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Authors: Elizabeth Haynes
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rang and it made me jump out of my skin. Carling fished in his pocket for his phone while my heart raced.
‘DC Carling. Okay… thanks. No worries. Bye.’ He drank his coffee. ‘They’re all done out there now,’ he said. ‘Will you be alright?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you. It was kind of you to stay with me.’
‘Thank you for the coffee. I’ll have to see the rest of your boat another time, maybe.’ He scribbled his mobile number on a scrap of paper. ‘Call me if you remember anything else.’
I wondered if policemen always said that.
When he’d gone, and I’d shut the door of the wheelhouse and locked it behind him, the boat felt very empty, and very big. I stared at the closed door, thinking about what circumstances could bring him back here again, and whether giving him a tour of the rest of the boat would be an option.
I stood for a moment in the silence. I should eat something, I thought, but I had no appetite. My coffee was going cold and I didn’t even have the stomach for that. I should try to sleep, but I knew I would just lie there thinking about it all.
In the end I started by wiping down the woodwork in the new room, getting the dust off everything so that I could paint it. Autopilot kicked in, which was a blessed relief. I put the radio on, which meant I could block out the sound of feet tramping up and down on the pontoon outside – what were they doing out there? Surely they’d looked at everything, sampled everything, photographed everything?
The boat had been my dad’s idea. It was one of our main topics of discussion, in his workshop. There was some unspoken understanding that it was only to be mentioned in that sacred space, between us: that if my mother knew of this, she would flip. He shared his dream with me. One day, he said, he would buy a boat and do it up, then he would take it around the canals and rivers of Britain. We spent hours discussing the merits of the narrowboat over the barge, whether to do just the fitting out ourselves or whether to buy a rusting shell and tackle the welding too. He sneaked in boat magazines which he secreted in a box under the workbench and we pored over the classified ads, choosing our dream boat and then changing our minds, over and over again. We set ourselves imaginary budgets and planned interiors. I had different names for my boat every week, but Dad’s was always the same. He was always going to call his boat Livin the Dream. I tried to tell him how naff this was, but he didn’t care. It was his dream, his decision.
My mother found his magazines when she ventured into the workshop for the first time, two months after the funeral. She’d burned them in the back garden, along with a whole pile of wood that he’d been planning to make into a chest of drawers.
When the woodwork was clean and everything in the room smelled of damp pine, the floor swept and washed too, I realised it had gone quiet outside. I stuck my head out of the wheelhouse. There were police cars in the car park, and the gates were shut – all the other cars and people outside the gate. Cameron must have evicted the press. The pontoon was as it always had been – empty, and starting to move on the rising tide. If there was anything left to find down in the mud, their chance had gone.
I seized the opportunity to head for the disposal tank, and emptied the toilet cassette and the bucket I’d used in the night, cleaned them both and scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom. Then I took a bagful of washing up to the laundry and stuck it in the washing machine, leaving it to its own devices while I took a hot shower in the shower block. The hose was alright. It had been fine in the summer. But now the weather was turning chilly I should think about sorting the bathroom out next; I couldn’t keep coming out here when it was getting darker in the evenings.
I felt better once I’d showered, and back at the boat I made myself a fresh cup of coffee. After that I went
‘DC Carling. Okay… thanks. No worries. Bye.’ He drank his coffee. ‘They’re all done out there now,’ he said. ‘Will you be alright?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you. It was kind of you to stay with me.’
‘Thank you for the coffee. I’ll have to see the rest of your boat another time, maybe.’ He scribbled his mobile number on a scrap of paper. ‘Call me if you remember anything else.’
I wondered if policemen always said that.
When he’d gone, and I’d shut the door of the wheelhouse and locked it behind him, the boat felt very empty, and very big. I stared at the closed door, thinking about what circumstances could bring him back here again, and whether giving him a tour of the rest of the boat would be an option.
I stood for a moment in the silence. I should eat something, I thought, but I had no appetite. My coffee was going cold and I didn’t even have the stomach for that. I should try to sleep, but I knew I would just lie there thinking about it all.
In the end I started by wiping down the woodwork in the new room, getting the dust off everything so that I could paint it. Autopilot kicked in, which was a blessed relief. I put the radio on, which meant I could block out the sound of feet tramping up and down on the pontoon outside – what were they doing out there? Surely they’d looked at everything, sampled everything, photographed everything?
The boat had been my dad’s idea. It was one of our main topics of discussion, in his workshop. There was some unspoken understanding that it was only to be mentioned in that sacred space, between us: that if my mother knew of this, she would flip. He shared his dream with me. One day, he said, he would buy a boat and do it up, then he would take it around the canals and rivers of Britain. We spent hours discussing the merits of the narrowboat over the barge, whether to do just the fitting out ourselves or whether to buy a rusting shell and tackle the welding too. He sneaked in boat magazines which he secreted in a box under the workbench and we pored over the classified ads, choosing our dream boat and then changing our minds, over and over again. We set ourselves imaginary budgets and planned interiors. I had different names for my boat every week, but Dad’s was always the same. He was always going to call his boat Livin the Dream. I tried to tell him how naff this was, but he didn’t care. It was his dream, his decision.
My mother found his magazines when she ventured into the workshop for the first time, two months after the funeral. She’d burned them in the back garden, along with a whole pile of wood that he’d been planning to make into a chest of drawers.
When the woodwork was clean and everything in the room smelled of damp pine, the floor swept and washed too, I realised it had gone quiet outside. I stuck my head out of the wheelhouse. There were police cars in the car park, and the gates were shut – all the other cars and people outside the gate. Cameron must have evicted the press. The pontoon was as it always had been – empty, and starting to move on the rising tide. If there was anything left to find down in the mud, their chance had gone.
I seized the opportunity to head for the disposal tank, and emptied the toilet cassette and the bucket I’d used in the night, cleaned them both and scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom. Then I took a bagful of washing up to the laundry and stuck it in the washing machine, leaving it to its own devices while I took a hot shower in the shower block. The hose was alright. It had been fine in the summer. But now the weather was turning chilly I should think about sorting the bathroom out next; I couldn’t keep coming out here when it was getting darker in the evenings.
I felt better once I’d showered, and back at the boat I made myself a fresh cup of coffee. After that I went
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