Revenge of the Tide Read online

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’ I asked.

  ‘Fitz will be charged. You’ll be interviewed and, with a bit of luck, bailed. And then you and Dylan can do whatever it is you want to do, and I’ll quietly disappear and think about what might have been.’

  I felt my cheeks flush. I’d behaved very badly, towards both of them. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  He was quiet for a moment, then he gave a short laugh. ‘Yeah, well, I should have known I’d never be that lucky. Besides, you’re one of the most infuriating women I’ve ever met.’

  I looked up at him then and saw the hurt there, despite the smile. ‘Me, infuriating? Bloody cheek! You were the one who wasn’t around when I really needed you.’

  That was the wrong thing to say. I saw him almost flinch.

  ‘Look, I didn’t mean that. You did your best, didn’t you? It wasn’t your fault I decided to go back to the boat, when you’d told me not to. I was an idiot.’

  ‘No, you’re right. I let you down. Both of you.’

  An ambulance pulled up outside the entrance around the corner, sirens screaming and then abruptly silent. We got up off the bench and walked back towards the doorway.

  ‘Can I see Dylan?’ I asked.

  That look, again. The hurt behind his eyes. ‘I’ll see what I can sort out,’ he said.

  Forty-one

  The morning of Caddy’s funeral brought bright blue skies across London. I caught the train from Maidstone East and now I was waiting outside Bromley station, wondering if I should have worn lower heels, tugging my skirt down a little. Opaque tights made the outfit more sober.

  The black BMW pulled up next to me without a sound and, while Dylan got out of the driver’s seat and went round to open the door at the back for me, I opened the passenger door and jumped in. Despite the occasion I smiled to myself as I watched him through the wing mirror. He stopped, rolled his eyes, shook his head slightly and came back to the driver’s side. He got in and shut the door.

  ‘Alright?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  That was it. The engine started up and we moved off into the traffic.

  At first I stole sneaky glances at him out of the corner of my eye, and then I gave up and twisted in my seat so I could look at him properly. His gaze remained resolutely ahead, and, while he seemed perfectly relaxed and calm, both hands were gripping the steering wheel. Dark glasses, partly hiding the mess they’d made of his face. He was wearing a suit the way he always did, even though he wasn’t supposed to be going to the funeral. He’d offered to drive me there and wait for me, and, because it was the only time he’d agreed to see me since the night I’d nearly managed to get him killed by taking him back to the Revenge, I’d readily accepted.

  ‘You should come in with me,’ I said at last. ‘They probably won’t even notice.’

  ‘They’d notice,’ he said. ‘I don’t exactly blend in.’

  I wasn’t even sure why Caddy’s family had extended an invitation to me, since I was possibly the only one who could have saved her, could have got to her in time. But it seemed that Caddy had talked about me, and, since I wasn’t a dancer any more, that was it: I got an invitation.

  ‘You, on the other hand,’ he said, nodding towards my black skirt, ‘will fit in just fine. You look like a solicitor.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Maybe a solicitor who pole dances in her spare time.’

  ‘Why won’t you see me?’ I asked, out of the blue, since he seemed to be relaxing at last. ‘Why are you being so distant?’

  ‘I’m here now, aren’t I?’ he said with a deep breath in, as though I were some tiresome child asking the same question for the hundredth time. The car had stopped at traffic lights, the sound of the indicator’s subtle click on-off-on hypnotic and soothing.

  ‘You heard from Jim?’ he asked.

  ‘Not since the hospital,’ I said. ‘You know he’s been suspended.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard. He told me they arrested you.’

  ‘Yes. Not going to help me get another job, is it?’

  ‘They charge you?’

  ‘They charged me with assault and then they gave me a police caution. Could have been much worse, I guess, but it’s still given me a criminal record.’

  ‘You should talk to your boyfriend Jim,’ he said. ‘Might be able to take it off for you, if you ask him nicely.’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend. And in any case, he’s not supposed to talk to me.’

  ‘Well, I guess it will give his eardrums a chance to recover.’

  ‘Why did you offer to give me a lift, Dylan, if you’re going to be a rude, grumpy bastard?’

  He laughed then, and I thought he might be softening again. ‘Why d’you think? Wanted to see you in a skirt. Been a long time since I saw you in a skirt.’

  ‘You’re such a tease.’

  ‘Yeah, you love it. Anyway, we’re here.’

  We drove slowly up a long, curved driveway between manicured lawns, trees, wooden benches and flower beds and over speed bumps. There was a car park discreetly tucked behind a large yew hedge, and as we pulled in other cars were disgorging their occupants. Everyone was looking around the same as I was, wondering if they should recognise each other and offering hesitant smiles.

  ‘I’ll wait for you here,’ he said.

  ‘Please come with me,’ I asked. For some crazy reason I wanted an excuse to hold his hand.

  ‘I’ll wait here,’ he said again.

  So fucking stubborn, the man. I slammed the door as hard as I could, but it still only made a reassuring clunk.

  The funeral was very quick. While I waited outside the chapel at the crematorium with all the people I didn’t recognise, the mourners from the previous service were filing out of a different door on the other side of the building. There were about forty people, maybe a few more. A woman of about fifty could only have been Caddy’s mum – she was exactly like her: petite, curvy, beautiful, with dark hair scraped into a neat bun. She was crying a lot, silently, dabbing her tears away while a girl who might have been Caddy’s younger sister stood by with no expression on her pale face to give anything away. Trying to establish the family relationships passed the time.

  I stood awkwardly on my own, wishing I’d worn flatter shoes, wishing I’d not worn quite so much black.

  The car arrived with the coffin, and as the funeral directors positioned it on their shoulders I recognised Beverley Davies, the officer who’d interviewed me, standing at the back. She looked different today, smartly dressed in a grey trouser suit and a grey, grim smile.

  The service was over in half an hour. I sat at the back and listened while they talked about Caddy, and for a while I wondered if I was in the wrong chapel after all because everything they said related to a different woman, a woman I’d never met; she was a loving sister, a talented pianist and singer; she’d got a good degree in English and had completed a PGCE. She’d done a year of teaching and had loved it, and then had taken time off to work in London. They didn’t mention that she was also an accomplished dancer. They didn’t mention the Barclay.

  I stopped listening. When the curtains started to close around the coffin, I shut my eyes.

  We all filed out of the back of the chapel while they played Adele, which made me want to cry. And then I found myself stifling a hysterical giggle when I had the thought that they should have actually played the Pussycat Dolls’ ‘Buttons’ – which had been Caddy’s favourite dancing track.

  I joined the line of people waiting to speak to Caddy’s mum and sister. I tried to run through what I was going to say. What possible things were there, in those circumstances? I’m sorry I didn’t save her? I’m sorry I invited her to the party? I wish things had been different?

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ was what I actually said. ‘Your daughter was a beautiful person.’

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Caddy’s mum said. She was already looking past me to the next person in the line.

  Caddy’s sist
er was crying now, a boyfriend, with earrings and a straggly growth of beard, providing a comforting shoulder.

  People had started to head back to the car park and I followed them.

  ‘Genevieve?’

  It was Beverley Davies. She tried for a smile and then gave up, walking alongside me.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m alright, thank you. Do you know how Jim is?’

  ‘I can’t – sorry.’

  ‘He didn’t do anything wrong,’ I said.

  ‘They’ll take your statement into account. I just wanted to say thank you for coming. I know the family – they’ve had a very difficult time of it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you coming to the pub?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know – I don’t think…’

  ‘Well – if I don’t see you… Take care.’ She went off towards a dark grey Vauxhall that was parked at an angle half on the grass verge and got into the driver’s seat. I watched her drive away.

  The BMW’s windows were open and I could see Dylan watching me through the gap in the hedge as I walked back towards him.

  ‘They’re having drinks in a pub,’ I said through the open window, ‘do you want to go?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ I said, climbing into the passenger seat. ‘In that case, you can drive me there and wait for three hours or so while I get pleasantly hammered.’

  The Bull’s Head in Chislehurst High Street was crowded with people and, although most of the people dressed in black seemed to be outside in the garden, in the end, I managed to persuade Dylan to come in and mingle. I’d already spent twenty minutes standing on my own, like a lost soul, necking vodka. I wanted some company.

  ‘You don’t need to talk to anyone,’ I said. I was dragging him in.

  ‘Too right I don’t.’

  He waited at the bar to get me another drink and I spotted Beverley Davies again. I turned away. Dylan had talked to Jim, I knew he had. Jim had worked with Dylan for years, but their alliance went deeper than that. I’d almost expected there to have been some sort of argument between them, some sort of dispute over me; but it seemed I’d overrated my own importance in that respect. Dylan seemed to be utterly convinced that I should be with Jim now. Despite risking his life to keep me safe, since they’d let him out of the hospital he’d avoided me, ignored my calls, refused to talk to me, and above all given me no indication about how he felt, whether he still liked me, or even if he ever had. And the cooler he was, the more he pushed me away, the more I wanted him. It was a big, horrible mess that seemed to have no solution.

  We stood awkwardly in the beer garden, my heels sinking into the grass so that I was constantly perching on my tiptoes.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘when are you going to Spain?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘What if I need to get hold of you?’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘But what if something happens? What if I need to talk to you?’

  He sighed heavily.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, woman. Jim knows where I’m going. He’s the only one who knows. So if there’s any sort of emergency – not that I can imagine there will be – but if there is – Jim knows. Alright?’

  ‘Can I see you again, before you go?’

  ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t. Unlike you.’

  He swallowed three big, slow gulps from his pint. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’ve given up on me.’

  ‘I never had you in the first place,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not going to stay here without you, Dylan.’

  He waited for a few seconds before answering, scanning the faces in the beer garden as though he was expecting to see someone he knew.

  ‘You’ve got Jim,’ he said.

  ‘Jim’s being investigated for some sort of misconduct because of me,’ I said.

  ‘That’ll all be over with soon enough.’

  ‘He doesn’t want me anyway, Dylan.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s what he wants you to think. Poor bastard’s fallen in love with you, and to make it worse he blames himself for what happened.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t his fault. It was mine. The whole thing.’

  ‘Would have probably been a lot less drama if you hadn’t slept with him.’

  That hurt. My cheeks flushed and I gritted my teeth to stop myself answering him back. I took it in and felt tears stinging my eyes, looking away from him, across the crowded beer garden at the blurred faces.

  ‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘since you don’t care about me, it doesn’t really matter any more.’

  ‘Who said I don’t care?’

  ‘Why are you such hard work? What is wrong with you?’ I demanded, trying to angle my face into his line of sight. ‘Dylan?’

  He finished his pint, put it down on the top of a plastic bin and headed through the gate and out into the car park. I ran behind him, trying to keep up, but he was already in the car with the engine on, the tyres sending an arc of gravel flying as he accelerated towards me.

  I stood firmly in the middle of the car park as the car headed straight for me at a heart-stopping speed. Then the brakes slammed on and the car stopped, the bumper about a foot from my knees.

  I got in the passenger seat and pulled the door shut with force.

  Neither of us spoke.

  He was heading for Bromley, back to the station. It felt as if I was running out of time. ‘Look,’ I said at last, ‘can you give me a lift back home? I don’t want to go on the train.’

  ‘Public transport beneath you now, is it?’

  ‘No. I’ve had too much to drink. I don’t want to be on a train drunk like this.’

  He let out a short laugh. ‘You want me to drive you all the way to Kent?’

  ‘It’s not that far. Please?’

  He let out a heavy sigh that implied I’d just ruined his day, but at the next junction he turned back towards the A2. The fact that he’d agreed to drive me home gave me a fraction of hope, despite his hostility. I leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes, trying to think. The alcohol had filled my brain with a cloud. Everything I thought of saying sounded stupid, or desperate, or selfish. How could I begin to deal with someone so stubborn? What could I possibly say that would make him change his mind?

  I had to fight the urge to reach out and put my hand on his knee. I wanted to touch him so badly, thinking that if words weren’t going to work, then maybe some kind of physical contact would do the trick. But he would have just removed my hand, deliberately placed it back on my side of the handbrake.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him.

  We were on the dual carriageway now, speeding past the Black Prince. Another forty minutes or so, and I’d be home and my chance would have gone. I’d never see him again, after this.

  ‘I was worried about you,’ I murmured.

  I thought he wasn’t listening because he didn’t react; staring straight ahead at the traffic, he might as well have been alone in the car.

  ‘I thought you were dead. I thought Fitz had killed you.’

  He took a deep breath in through his nose. If all this was such an ordeal for him, why had he agreed to give me a lift home?

  ‘Well, he didn’t. I’m still here.’

  ‘Do you miss the club?’ Oh, so many stupid questions. I couldn’t think of the right one.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, are you working?’

  ‘No.’

  Silence again. I closed my eyes, half-wishing I’d not asked him for the lift after all. If he’d dropped me at the station, this torture would have been over with by now.

  I must have dozed, because the gentle click of the indicator woke me. I sat up straight and looked out of the window.

  ‘Oh, don’t turn off here.’

  ‘
What?’

  ‘I’ve moved the boat.’

  The BMW moved swiftly out of the exit lane for Rochester and Strood, and back on to the main carriageway. A car behind us beeped. Dylan looked in his rear view mirror at the driver.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘So where the fuck is your boat?’

  ‘Allington. Near Maidstone. It’s the next exit. Sorry, I should have said.’

  We were on the Medway bridge by this time. Beneath us, the marina where I’d lived for six months in total, where I’d made some good friends, and where it had all fallen apart. I couldn’t see it from up here. Just the straight lines of the motorway and, in the distance to the left, Rochester Castle, a flag flying from the battlements.

  ‘When did you move the boat?’

  ‘A few weeks ago. Bloody ordeal that was, I can tell you. I had to go through a lock. I had to pay Cameron to help me move it.’

  He didn’t say anything. At the next exit he turned off towards Maidstone, down a long, steep hill with a view over the Medway valley. ‘It was difficult,’ I said, even though he’d not asked. ‘You know, with the people in the marina. They’re lovely, all of them, but they’ve chosen this quiet life, you know? Or at least, that’s what they were hoping for, until I turned up and ruined it for them. And Malcolm and Josie… We did try. We were talking about it all. But Josie blames me for everything that happened. And I blame myself.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said at last. ‘He was the fucking idiot that brought Fitz to your door.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I did that. Malcolm just hurried him along a bit.’

  He fell silent again, concentrating on the short stretch of the M20 that would take us back towards Maidstone. I couldn’t bear the quiet. The minutes were flying past, the precious time I had with him was slipping away like sand through my fingers.

  ‘It’s a nice place, anyway,’ I said. ‘Not a marina. Just a few moorings, and there’s a nice pub too, with a restaurant. There’s even a shower block; it’s supposed to be for kayakers I think, but I used it anyway until I finished the bathroom last weekend. And the river isn’t tidal because I’m above the lock. I get ducks and swans now, instead of bloody seagulls. It’s a nice place. You’ll like it.’