Dedication
For David
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Elizabeth Haynes
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Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
The smell reminded her of cleaning out the fish tank she’d had as a kid; dead, slimy vegetation, mud, wet stones, and above it the briny tang of the sea carried upriver on a cold wind.
It was all horribly quiet. She should be able to hear sounds by now, music, laughter, something to point the way to the party, which had to be down here somewhere—but there was nothing. The only music was a distant wet sucking, slurping as the river played with its toys at the water’s edge.
She picked her way across the potholed parking lot in the darkness, gritting her teeth in concentration, trying to keep her balance on the stupidly high-heeled shoes. Something moving, further down the slope, made her jump, and she stood still for a moment, listening for a voice, a footstep, breathing, something to give substance to that gnawing sense of unease that she felt inside. Large shapes, moving. She peered at them myopically, and then she realized they must be the boats, moored and rising and falling on the water—how silly she was! Jumping at shadows.
Everything that was darkness was suddenly blinding light. She must have triggered some motion-sensitive light, and as she looked up to see where she was going they were there, two of them, and she just had time to register that they were right in front of her, and she opened her mouth to scream as one of them drew back his arm, his hand balling into a fist.
Then she was lying on cold asphalt, gritty under her face, warm and wet running down her cheek and nose and dripping red onto the ground. She gasped just once and then she felt herself being lifted, her head swinging loosely against fabric, hearing hushed voices, urgent, a whispered argument.
She felt a shrill panic and tried to scream again, but as she opened her mouth she was falling. And then the shock of the freezing water hitting her like concrete. She gasped to take a breath and the water surged in. Walls on either side of her, slippery, nothing for her clawing fingers to grip. And then the walls closed in, squeezing her.
There was a bright flash of pain, beautiful almost, surprisingly peaceful, and then nothing.
Chapter One
It was there when I opened my eyes, that vague feeling of discomfort, the rocking of the boat signaling the receding tide and the wind from the south, blowing upriver, right into the side of the boat.
For a long while I lay in bed, the sound of the waves slapping against the hull next to my head, echoing through the steel and dulled by the wooden siding. The duvet was warm and it was easy to stay there, the rectangle of skylight directly above showing the blackness turning to dark blue, and gray, and then I could see the clouds scudding overhead, giving the odd impression of moving at speed—the boat moving rather than the clouds. And then, that discomfort again.
It wasn’t seasickness, or river-sickness, for that matter: I was used to it now, nearly five months after I had left London. Five months living aboard. There was still a momentary shock when my feet hit the solid ground of the path to the parking lot, a few wobbly steps, but it was never long before I felt steady again.
It was a gray sort of a day—not ideal for the get-together later, but that was my own fault for planning a party in September. “Back to school” weather, the wind whistling across the deck when I got up and put my head out of the wheelhouse.
No, it wasn’t the tide, or the thought of the mismatched group of people who would be descending on my boat later today. There was something else. I felt as though someone had rubbed my fur the wrong way.
The plan for the day: finish the rest of the wood siding for the second room, the room that was going to be a guest bedroom at some point in the future. Clear away all the carpentry tools and store them in the bow. Sweep out the boat, clean up a bit. Then see if I could bum a ride to the store for party food and beer.
There was one wall left to do, an odd shape, which was why I had left it till last. The room was full of sawdust and wood remnants, scraps of edging and sandpaper. I’d done the measurements last night, but now, frowning at the piece of paper, I decided to recheck it all just to be on the safe side. When I had sided the galley, I’d ended up wasting a load of wood because I’d misread my own measurements.
I put the radio on, turned up loud even though I still couldn’t hear it above the miter saw, and got to work.
At nine, I stopped and went back through to the galley for a coffee. I filled the kettle and put it on the gas burner. The boat was a mess. It was only occasionally that I noticed it. Glancing around, I scanned last night’s take-out containers hurriedly shoved into a shopping bag ready to go out to the garbage cans. Dirty dishes in the sink. Pans and other items in boxes sitting on one of the dinette seats waiting to be put away, now that I had finally installed cabinet doors in the galley. A black plastic bag of fabric that would one day be curtains and cushion covers. None of it mattered when I was the only one in here, but in a few hours’ time this boat would be full of people, and I had promised them that the renovations were almost complete.
Almost complete? That was stretching the truth a little thin. I had finished the bedroom, and the living room wasn’t bad. The galley was done, too, but needed cleaning and tidying. The bathroom was—well, the kindest thing that could be said about it was that it was functional. As for the rest of it—the vast space in the bow that would one day be a bigger bathroom with a bath, as well as a true shower instead of a hose; a wide deck garden area with a sliding glass roof (an ambitious plan, but I’d seen one in a magazine and it looked so fantastic that it was the one project I was determined to complete); and maybe a study or an office or another unnamed room that would be wonderful and cozy and magical—for the moment, it worked as storage.
The kettle started a low whistle, and I rinsed a mug under the tap and spooned in some instant coffee, two spoons: I needed the caffeine.
A pair of boots crossed my field of vision through the porthole, level with the dock outside, shortly followed by a call from the deck. “Genevieve?”
“Down here. Kettle’s just boiled.”
Moments later Joanna trotted down the steps and into the main cabin. She was dressed in a miniskirt, with thick socks and
heavy boots, the laces trailing, on the ends of her skinny legs. The top half of her was counterbalanced by one of Liam’s sweaters, a navy-blue one, flecked with bits of sawdust and twig and cat hair. Her hair was a tangle of curls and waves of various colors.
“No, thanks, not for me—we’re off in a minute. I just came to ask what time we should come over later, and do you want us to bring a lasagna as well as the cheesecake? And Liam says he’s got some beers left over from the barbecue, he’ll be bringing those.”
She had a bruise on her cheek. Joanna didn’t wear makeup, wouldn’t have known what to do with it, so there it was—livid and purplish, under her left eye.
“What happened to your face?”
“Oh, don’t you start. I had a fight with my sister.”
“Christ.”
“Come up on deck, I need a smoke.”
The wind was still whipping, so we sat on the bench by the wheelhouse. The sun was trying to make its way through the scudding clouds but failing. Across the other side of the marina I could see Liam loading boxes and shopping bags into the back of their battered Ford van.
Joanna fished around in the pocket of her skirt and brought forth a pouch of tobacco. “The way I see it,” she said, “she should keep her fucking nose out of my business.”
“Your sister?”
“She thinks she’s all that because she’s got herself a mortgage at the age of twenty-two.”
“Mortgages aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”
“Exactly!” Joanna said with emphasis. “That’s what I said to her. I’ve got everything she’s got without the burden of debt. And I don’t have to mow any lawn.”
“So that’s what you were fighting about?”
Joanna was quiet for a moment, her eyes wandering over to the parking lot, where Liam stood, hands on his hips, before pointedly looking at his wristwatch and climbing into the driver’s seat. Above the sounds of the marina—drilling coming from the workshop, the sound of the radio down in the cabin, the distant roar of the traffic from the highway bridge—the van’s diesel rattle started up.
“Fuck it, I’d better go,” she said. She shoved the pouch back into her pocket and lit the skinny cigarette she’d just managed to fill. “About seven? Eight? What?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Sevenish? Lasagna sounds lovely, but don’t go to any trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. Liam’s made it.”
With a backward wave, Joanna took one quick hop-step down the gangplank and onto the dock, running despite the boots across the grassy bank and up to the parking lot. The van was taking little jumps forward as though it couldn’t wait to be gone.
At four, the cabin was finally finished. A bare shell, but at least now it was a bare wooden shell. The walls were clad, and the berth built along the far wall, under the porthole. Where the mattress would sit, two trapdoors with round finger holes in the board accessed the storage compartment underneath. The rest of it was pale wood in neat paneling, carved pine edging covering the joins and corners. It would look less like a sauna once it got a coat of paint, I thought. By next weekend it would be entirely different.
Clearing away the debris of my most recent foray into carpentry took longer than I thought it would. I had crates for the tools, but I hadn’t bothered to put them away into the storage area since I’d started work on the bedroom, months ago.
I lugged the crates forward into the bow, through a hatch and into the cavernous space below. Three steps down, watching my head on the low ceiling, stowing the crates to the side.
It was only when I made the last trip, carrying the black plastic bag of fabric from the dinette and throwing it into the front compartment, that I found myself looking into the darkest of the spaces to see if the box was still there. I could just about see it in the gloomy light from the cabin above; on the side of it was written, in thick black marker: KITCHEN STUFF.
I had a sudden urge to look, to check that the box still held its contents. Of course it did, I told myself. Nobody’s been down here since you put it there.
Stooping, I crossed the three wooden pallets that served as a floor, braced myself against the sides of the hull, and crouched next to the box. KITCHEN STUFF. The top two-thirds was full of garbage I’d brought from the London flat—spatulas, wooden spoons, a Denby teapot with a crack in the top, a whisk, a blender that didn’t work, an ice cream scoop, and various cake pans nested inside one another. Below that was a sheet of cardboard that might, to the casual observer, look sufficiently like the bottom of the box to deter further investigation.
I folded the cardboard top of the box back down and tucked the other flap underneath it.
From the back pocket of my jeans I took out a cell phone. I found the address book and the only number that was saved there: GARLAND. That was all it said. It wasn’t even his name. It would be so easy to press the little green button now and call him. What would I say? Maybe I could just ask him if he wanted to come tonight. “Come to my party, Dylan. It’s just a few close friends. I’d love to see you.”
What would he say? He’d be angry, shocked that I’d used the phone when he’d expressly told me not to. It was only there for one purpose, he’d told me. It was only for him to call me, and only when he was ready to make the pickup. Not before. If I ever had a call on it from another number, I shouldn’t answer.
I closed my eyes for a moment, for a brief second allowing myself the indulgence of remembering him. Then I put the screen lock back on the phone so it didn’t accidentally dial any numbers, least of all his, and I shoved it in my pocket and made my way back to the cabin.
Chapter Two
Malcolm and Josie were the first to arrive, at six. It was an unofficial arrival: they stopped for a chat and didn’t leave again. I was on the deck, tipping the ice I’d just gotten from the mini-mart into a big plastic tub, and Malcolm heard the chink of beer bottles from his narrowboat. Seconds later he was chatting amicably from the dock about this and that, three bottles of French red wine cradled in one arm.
“We’ve got loads more if you run out, Genevieve,” Josie said, when they came aboard. “We went to France last weekend. Stocked up for Christmas, you know.”
“I thought you didn’t drink wine,” I said, handing the bottle opener to Malcolm so he could crack open his first beer.
“Don’t, really,” Malcolm said. “Don’t know why we bought so much of it, tell the truth.”
I’d cleaned up as much as possible. It could have been better, but the worst of the mess was out of the way, and the galley wasn’t looking too shabby. Maureen had given me a ride to the store and I’d taken a taxi home, with two cases of beer and several bags of ice, jumbo bags of potato chips, and a large block of cheese that had seemed like a good idea at the time. I wasn’t very good at party food, to be honest—but at least there was plenty of alcohol.
Josie had brought garlic bread wrapped in tinfoil. “I thought it could go on your stove,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to light it. I think it’s going to be roasting with lots of people in here.”
Malcolm, the designated expert in the room who had provided advice on living aboard more times in the last five months than I could remember, snorted. “You’ll freeze at night if you haven’t got your stove on.”
For a moment we all stood contemplating the wood-burning stove that sat on large tiles in the corner of the main cabin. It wasn’t cold now, but Malcolm had a point—not good to be lying in bed at four in the morning freezing cold.
“I’ll light it, if you like,” Malcolm said at last. “You ladies go up on deck and admire the sunset.”
On the way past the galley I took hold of the bottle opener and, as I opened two bottles of beer—not as cold as they should be but cold enough—Josie said something about leaving the man to build his fire. “He loves it. We were going to have central heating put in at one point but he kept putting it off and putting it off. He even starts piling up logs in the summer, just in case
it gets a bit on the chilly side. One of these days he’s going to chop down one of the trees in the park.”
I looked down and along the dock to the Scarisbrick Jean, the narrowboat Malcolm and Josie shared with their cat, Oswald. Not long after I’d moved in, I had heard them talking about “Aunty Jean” and for a while I’d thought they had a third person living on the boat with them, until I realized that Aunty Jean was their affectionate name for the boat itself. A friendly name. Maybe I should think of a pet name for mine.
The first time I saw the Revenge of the Tide I knew it was the one. It was above my price range, but my finances had seen a recent improvement and as a result I was looking at boats I’d previously discounted. It needed work, but the hull was sound and the cabin was bearable. I could just about afford to buy it and do the renovations for a year or so, provided I budgeted carefully and did the work myself.
“Revenge of the Tide. Odd sort of a name for a boat,” I’d said, the day I decided to spend the bulk of my savings on it. Cameron, the marina owner and the broker for boat sales, was standing beside me on the dock. He wasn’t a very good salesman; he was in a hurry to get on with the countless other tasks he had waiting. He was fidgeting from one foot to the other and was clearly only just managing to hold back from saying, Do you want her or not? It was a good thing for him that I’d already fallen in love.
The Revenge of the Tide was a seventy-five-foot-long steel-hulled barge of a type known as a Hagenaar, named for the canals of The Hague, under whose bridges the boat was low enough to pass. It had been built in 1903 in the Netherlands, a great beast of a boat, a workhorse. The masts had been removed and a diesel engine added after the Second World War, and it had been used for transporting goods around the Port of Rotterdam until it was sold in the 1970s and moved across the English Channel. Ever since then, a steady stream of owners had been using it either for moving cargo, for pleasure trips, or as living accommodations, with varying degrees of commitment and success.
“The owner bought her just before his second divorce,” said Cam. “He managed to con his missus because he bought the boat with all the savings he had stashed away. He wanted to call her just Revenge, I think, but it was a bit too obvious so he called her Revenge of the Tide instead.”