To Warren Norwood
–
Prologue
Mist rose in swirls from the still surface of the canal. It seemed to take on a life of its own, an amorphous creature bred from the dusk.
The day, which had been unseasonably warm and bright for late November, had quickly chilled with the setting of the sun, and Annie Lebow shivered, pulling the old cardigan she wore a bit closer to her thin body.
She stood in the stern of her narrowboat, the
Five years ago, Annie had left behind her husband of twenty years as well as her job with South Cheshire Social Services, and had bought the
demands of working the boat on her own, would keep her demons at bay. For a while it had worked. She’d developed a deep love of the Cut, as the traditional boating people called the canal, and an unexpected strength and pride in her own skills. Her explorations of the inland waterways had taken her from Cheshire to London, then back up the northern industrial route to Birmingham and Manchester and Leeds, until she sometimes imagined herself adrift in time, following the route of all those hardy people who had gone before her.
But lately that ghostly comfort had begun to fade, and she found herself returning more and more often to her old haunts, Cheshire and the stretch of the Shropshire Union Canal near Nantwich. Her memories came thronging back. Against the horrors she’d seen in child- protective services, the mea sure of her own life seemed woe-fully inadequate. She’d been too afraid of loss to make her own mark against the darkness, to stay in her marriage, to have a child, and now it was too late for either.
She turned back towards the lamp- lit cabin, drawn by the thought of the white wine chilling in the fridge. One glass, she told herself, just to ease the evening in, but she knew her discipline would fail as the long hours of the night ticked away. Just when, Annie wondered, had she become afraid of the dark?
Ahead, the Cut curved away between the overarching trees, offering the elusive promise of vistas unseen, unexplored, and a chill little wind snaked across the water. Scudding clouds blotted the rising moon, and Annie shivered again. With a sudden resolve, she leapt to the towpath. She’d take the boat up the Cut to Barbridge before the light faded completely. There, the bustle and sounds from the old canal-side inn would provide a welcome distraction. Perhaps she’d even go in for a drink, leave the bottle of wine safely corked, a pana-cea for another night. Then first thing in the morning she’d move on, away from this place where the past seemed so much more present.
Kneeling in the soft turf with her hand on the mooring strap, she felt the vibration on the path before she heard the rapid footfalls, the
quick pant of breath. Before she could move, the hurtling shape was upon her. She saw the boy’s wild, white face, felt the lash of his sodden clothing as he stumbled past her. He muttered something she didn’t quite catch, but knew it for a curse, not an apology.
Then he was moving away from her, and she imagined she heard the sound of his footsteps long after his slender shape was swallowed by the darkness.
Chapter One
Gemma James would never have thought that two adults, two children, and two dogs, all crammed into a small car along with a week’s worth of luggage and assorted Christmas presents, could produce such a palpable silence.
It was Christmas Eve, and they’d left London as soon as she and her partner, Duncan Kincaid, could get away from their respective offices, his at New Scotland Yard, hers at the Notting Hill Division of the Metropolitan Police. They had both managed a long-overdue week’s break from their jobs and were on their way to spend the holiday with Duncan’s family in Cheshire, a prospect that Gemma viewed with more than a little trepidation.
In the backseat, her five-year-old son, Toby, had at last fallen asleep, his blond head tilted to one side, his small body sagging against the seat belt with the abandon managed only by the very young. Geordie, Gemma’s cocker spaniel, was sprawled half in the boy’s lap, snoring slightly.
Next to Toby sat Kit, Duncan’s thirteen-year-old, with his little terrier, Tess, curled up beside him. Unlike Toby, Kit was awake and ominously quiet. Their anticipated holiday had begun with a
row, and Kit had shown no inclination to put his sense of injury aside.
Gemma sighed involuntarily, and Kincaid glanced at her from the passenger seat.
“Ready for a break?” he asked. “I’d be glad to take over.”
As a single fat raindrop splashed against the windscreen and crawled up the glass, Gemma saw that the heavy clouds to the north had sunk down to the horizon and were fast obliterating the last of the daylight. They’d crawled up the M past Birmingham in a stop-and- start queue of holiday traffic, and only now were they getting up to a decent speed. “I think there’s one more stop before we leave the motorway. We can switch there.” Reluctant as she was to stop, Gemma had no desire to navigate her way through the wilds of Cheshire in the dark.
“Nantwich is less than ten miles from the motorway,” Kincaid said with a grin, answering her unspoken thought.
“It’s still country in between.” Gemma made a face. “Cows. Mud.
Manure. Bugs.”
“No bugs this time of year,” he corrected.
“Besides,” Gemma continued, undeterred, “your parents don’t live in the town. They live on a
“It’s not a working farm,” Kincaid said, as if that made all the difference. “Although there is a dairy next door, and sometimes the smell does tend to drift a bit.”
His parents owned a bookshop in the market town of Nantwich, but lived in an old farmhouse a few miles to the north. Kincaid had grown up there, along with his younger sister, Juliet, and as long as Gemma had known him he’d talked about the place as if it were heaven on earth.
By contrast, having grown up in North London, Gemma never felt really comfortable out of range of lights and people, and she wasn’t buying his glowing advertisements for country life. Nor was
she thrilled about leaving their home. She had so looked forward to a Christmas unmarred by the calamities that had shadowed last year’s holidays, their first in the Notting Hill house. And she felt the children needed the security of a Christmas at home, especially Kit.
Especially Kit. She glanced in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t joined in their banter, and his face was still and
