Read Online The Salt Marsh by Clare Carson - Free Book Online Page B

hocus-pocus, she was back on firm ground, wanted to get going, find Luke.
    â€˜I see what you mean. Thanks.’
    â€˜No problem.’
    â€˜I’d better be leaving. Check out the Lookers’ Hut. It’s where we usually go.’
    â€˜You’re going to the marsh now?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜In the dark?’ He wrung his hands. ‘No, don’t do that. Crash here if you like. Wait until morning.’
    She stood, her legs wobbled. ‘I’ll be fine. Thanks.’
    â€˜You can come back if you don’t find him.’ There was something pleading about his tone that put her on edge. What was he after?
    â€˜I know my way around the marsh,’ she said. ‘I’m not scared of the dark.’
    He gave her a tentative nod, shrugged, crossed to the door, held it open. A low black car was parked outside the next cabin along the track – a scarab in a clump of viper’s bugloss.
    â€˜Porsche,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it a couple of times recently. There’s lots of new money around here these days. Dungeness is becoming too fashionable for the likes of me. Time to be moving on.’
    He hunched his shoulders and stuck his hands in the front pockets of his fading jeans.
    â€˜Remember,’ he said. ‘You got the power, you just gotta learn to channel it. Don’t forget the barn owl.’
    â€˜Right.’ She smiled glibly.
    â€˜The birthmark,’ he said. ‘I spotted it. You can’t escape your legacy.’
    She opened her mouth, couldn’t find a response, turned and walked away.

THREE
    S HE HAD LEFT the camper van in the pub car park, Belisha beacon tangerine in the darkness. She clipped a kerb as she swung on to the road and headed north into the marsh, her head more befogged than she had realized. She wound the window down to clear her brain, inhaled sea air – brine, kelp, dead fish – and saw stars reflected in the obsidian waters of the flooded gravel pits. Her eyes drooped, lids dope-heavy, the tarmac dissolved in the lapping roadside shrubs. Bright light behind made her start. She gripped the wheel, blinded by the dazzle, swerved, left tyre hitting uneven verge, van tipping at a mad angle before she found the tarmac again. She slowed, allowed the black Porsche to overtake, a fleeting impression of a thick neck and a shaved head behind the steering wheel as the driver sped away. Jerk. Probably the Porsche from the spit; there weren’t that many flash cars down here, whatever Alastair’s concerns about the tide of new money. Most of the marsh was takeaway and trailer-park country. Isolated, run-down houses with Alsatian dogs, pick-up trucks and boundaries marked by chainlink fences to keep out the bleakness. Southern badlands, nothing quaint nor pretty here. An owl shrieked as she crossed the Rhee Wall causeway into the waterlogged meadows of Romney Marsh. Alastair was right, at night the marsh felt like a place where death hung close – spirits easily summoned from the drifting vapours and black waters. She had said she wasn’t scared of the dark, but she hadn’t been out on the marsh at night before without Luke, and now she was travelling alone through its morbid contours.
    She pulled up by the narrow turfed bridge, certain she would see Luke’s dented blue Polo squatting on the tyre-rutted verge. It wasn’t there. He could have parked on the other side of the field for some reason. She checked her pocket for her torch and penknife – the talismans she always carried – then fished around in the back of the van for her sleeping bag, water bottle. She stood and listened: sheep bleating, breeze rustling the willows, toads croaking. She knew in her gut she wouldn’t find Luke waiting for her in the Lookers’ Hut. She half wished she’d taken up Alastair’s offer and stayed at his place, left it until first light to look for Luke. Too late, she was here now. She