the distinct sensation of walls going up and
alarm bells ringing, and all the camaraderie of moments earlier dissipated like smoke.
When Annie had tucked the map back into its spot in the bookcase, she picked up her barely touched tea and set the mug in the galley sink. The message couldn’t have been clearer if she’d shouted.
“Um, I suppose we’d better be going,” Kincaid said into the awkward silence. As he stood, he glanced at the window and found an acceptable excuse. “The light’s fading. If we’re not careful we’ll be blundering home in the dark. Thanks for the tea and the hospitality.”
Kit looked disappointed, but set his mug in the galley without protest.
“I hate winter afternoons, they draw in so early,” murmured Annie, almost as if she were speaking to herself. She stayed at the sink, rinsing cups as Kincaid and Kit put on their coats, but when they were suitably bundled up she wiped her hands on a tea towel and followed them up into the foredeck.
The pale blue dome of the sky had flushed a translucent rose and the light breeze had died, leaving the air utterly still. The boat’s mirror image gleamed on the surface of the canal, near and yet enticingly distant. Kincaid had turned to thank their hostess once more when Kit spoke.
“Can I see where you steer, before we go?”
“Kit, I don’t think—”
“No, it’s all right,” said Annie, her mood seeming to shift once again. “You can go along the edge—it’s called the gunwale. But be careful not to slip. The canal’s not deep, but the water’s very cold.
You can freeze more quickly than you’d think.”
“I won’t fall in.” Kit grinned at them, then turned and walked lightly towards the stern, his trainer-clad feet sure on the narrow ledge of the gunwale, one hand outstretched so that his fingertips traced the edge of the boat’s roof.
As Kincaid made an effort not to hold his breath, he heard Annie’s quiet chuckle. “He’s a natural. And it helps to be young.”
When Kit had reached the stern and jumped into the well deck, Kincaid said, “Still, accidents happen. My sister told me a boy drowned along this stretch of the canal recently. He must have been about Kit’s age.”
“Is this curvy thing the rudder?” Kit called out, his hand on the swan- necked tiller.
“It’s called the elum, in boating language,” answered Annie.
“Probably a corruption of helm,” she added to Kincaid as Kit poked happily about in the stern, examining the ropes and fenders.
Then, to Kincaid’s surprise, she said softly, “I might have seen him, the boy who drowned. I was moored not far from here, down near the Hurleston Reservoir. Just at dusk, a boy came running along the towpath. His clothes were wet. He almost ran me down, and he looked . . . wild. Distressed. But I never thought . . . It never occurred to me that it was anything more than kids playing pranks.
I moved the boat up to Barbridge that night, and the next morning I left early to cruise down the Llangollen, so I didn’t hear what had happened until several weeks later. If I had known . . .” She shivered, crossing her arms over her breasts, and Kincaid realized the temperature was dropping rapidly as the sun set. He could smell the damp rising in tendrils from the water’s surface.
“There’s no way you could have known what would happen,”
Kincaid assured her. He shook his head. “A bad business altogether.
Apparently, my niece knew the boy. They were at school together.”
“Difficult for her,” agreed Annie. “Has she—”
“It’s brilliant,” called Kit, coming back along the opposite gunwale, interrupting whatever question Annie had meant to ask. He was almost running now, as confident as a tightrope walker.
“Your boat, it’s brilliant,” he repeated when he reached them.
“Or I should say ‘she’s brilliant,’ shouldn’t I? Is she easy to steer?
And how do you manage the locks on your own?”
Annie answered with indulgent patience. “Most people overcompensate when they first practice steering, but you develop a feel for
it after a bit. As for the locks, it takes a bit longer on your own, but you get used to it. And often there are other boaters to help, or bystanders.”
Then she seemed to hesitate, as she had when she’d first asked them aboard, but as she studied Kit’s eager expression, she gave an almost imperceptible shrug and went on quickly. “Look. You could come back, if you like. We could take her down to Hurleston Junction, through the locks. You could even steer a bit.” With a glance at Kincaid, she added, “You
Giving no sign that he had noticed the reference to his mother, Kit looked up at Kincaid with an eagerness that was almost painful. “Could we?” he asked. “Could we come back? What about tomorrow?”
Kincaid remembered his mother telling him they’d planned their annual Boxing Day lunch for the entire family at the Barbridge Inn, the pub just round the junction from Annie’s mooring. “I think we could work that out,” he said, willing to juggle activities in order not to disappoint Kit. But even as he agreed, he felt a fleeting twinge of discomfort as he realized that Kit seemed more at ease with adults than with his cousins. “It’s kind of you,” he added to Annie. “If you’re certain—”
“It’s not kindness, it’s pure selfishness,” Annie said, with a grin for Kit. “I don’t often have a chance to indoctrinate a future boater.
But you’d better be careful—before you know it you’ll be booking family narrowboat holidays.”
“Holidays? Really?” said Kit. “Where do you—”
“Enough.” Kincaid gave his son a little push towards the towpath. “We really must go. Gemma and your grandmother will be sending the dogs for us.”
Not only was the light fading, but the reminder of the next day’s plans had made him think of his sister. The worry that had been lurking in his subconscious now rose to the surface, nagging
at him. Had he dismissed Juliet’s disappearance from her in- laws’
too readily?
He’d asked Gemma to ring him if they heard from Jules, but he knew the mobile reception was spotty this far from town, and he might have missed a call. He was suddenly anxious to return to the farmhouse.
Kit glanced up at him, and seeming to sense his impatience, thanked Annie Lebow with commendable good manners.
“See you tomorrow, then,” she called out cheerfully as they jumped to the towpath.
But as they turned away, an impulse made Kincaid glance back.
She stood at the
Then she broke her pose, lifting her hand in farewell. He returned the salute, chiding himself for being fanciful, but as he walked on, her image lingered as if burned on his retina.
Annie Lebow had a rare confidence and a physical assurance as she moved about her boat, as well as an obsessive enthusiasm when she talked about life on the Cut—a portrait of a woman who had found her place in life. But beneath that veneer, he sensed a melancholy, a shadow of longing. What had been denied her—or what had she denied herself?
Picking the locks on Piers’s drawers had been easier than Juliet had expected. Sifting through his paperwork had been much more difficult. It wasn’t that it was disorganized, but rather the contrary—
everything was kept in meticulous order and seemed quite aboveboard.
After a quick recce, she started with the first client fi le, reading carefully through each share and unit- trust statement and all the associated correspondence before going on to the next heavy folder.
She grew absorbed, unaware of time passing, and it was only when she glanced absently at the window that she saw the light had begun
to fade. Fighting a sudden surge of panic, she took a breath and reached for another file. She couldn’t quit, not yet. Urgency gripped her. She might never have another chance at this.
A car door slammed in the street and Juliet jerked, spilling pages across the desk. She listened, but no footsteps approached. Closing her eyes for a moment, she calmed her racing pulse. A few more minutes, and then she would go.
Then, as she gazed at the papers spread across the green baize of the blotter, something caught her eye.
