A half-hour later, and Amber was walking back into her old street. Grace was at school, and her mother at work, so the house was empty. Even so, she found herself going up the drive. She let herself in, went upstairs and dumped her bag on her bed. But as she left the room she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall. She stopped, frowning deeply at her reflection. Then she sat down on her bed and pulled off her boots. She inspected them, one after the other. They looked perfectly normal, and she nearly put them back on. But something stopped her. Instead she yanked open her wardrobe, and fished around in the bottom until she found another pair, an older pair that hadn’t made the cut when she was packing to move away to her new life on the mainland. Suppressing the sense that she was actually going crazy, she pulled them on, then threw her newer boots back in their place. Then she considered. If this was worth doing, it was worth doing properly.
She checked quickly around her old bedroom for a second, then dropped back down the stairs and into the kitchen. She rummaged around in the crazy drawer – the place they kept for the little stuff that didn’t live anywhere else, and eventually she found what she was looking for, the little metal spike for removing the SIM card from her cell phone. She had to concentrate to use it, but soon she had the little rectangular chip in her hand. She wasn’t sure if that was enough, so she found some silver foil, and wrapped it up in that, finally putting it carefully into her purse. Then she thought again, and decided she was satisfied.
She was as vague as she could be with Kelly, saying she just had some things to do before she left the island. Kelly wasn’t suspicious at all – they’d each lent their cars before, the island’s less than regular bus network tended to encourage such generosity – nevertheless Amber promised to have it back by the evening at the latest, when Kelly had to get to work. And with that she set off.
It would have taken her far longer than one afternoon to search all the island’s creeks and coves – the east coast was riddled with cliffs and caves, and the west coast mired with swampy inlets, but Amber had an advantage. There was only one place she needed to check. She didn’t really believe she would find anything there, but nevertheless, she wanted to look.
Forty minutes later she turned off the proper road and onto a muddy track. The temperature was warmer now, the snow long gone, and replaced by deep brown puddles, that she had to steer around for fear of leaving Kelly’s car sunk up to its axles. As she drove she couldn’t help but reflect on the previous times she’d been here. The first, in the back of a panel van, with the kidnappers who had taken her sister. That seemed several lifetimes ago, and was understandably something she had tried to forget. The second, just under a year ago, with Billy, after he’d finally revealed his latest, ‘secret’ project.
And for once it was actually a cool project, at least as she saw it. It wasn’t about rescuing some crustacean population, or counting seagull eggs, but actually something genuinely neat. A few years before the two of them had helped Billy’s father set up a whale watching business, and one of the – admittedly fairly major – perks, was they were able to use the boat when it wasn’t needed for the business. That boat, the Blue Lady, was sadly no more and its replacement, the Blue Lady II, was too large and expensive for general leisure use. That had been a particular blow to Billy, who always seemed to have some reason to need to be on the water. And for weeks and weeks she had known he was up to something, Billy and his Dad, behind her back. Eventually they’d let her in on what it was.
She remembered the gleam in Billy’s eyes as Sam drove them both here. There were puddles then too, but he threw the truck through them without concern, and they emerged at the end of the lane with muddy water streaming off the sides. But Amber had barely noticed. She’d known exactly what it was she was supposed to be looking at. Bishop’s Landing was one of the smallest named places on Lornea Island, and consisted of precisely one small wooden boathouse/workshop, one rickety wooden jetty stretching out into one of the island’s innumerable creeks, and the long, lonely lane they had just driven down. There was nothing else, and no other buildings for miles. Except that now there was something else. A small wooden yacht sat tied to the end of the pier. A wooden yacht that needed a ton of work.
“What’s that?”
“It’s my boat.” Billy beamed. “She’s called Caroline.”
Amber couldn’t help smiling at the thought. Even though it was madness, the boat was about twenty seven foot long, and once upon a time would have been a real beauty. But now the paint was peeling off, what rigging it had hung limp and damaged from blistered spars. Many of the porthole windows were smashed or missing, and the cockpit was covered with black, oily tarpaulin. Seemingly oblivious to this, Billy led the way down the jetty and jumped aboard. The yacht didn’t move, its keel was lodged in the mud.
“Where did you get it?”
“She was abandoned. I found the previous owner online, and he said I could have her. For nothing. Isn’t that incredible?”
Amber had looked around, it needed so much doing, you’d have to pay most people to take it away. “I guess. But why’s it here?”
“Well that’s why it’s a secret. You know how much berthing costs are. We can’t afford to keep her anywhere else.
