Page 123 of The Rising Tide

They’re far too late.

She’s not sure if she has the fortitude to face what comes next. Doesn’t think she can look at another human being again. Perhaps she should find something heavy, climb into the water and sink beneath the surface.

Because however hard she massages Fin’s heart, however much air she breathes into him, she can tell that he’s gone.

… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Nothing.

Dropping her hands to her thighs, she stares at her littleboy; at his cold face, his lost expression. A face that made her laugh, made her cry, that stirred in her a depth of feeling she hadn’t believed possible.

Katharsis.

Purification through tragedy.

Lucy doesn’t feel purified. She feels bereft.

Everything beautiful atrophies – or is torn down and destroyed before its time. A month ago, she had a life: a husband and two extraordinary children; a surfeit of love and laughter. At the time, it hadn’t seemed perfect. Only now does she realize how close it came.

Luck blessed her. And now luck has taken everything: a magazine article in a Sunday supplement leading to a monster hunting her down.

The Tamar-class boat is far closer. When she turns, she sees a coastguard helicopter growing in the southern sky.

Lucy raises herself off her haunches, bends over her son. Places her hands on his chest.

One … two … three …

But her strength has gone, her hope. Her star-gazing, card-sorting little bookworm has departed. A cruelty to keep trying to drag him back.

… four …

… five …

The lifeboat throttles down as it pulls up alongsideHuntsman’s Daughter. The yacht rocks violently in the wash. Lucy grabs a cleat and steadies herself. The helicopter is louder, closer, its turbine a steady whistle.

Someone lands on the deck, up towards the bow. Moments later a man kneels beside her. Lucy ignores him, keeps working on Fin. She’s not ready to stop, not quite.She needs another minute before she can accept what’s happened. ‘Fifteen … sixteen …’

The man beside her is Detective Inspector Abraham Rose. Crag-faced, ill-looking, solemn. Never has she seen such empathy. He places two enormous hands over her own and, with a gentleness belying his size, guides them away from Fin’s chest.

FIFTY-SEVEN

1

The boy.

Ignoring the dead man hanging from the boom, Abraham leaps on toHuntsman’s Daughterand climbs into the cockpit. There’s Lucy Locke, ragged as a stray, soaked and shivering and desolate. And there, lying in front of her, is the reason why.

Abraham recognizes Fin in an instant. But gone is the little entertainer he saw on Lucy’s phone. In his place is just a shell.

The sight is so tragic – so profoundly shocking – that he sinks down beside the mother. All he can think about is the boy with the bow tie. Fin Gordon Locke: weaver of words; teller of fine tales; storyteller extraordinaire.

‘Once,there was a hunchbacked old man called Bogwort. Bogwort was very grumpy, because he believed everyone thought he was ugly, even though they didn’t. What was so, so sad is that he could have had lots of friends if he hadn’t made people nervous of him, and frightened of him too.

‘But I don’t want you to worry too much about that, because this isn’t going to be one of those sad stories at all but one to cheer you up, cos you’ll see that actually in the end some nice things happened to Bogwort. Because he deserved it. And that’s what people get if they’re good.’

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