was always ready. I was told precisely where they'll pick us up. Then they'll get us into Germany, provide false papers, a new identity, incorporate us into the organization, find us a job.'
'Not for me they bloody well won't!' Amy looked at Caroline with horror. 'They're terrorists, aren't they? And you're one too. You're a bloody terrorist!'
Caroline said calmly: 'And what else are the agents of capitalism? What are the armies, the police, the courts? What are the industrialists, the multinational corporations who hold down three-quarters of the world's population and keep them poor and hungry? Don't use words you don't understand.'
'I understand that word. And don't you patronize me. You crazy or something? What were you planning, for Christ's sakes, to sabotage the reactor, release all that radioactivity, worse than Chernobyl, kill everyone on the headland, Timmy and Neil, Smudge and Whisky?'