Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James 11 - Water Like A Stone

Prologue

Late November

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 Lost Horizon, gazing at the bare trees lining the curve of the Cut, breathing in the dank, fresh scent that was peculiar to water with the coming of evening. The smell brought, as it always did, an aching for something she couldn’t articulate, and an ever-deepening melancholia. Behind her, the lamps in the boat’s cabin glowed welcomingly, but for her they signaled only the attendant terrors of the coming night. The fact that her isolation was self- imposed made it no easier to bear.

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 Horizon with money accumulated from her interest in her family’s shipping business. She’d imagined that the simplicity of life on a boat sixty feet long by a mere seven feet wide, and the physical s

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.