Querky: are you going through with it then?
Moonshadow: yes, thanks so much.
Querky: for what?
Moonshadow: for helping me! i wouldn’t be able to manage it without you.
Lisa clapped shut her notebook and pushed it under the duvet, because she thought she’d heard a noise in her mother’s cabin, but it was probably only the fixed furniture creaking as the ship moved. No knock at the connecting door.
Phew.
The last thing she wanted was for her mother to catch her with a computer. She’d handed over her mobile for the duration of the holiday, apparently willingly. Telephoning at sea was much too expensive and, in any case, she could surf the internet much better with the notebook she’d secretly smuggled on board. Luckily her mother hadn’t noticed the little thing in her rucksack.
Like so much.
To be on the safe side she waited for a while before returning to her online chat.
She had to log in again, because the connection was automatically lost when you closed the screen, but that wasn’t a problem. The Wi-Fi in the rooms was free and worked brilliantly while they were close to the coast. After dinner there didn’t seem to be so many people online. Most were probably spending their first evening in the Aquatheatre, one of the bars where a figure skating show was being performed, or in the 4D cinema, or just promenading up and down the outer decks in the comparatively mild night air.
Lisa had sat through a very strenuous five-course dinner with her mother in a restaurant that made the dining room from the Titanic film look like a canteen for the homeless. At any one time six hundred guests could eat their meal on two levels connected by a large double staircase. A uniformed waiter was responsible for each table; on the face of the dandy who’d been assigned to them, Lisa had detected irritation at the fact that she, in her black pleated skirt and death’s head T-shirt, hadn’t altogether complied with the recommended smart-casual dress code.
So fucking what?
She’d rather he’d served her up a decent curry sausage rather than the underdone meat on a plum-something sauce, which she’d found as unpalatable as the worried questions her mother had asked: ‘Are you alright, my love? Have you got problems? Do you want to talk about them?’
At the end of the dinner, Lisa was so exhausted by her lies that she didn’t need to feign tiredness to be allowed to go back to her room alone. She activated the most recently opened window in her browser.
Easyexit opened within seconds and she was back in the private chatroom which, as Querky had assured her, was encrypted several times over.
Moonshadow: sorry, back online now.
Querky: your mum?
Moonshadow: false alarm
Querky: do you think she suspects anything?
Moonshadow: well, i know she’s found the video.
She wished she could have blurted out the truth to her mother over dinner, when, after much beating around the bush, Julia had finally come out with it and asked apprehensively whether it was ‘real’.
‘Yes, mum, I’m the slut on the internet. But that’s not the reason why I want to slit my wrists or throw myself under a train. Not because of the video.’
Lisa felt the anger rising in her once more.
Christ, the file had been doing the rounds on the internet for weeks. It was a miracle her mother hadn’t discovered it earlier. Only because Schiwy had tipped her off.
What a huge shock it was all of a sudden, and yet she was the whore screwing her daughter’s teacher. Jesus Christ, the stupid cow probably thought that shagging made them invisible. But you only had to wander past the wrong café at the wrong time on the wrong day and see the two of them ramming their tongues down each other’s throat. Puke.
Querky: hey, are you still there?
She stared at the blinking cursor. In Easyexit chat you wrote in white letters on a black background, which was fitting for a suicide self-help forum, but it hurt your eyes after a while.
Moonshadow: when’s the best time to do IT?
Querky: not straight away. first make her think that everything’s okay with you.
Moonshadow: i think i managed that quite well today.
The ship’s engines had barely roared into life before she was putting on an Oscar-winning performance, pretending she was really looking forward to the trip.
‘This is so great, Mum.’
She’d even managed to squeeze out a tear. The encore had then been her show at dinner.
‘Don’t worry,’ she’d told her mother. ‘The video is a hoax, a fake. That’s not me. All my friends know that. And no one in the school takes the scumbag who’s posting all that shit about me seriously. We laugh about it, me and my mates.’
Yes, I know, Mum: ‘My mates and I.’
‘The reason why I’m hardly seeing my mates at the moment is my boyfriend. Yes. I’ve got one. My secret’s out. Phew. I didn’t want to tell you, but that’s why I’ve been so weird recently. No, it’s not what you think. We haven’t done anything but a bit of cuddling.’
As she recalled this, something amusing occurred to her that she had to tell Querky right away.
Moonshadow: i told Mum we were a couple.
Querky: huh?
Moonshadow: when i told her i was going out with a boy she asked me his name. the only one that i could think of off the top of my head was your nickname.
Querky: she thinks your boyfriend’s called Querky?
Lisa couldn’t help smiling.
Moonshadow: i told her it was a nickname based on your surname, Querkus.
Querky: blimey! if only she knew… ☺
‘He’s older than me,’ she’d said, continuing to spin her yarn. ‘Seventeen. You’re bound to meet him soon. But don’t say anything to Dad, will you?’
Her mum had looked at her with the same relief on her face as her best friend had that time she finally got her long-overdue period after a school trip.
Her father would never have bought this crap. Lawyers were more suspicious by nature, she thought.
Lisa was torn from her thoughts by a humming noise, but it was just the minibar, from which she took a cola. Like all soft drinks and food aboard the Sultan, it was free.
Back on her bed, she sat cross-legged again, took a sip from the tiny bottle and glanced briefly at the balcony door, which reflected the whole room. The ship trundled sideways as she typed into her notebook:
Moonshadow: i’ve read that drowning is gross. unbelievably painful. not like getting high as some people write.
Querky: you mustn’t think about that. those sorts of thoughts will just hamper you.
Easier said than done. She thought about pain all the time. It began when her parents separated. Although her father was the first person who’d left her, unfortunately he hadn’t been the only one. Curiously enough, emotional torment was far more intense than physical pain. On the contrary, whenever she cut herself, the pain was the only positive thing she felt.
Lisa was just about to ask Querky at what time she should go online tomorrow when the minibar hummed again. She stood up, confused.
The sound was too regular to be some sort of static noise. She was about to tell her chat partner she was going to be briefly offline to check something, but Querky got there first:
Querky: what’s that humming the whole time?
Lisa slapped her hand over her mouth in shock.
She checked the icons on her screen. The microphone and webcam were switched off.
How can Querky hear that?
The noises got louder when she opened the minibar in the cupboard below the television.
Inside were a dozen bottles of soft drinks and beer, while the side compartment was filled with spirit miniatures and peanuts. Nothing that could make a humming sound. And yet something was buzzing, rhythmically.
Lisa opened the freezer compartment and found something.
Beside the ice cube tray was a light-blue envelope with the cruise line’s logo. The bulging packet vibrated, making Lisa scream and leap back from the fridge in fright. To begin with she thought it was maggots crawling around inside the envelope, but that was impossible.
Not at minus eight degrees. And maggots don’t hum at regular intervals!
It was a while before Lisa thought of the obvious thing to do: she took out the envelope to open it.
Sure enough.
The packet was padded and well insulated, which is why the mobile phone she found inside didn’t feel especially cold.
‘Hello?’
‘Finally,’ said a voice she’d imagined would be quite different.
‘Querky?’ Lisa asked, forcing herself to speak softly so her mother couldn’t hear her in the adjoining cabin.
‘Who else?’
‘Bloody hell!’ Lisa laughed, relieved. Her heart was pounding as if she’d just raced a hundred metres. ‘You really gave me a fright.’
‘How so, sweetie? Didn’t I tell you I’d be accompanying you on your big journey?’
Now Querky laughed too. ‘I’ve got the screwdriver, the spray can and the list of security cameras for you. Listen, Lisa, I’ll tell you where and how you’ll find everything!’