Dark Tide

  “You, on the other hand,” he said, nodding toward my black skirt, “will fit in just fine. You look like a solicitor.”

  “Do I?”

  “Maybe a solicitor who dances in her spare time.”

  “Why won’t you see me?” I asked, out of the blue, since he seemed to be relaxing at last. “Why are you being so distant?”

  “I’m here now, aren’t I?” he said with a deep breath in, as though I were some tiresome child asking the same question for the hundredth time. The car had stopped at a traffic light, the sound of the turn signal’s subtle click on-off-on hypnotic and soothing.

  “You heard from Jim?” he asked.

  “Not since the hospital,” I said. “You know he’s been suspended.”

  “Yeah, I heard. He told me they arrested you.”

  “Yes. Not going to help me get another job, is it?”

  “Did they charge you?”

  “They charged me with assault, and then they gave me a warning. Could have been much worse, I guess, but it still goes on my record.”

  “You should talk to your boyfriend, Jim,” he said. “Might be able to make it disappear if you ask him nicely.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. And in any case, he’s not supposed to talk to me.”

  “Well, I guess it will give his eardrums a chance to recover.”

  “Why did you offer to give me a lift, Dylan, if you’re going to be a rude, grumpy bastard?”

  He laughed then, and I thought he might be softening again. “Why do you think? Wanted to see you in a skirt. Been a long time since I saw you in a skirt.”

  “You’re such a tease.”

  “Yeah, you love it. Anyway, we’re here.”

  We drove slowly up a long, curved driveway between manicured lawns, trees, wooden benches, and flower beds, and over speed bumps. There was a parking lot discreetly tucked behind a large yew hedge, and as we pulled in, other cars were disgorging their occupants.

  “I’ll wait for you here,” he said.

  “Please come with me,” I asked. For some crazy reason I wanted an excuse to hold his hand.

  “I’ll wait here,” he said again.

  So fucking stubborn, the man. I slammed the door as hard as I could, but it only made a reassuring clunk.

  There were roughly forty people, maybe a few more, waiting outside the chapel at the crematorium. A woman of about fifty could only have been Caddy’s mother—she was exactly like her: petite, curvy, beautiful, with dark hair scraped into a neat bun. She was crying a lot, silently, dabbing her tears away while a girl who might have been Caddy’s younger sister stood by with no expression on her pale face. Trying to establish the family relationships passed the time.

  I stood awkwardly on my own, wishing I’d worn flatter shoes, wishing I hadn’t worn quite so much black.

  The car arrived with the coffin, and I recognized Beverley Davies, the officer who’d interviewed me, at the back of the crowd. She looked different today, fashionably dressed in a gray pantsuit, and wearing a gray, grim smile.

  The service was over in half an hour. I sat at the back and listened while they talked about Caddy, and for a while I wondered if I was in the wrong chapel after all, because everything they said related to a different woman, a woman I’d never met: she was a loving sister, a talented pianist and singer; she’d gotten a degree in English and had received her teaching certificate. She’d taught for a year and had loved it, and then had taken time off to work in London. They didn’t mention that she was also an accomplished dancer. They didn’t mention the Barclay.

  I stopped listening. When the curtains started to close around the coffin, I shut my eyes.

  We all filed out of the back of the chapel while they played Adele, which made me want to cry. And then I found myself stifling a giggle as I had the thought that they should have actually played the Pussycat Dolls’ “Buttons”—which had been Caddy’s favorite dancing track.

  I joined the line of people waiting to speak to Caddy’s mother and sister. I tried to run through what I was going to say. What possible things were there, in those circumstances? I’m sorry I didn’t save her? I’m sorry I invited her to the party? I wish things had been different?

  “I’m so sorry,” was what I actually said. “Your daughter was a beautiful person.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Caddy’s mother said. She was already looking past me to the next person in the line.

  Caddy’s sister was crying now, a boyfriend, with earrings and a straggly growth of beard, providing a comforting shoulder.

  People had started to head back to the parking lot and I followed them.

  “Genevieve?”

  It was Beverley Davies. She tried for a smile and then gave up, walking alongside me.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I’m all right, thank you. Do you know how Jim is?”

  “I can’t—sorry.”

  “He didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.

  “They’ll take your statement into account. I just wanted to say thank you for coming. I know the family—they’ve had a very difficult time of it. Losing their daughter like that . . . then having to wait until the investigation was concluded to bury her. It’s been hard on them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you coming to the pub?” she asked.

  “I don’t know—I don’t think . . .”

  “Well—if I don’t see you . . . Take care.” She went off toward a dark gray Vauxhall that was parked at an angle half on the grass and got into the driver’s seat. I watched her drive away.

  The BMW’s windows were open and I could see Dylan studying me through the gap in the hedge as I walked back toward him.

  “They’re having drinks in a pub,” I said through the open window, “do you want to go?”

  “Nah.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said, climbing into the passenger seat. “In that case, you can drive me there and wait for three hours or so while I get pleasantly hammered.”

  The Bull’s Head on Chislehurst High Street was crowded with people, and although most of the people dressed in black seemed to be outside in the garden, in the end I managed to persuade Dylan to come in and mingle. I’d already spent twenty minutes standing on my own, like a lost soul, nursing a vodka. I wanted some company.

  “You don’t need to talk to anyone,” I said as I dragged him in.

  “Damn right I don’t.”

  He waited at the bar to get me another drink and I spotted Beverley Davies again. I turned away. Dylan had talked to Jim, I knew he had. Jim had worked with Dylan for years, but their alliance went deeper than that. I’d almost expected there to have been some sort of argument between them, some sort of dispute over me; but it seemed I’d overrated my own importance in that respect. Dylan seemed to be utterly convinced that I should be with Jim now. Since they’d let him out of the hospital he’d avoided me, ignored my calls, refused to talk to me, and above all given me no indication about how he felt. And the cooler he was, the more he pushed me away, the more I wanted him.

  We stood awkwardly in the beer garden, my heels sinking into the grass so that I was left perching on my tiptoes.

  “So,” I said, “when are you going to Spain?”

  “Soon.”

  “What if I need to get hold of you?”

  “You won’t.”

  “But what if something happens? What if I need to talk to you?”

  He sighed heavily.

  “For fuck’s sake, woman. Jim knows where I’m going. He’s the only one who knows. So if there’s any sort of emergency—not that I can imagine there will be—but if there is—Jim knows. All right?”

  “Can I see you again, before you go?”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. Unlike you.”

  He swallowed three big, slow gulps from his pint. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve given up on me.”

  ??
?I never had you in the first place,” he said.

  “I’m not going to stay here without you, Dylan.”

  He waited for a few seconds before answering, scanning the faces in the beer garden as though he was expecting to see someone he knew.

  “You’ve got Jim,” he said.

  “Jim’s being investigated for some sort of misconduct because of me,” I said.

  “That’ll all be over with soon enough.”

  “He doesn’t want me anyway, Dylan.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That’s what he wants you to think. Poor bastard blames himself for what happened.”

  “Well, it wasn’t his fault. It was mine. The whole thing.”

  “Well, there would have probably been a lot less drama if you hadn’t slept with him.”

  That hurt. I took it in and felt tears stinging my eyes, looking away from him, across the crowded beer garden at the blurred faces.

  “Well,” I said at last, “since you don’t care about me, it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

  “Who said I don’t care?”

  “Why do you make things so hard? What is wrong with you?” I demanded, trying to angle my face into his line of sight. “Dylan?”

  He finished his pint, put the glass down on the top of a plastic garbage can, and headed through the gate and out into the parking lot. I ran behind him, trying to keep up, but he was already in the car with the engine on, the tires sending an arc of gravel flying as he accelerated toward me.

  I stood firmly in the middle of the parking lot as the car headed straight for me. Then the brakes slammed on and the car stopped, the bumper about a foot from my knees.

  I got in the passenger seat and pulled the door shut with force.

  Neither of us spoke.

  He was heading for Bromley, back to the station. I was running out of time. “Look,” I said at last, “can you give me a ride back home? I don’t want to go on the train.”

  “Public transportation beneath you now, is it?”

  “No. I’ve had too much to drink. I don’t want to be on a train drunk like this.”

  He let out a short laugh. “You want me to drive you all the way to Kent?”

  “It’s not that far. Please?”

  He let out a heavy sigh that implied I’d just ruined his day, but at the next junction he turned back toward the A2. I leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes, trying to think. The alcohol had filled my brain with a cloud. Everything I thought of saying sounded stupid, or desperate, or selfish. How could I begin to deal with someone so stubborn? What could I possibly say that would make him change his mind?

  I had to fight the urge to reach out and put my hand on his knee. If words weren’t going to work, then maybe some kind of physical contact would do the trick. But he would have just removed my hand, deliberately placed it back on my side of the hand brake.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him.

  We were on the highway now, speeding past the suburbs of South London. Another forty minutes or so and I’d be home and my chance would have gone. I’d never see him again, after this.

  “I was worried about you,” I murmured.

  I thought he wasn’t listening because he didn’t react; staring straight ahead at the traffic, he might as well have been alone in the car.

  “I thought you were dead. I thought Fitz had killed you.”

  He took a deep breath in through his nose. He wasn’t going to make this easy for me. “Well, he didn’t. I’m still here.”

  “Do you miss the club?” Oh, so many stupid questions. I couldn’t think of the right one.

  “No.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, are you working?”

  “No.”

  Silence again. I closed my eyes, half-wishing I hadn’t asked him for the ride after all. If he’d dropped me at the station, this torture would have been over with by now.

  I must have dozed, because the gentle click of the turn signal woke me. I sat up straight and looked out of the window.

  “Oh, don’t get off here.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve moved the boat.”

  The BMW moved swiftly out of the exit lane for Rochester and Strood, and back on to the main highway. A car behind us beeped. Dylan looked in his rearview mirror at the driver.

  “Right,” he said. “So where the fuck is your boat?”

  “Allington. Near Maidstone. It’s the next exit. Sorry, I should have said.”

  We were on the Medway bridge by this time. Beneath us, the marina where I’d lived for six months in total, where I’d made some good friends, and where it had all fallen apart. I couldn’t see it from up here. Just the straight lines of the highway and, in the distance, to the left, Rochester Castle, a flag flying from the battlements.

  “When did you move the boat?”

  “A few weeks ago. That was an ordeal, I can tell you. I had to pay Cameron to help me.”

  He didn’t say anything. At the next exit he turned off toward Maidstone, down a long, steep hill with a view over the Medway valley. “It was difficult,” I said, even though he hadn’t asked. “You know, with the people in the marina. They’re lovely, all of them, but they’ve chosen this quiet life, you know? Or at least, that’s what they were hoping for, until I turned up and ruined it for them. And Malcolm and Josie . . . We did try. We were talking about it all. But Josie blames me for everything that happened. And I blame myself.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said at last. “He was the fucking idiot that brought Fitz to your door.”

  “No,” I said. “I did that. Malcolm just hurried him along a bit.”

  He fell silent again, concentrating on the short stretch of the M20 that would take us back toward Maidstone. I couldn’t bear the quiet. The minutes were flying past, the precious time I had with him was slipping away like sand through my fingers.

  “It’s a nice place, anyway,” I said. “Not a marina. Just a few moorings, and there’s a nice pub, too, with a restaurant. There’s even a shower room; it’s supposed to be for kayakers, I think, but I used it anyway, until I finished the bathroom last weekend. And the river isn’t tidal because I’m above the lock. I get ducks and swans now, instead of bloody seagulls. It’s a nice place. You’ll like it.”

  “I’ll like it?”

  I smiled at him, hopeful. “I think you will.”

  “I like the sound of the pub.”

  “You have to walk across the lock to get to it. I’m on the wrong bank.”

  “And it’s all right there? Safe?”

  “Yes. I feel safe.”

  “Good.”

  Maybe it was the fact that we were a long way outside London now, but I could feel him thawing. His shoulders were not as rigid, his grip on the steering wheel more relaxed.

  “Your boat’s all right?”

  “Yes, I think so. I’m still repairing things. But now I’m just getting it straightened out so I can sell it.”

  “Why?”

  We made eye contact for the first time since we’d left Chislehurst.

  “I can’t live there anymore. I moved the boat because I thought it would help, but it hasn’t. So much happened on that boat, Dylan. Everything I look at reminds me of that night. Of Malcolm getting shot, of what Arnold was going to do. Of you nearly dying.”

  “You can’t just give up on your dream. You need to give it time.”

  I shook my head. “It won’t change how I feel. I can’t stay there. You need to take the next turn on the left. That one, there, look.”

  The car turned into Castle Road and slowed as the road narrowed, toward the end. Minutes, that was all I had left. Just a few minutes with him.

  “What will you do?” he asked.

  I couldn’t cry, not now. I forced the tears back. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” I wanted so desperately to hear him say the words Come to Spain. Come with me. But he didn’t.

&n
bsp; At the end of the road was a turnaround, with the entrance to the lock-keeper’s cottage and, beyond it, the parking lot that led to the ramp into the river. And we were there. The car’s tires crunched on the gravel and we pulled to a stop. The Revenge of the Tide was moored against the concrete bank, a few feet from where we were parked. It was sandwiched between two narrowboats and it looked huge and out of place, crouching like a grown-up between two kids, dominating the bank.

  I took a deep breath. “Will you come inside?”

  He shook his head.

  “I can’t,” he said. He was actually gritting his teeth.

  “Can’t what?”

  He paused, ran a hand over his forehead. “Can’t—do this anymore. Why won’t you just leave me alone?” And he finally turned to look at me for what felt like the first time.

  I reached across to him, put my hand up to stroke his cheek. “Because I love you,” I said. “And I know you love me, even though you won’t say it. I know you do.”

  He stared at me for a long moment and I stared right back at him, challenging him to refuse, or make a joke about it, or laugh. When he did none of those things I put my hand up to his cheek, stroked it gently, and then clambered over the central console of the BMW and kissed him, ignoring the wince as my weight fell against his bruised chest, pushing him back against the door as I put my arms around his neck so he couldn’t move until I’d made him change his mind.

  Author’s Note

  Readers who are familiar with the Medway may well recognize some of the locations mentioned in this book. However, the marina where the Revenge of the Tide is moored is an imaginative blend of several of the boatyards along the river and therefore does not exist as it is described in the story. The Barclay is also entirely fictional.

  Acknowledgments

  The first draft of Dark Tide was written in November 2010 for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and was excitedly presented to my editor, Vicky Blunden, as a 90,000-word draft. The transformation of that tangled mess of ideas, characters, and plot into the final book is thanks to her, and to the brilliant team at Myriad, including Candida Lacey, Corinne Pearlman, Linda McQueen, Anthony Grech-Cumbo, Adrian Weston, Dawn Sackett, and Emma Dowson. Thank you all.