In Dark Water by Lynne McEwan

Author:Lynne McEwan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Shona woke to the Sunday morning call of gulls across the Solway Firth. Thursday, Friday and Saturday had passed with frustratingly slow progress with both the baby milk case and the deaths of Isla and Sami Raseem. Tomorrow she’d have to make some hard decisions. To do that she needed to clear her head.

Rob had opened one of the full-length windows opposite their bed and the gauze curtains stirred in the faintest autumn breeze. Below, the polished silver of Kirkness estuary was marked by a single fishing boat drawing a plough-mark across its surface. Shona sat up and watched the boat’s progress. Jimmy Hunter’s Orion, out after some sea trout. She knew most of the local craft on sight now. She checked again that her RNLI pager was switched on. She was overcome by the urge to step off the land, let the sway of the sea dissolve away the tensions of her everyday life.

She dressed quickly and went downstairs to the kitchen. Rob and Becca were somewhere below on the guest level, holding a conversation that consisted of shouting to each other from different rooms above the sound of a vacuum. She left a note to say she’d be at the lifeboat station and slipped out the back door.

Coxswain Tommy McCall gave Shona the helm as they put the Margaret Wilson through her paces out on the firth. Then Shona coached a new recruit as he practised recovering 50 m of rope with a 15 kg weight attached in under 90 seconds, a test he needed to pass before his training could progress. The last of the season’s holidaymakers lined up to cheer him on. The crowd broke into a spontaneous round of applause when, on the third attempt, Shona declared the recruit had done it. Tommy came out with the donations bucket and worked the crowd, who gave generously and felt they’d had their money’s worth.

Shona spotted Becca in a small group gathered round Callum in the boat bay of the lifeboat station. He was giving a talk on the night bag, a satchel-sized extra loaded for shouts after dark, with extra flares. Becca was looking at the handsome village postman with a shy smile and rapt attention. If Becca ever showed any interest in joining the lifeboat, the RNLI wouldn’t have her mother to thank for their latest recruit. When Becca spotted her approaching, her shoulders resumed their habitual slump and she scowled. ‘Dad sent me to find you. Dinner’s ready.’

Shona returned home with Becca, exhausted but renewed, to a family meal where Rob made them laugh with stories of his most eccentric university friends. He’d had a couple of trips to Glasgow since reconnecting with former fellow students at the STAC reception and had a potential investor for his restaurant idea. It was decided that their daughter would spend the remaining days of her exclusion from school helping Rob and both seemed happy with the prospect. Shona was just going to bed when Baird’s name flashed up on her phone.

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