back of one of the cupboards in the galley, a bottle of strange green sauce that the old man hated, but had been almost empty when the boy arrived on the farm.
Then there were the things he’d noticed. The way that the old man would automatically pass him sweetener for his tea, even though he’d never used it in his life. How the old man would frown at the way he laid out his tools before a job. The way the old man would stare, when they were eating, when they were out on the boat, whenever he thought the boy wasn’t watching.
The boy would lean forward towards his reflection and open his eyes wide. Had his skin always been that pale – almost grey? The same grey as the walls and the floor. He would reach up and touch his cheek, his forehead, to make sure they had not in fact turned to metal. White moons would appear where he pressed his fingertips, and take a long time to fade.
There was just one meeting he could recall. A small room, rows of orange plastic chairs bolted to the floor, lining two walls. The boy had been sitting on one of them, his feet barely touching the floor. His father had been standing. The paint on the walls was flaking and there was a hairline crack running close to the boy’s shoulder. He had traced his finger along it, over and over. He could still remember the course of the crack, the texture of the paint, the way the edges of it had bitten into his skin. He could remember his father’s bulk, the creak of the new boots he’d been given ready for starting his contract, the sound one of the chairs had made when he eventually sat on it, but his face was as blurred and tarnished as the mirror.
His father’s breath had been loud in the small room. It had smelled smoky, or maybe more like dust. He had knotted and unknotted a strap on the bag he was holding – he must have been leaving to go out to the farm that day. ‘I’ll get out,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll come back for you, okay?’ The boy remembered that; had always remembered it. And, for a time, he’d believed it too.
His hands would clench either side of the sink. Now here he was, instead.
For a moment, the wind would seem to drop and the rig would be quiet, almost silent. The lights would be low and seem to stretch for miles in the dark corridors. The corridors seemed to narrow and twist in on themselves, knotting the boy into the middle, the silence expanding and pressing in.
Then the wind would suddenly bawl, the air con would creak and whirr, the transformer would thrum from the floor below, and, deeper still, the waves would thud against the walls of the dock.
He was here to do the job. He just needed to focus on doing the job.
The boot-print didn’t match his own exactly – it was wider at the toe, and the heel was not worn-down like his was. The overalls were dirty and frayed where the boy would have repaired them. And he’d once tried the green sauce, dipping the tip of his finger in and licking it, and it had burned his tongue.
The boy would step back, breathe on the mirror and wipe away the clean circle with his sleeve.
Sometimes, on his way back to his room, another sound would work its way up through the vents from somewhere inside the rig. It would begin with something rasping, which would turn to an uneven rattle, then a stutter, like an engine struggling to start. The boy would follow it along the corridors, up the stairs and into the sleeping quarters. Sometimes it would stop for a moment and he would pause and wait. But it always started up again.
He’d first heard it a few weeks after he’d arrived on the farm. He’d followed the sound into the galley, where he’d found the old man curled on the floor, coughing and spasming. The boy had almost shouted for help, then remembered where they were. So he’d done the only thing he could – gone back out into the corridor and waited until he’d heard the old man get up and begin to move around again.
He would take his watch out of his pocket and count the numbers. Sometimes it only lasted a couple of minutes; other times it went on for longer.
He would wait a minute. Then two.
After that first time, he’d expected the old man to say something, to tell him what was wrong. But the old man had never mentioned it, and the boy had never mentioned it, and so that was how it stood.
All the boy knew was that it was better when the weather was warmer, worse when the old man spent hours out in the wind and rain checking his nets. A mug of homebrew seemed to hold it off, but if the old man got drunk and fell asleep at the galley table, he would always wake up coughing.
After a while the boy had begun to see it as just another thing that happened: like the glitches in the computer system, the leaks in the vents, the cracks that spread endlessly through the rig, which the boy fixed only to find them creeping back again, almost too delicate to see.
Five minutes. Six.
Sometimes the sound turned harsher, more drawn-out. Sometimes the boy would take a slow breath in and picture the old man curled up on the floor, each cough ringing out like a radar blip with nothing to return the signal.
Seven.
He would breathe out, put his watch in his pocket and walk quickly towards the old man’s room. But, just at that moment, the coughing would stop.
The boy would stand still and bend his head, listening. There would be no sound. Nothing would move. Then, from far off in the corridors, the dripping would start up again.
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