AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Two
Alone at Sea
Alexandra Robinson had been at sea for seven days now and so far she’d managed to avoid all human contact, except for one brief stop at Penzance where she’d bought enough provisions to keep herself alive, if not exactly thriving. She’d been careful not to say a word to anyone during that brief shopping spree, trying to act inconspicuous as she scrabbled nervously in her purse for change at the Co-op’s self-checkout.
She couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure there wasn’t a search party out looking for her and she couldn’t face being recognised.
There’d been no mention over her radio of a runaway ferrywoman, so it was unlikely they’d launched the lifeboats. At least she hoped they hadn’t.
Perhaps she should have put in a quick call to let someone know she was fine, but there was no one she wanted to talk to. Besides, that wasn’t part of her plan to cut herself off entirely and get as far away as possible from Port Kernou.
What would they think if they could see her now, transformed by a week at sea? She knew her lips were cracked and her skin papery, and her hair hadn’t had a proper wash since the day she’d run away. Quick, chilly dunks in salt water had turned her long, thick hair – still bleached from the summer sun – into crisp strands. No matter. Nobody could see her out here.
Everything was damp on board theDagalien, Alex’s twenty-seven-foot river cruiser, which, even though a relic of her father’s from the 1980s, was perfectly adequate for her impromptu sea escapade. The rear cabin allowed her to sleep in relative comfort. There was a fresh water supply and a kettle for coffees and instant ramen (though she’d have given almost anything for a proper roast dinner about now), and even a porta-potty behind a folding door but still, the boat hadn’t been designed for luxury, or to facilitate a heartbroken woman’s mad dash to get the hell out of Cornwall.
Until now, it had barely deviated from its easy back and forth over the Fal estuary where Alex had operated her ferry service for tourists and locals for eight long years, having taken it over from her dad when he passed away just as she was fresh out of high school with a clutch of A-levels, finding herself orphaned at aged eighteen and with a house and ready-made business to run.
Running away, or rather, sailing away, had seemed the only rational thing to do last week and she hadn’t been at sea long enough for the frenzied state to pass. She was still fizzing with anger and hurt, but there was a sneaking sense of shame and guilt emerging that she didn’t like and was trying to ignore.
Coming home from a long day’s ferrying to find your boyfriend hurriedly buttoning his shirt while your best friend cowers on the sofa will do that to a woman; make them inclined to bolt.
Alex hadn’t stopped to think. She hadn’t said a word. She’d turned on the heel of her flat boots (Ben was sensitive of his five feet seven inches in comparison to her six foot, so she’d been wearing flats for ages) and run all the way back to the jetty. Here, she’d drawn the wet weather canopy over the cockpit and clipped it into place before starting up the motor and gliding right out of the Roseland peninsula, where she’d lived for all of her twenty-six years, leaving Port Kernou far behind.
She’d consulted her charts and set a slow northerly course around the headland, hugging the land but trying not to draw attention to herself, a lone boatswoman in a vintage tub.
She had no idea where she was going or what she’d do when she got there, and all the while she shouted livid curses out into the waves, damning Eve, the woman she’d considered her best friend since she’d rocked up in Alex’s village only a year ago to run the post office. She’d suspected Ben had fancied her from the start. Damn him as well, she told the dark water.
Eve had always seemed so sad and so put-upon. Alex would spend hours by the ferry mooring listening to her bemoaning her scruffy, inattentive, layabout husband who she supported with her wages. Their son spent a few hours a week at pre-school and Eve’s husband Maxwell was proving to be an at-home daddy of the ‘bare minimum effort’ type. Alex had absorbed it all, and felt truly sorry for her friend.
Had Eve been slagging off lazy Maxwell to Ben as well? They’d obviously got to know each other much better than she’d been aware during their curry and quiz Friday nights at the Rising Sun. The very thought of them sneaking about behind her back made her stomach pinch painfully and her eyes burn.
The charts and weather-watching should have had her full attention as she sailed, but instead her brain wanted to replay the moment she’d discovered them, the cushions scattered everywhere and Ben fastening his shirt with shaky fingers.
‘It’s not how it looks,’ Ben had dared to say. At least he’d had the decency to look immediately ashamed.
The betrayal was the worst bit. It was like something you’d read in the gossip mags.
Take a Breakwould love it. She could picture it now. The headline would read,My Best Mate Stole My Man, and there’d be a large picture of Alex looking all forlorn and stoic staring down the camera lens. She had zero plans to ring the magazines, though. For as long as she could remember she’d craved peace and privacy.
She had, nonetheless, considered phoning Ben’s parents, just to let them know what he’d been up to. After all, she’d been part of the Thomas family for ages. How much had he told them, she wondered? Probably not enough to tarnish his apple-of-their-eye status. Soon, Eve would replace her in the Thomas family. This sent sadness blooming through her chest.
Actually,thathurt more than the betrayal. The affair, or whatever it was, had ousted Alex from her spot at their table. Now she had nobody.
Everyone in Port Kernou knew she had no parents of her own, no siblings or aunts and uncles, not even a spare grandparent or a second cousin of any kind, and the village had flocked around her back when her lovely dad died, but seeing how quickly she’d accepted her new line of work and how well she’d managed her independence, they’d soon left her to it. Then, after years going it alone, she’d met Ben and life seemed to begin again. She’d enjoyed being part of a family.
She’d even called Mr and Mrs Thomas ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ and while those words had never quite brought back the feeling of being with her own parents in her own family home, it had been the closest she was ever going to get, and she’d felt part of something happy and cosy. The Thomas family was massive, with cousins in every nearby village, and there was always someone around to have a cup of tea with when she popped in to Ben’s parents’ place. She wasn’t at all ready to admit that she’d loved that family feeling a tiny bit more than she’d loved Ben.
Finding herself crying at the helm yet again she gave herself a sharp talking to about needing to keep her wits about her, out here all by herself. Everyone in Cornwall knew the dangers and there wasn’t one of them untouched by a loss at sea at some point in their family history.
She kept her eyes on the horizon, avoiding the deeper water that she was afraid of, while navigating sandbars, rocks and wrecks, and dropping anchor to rest or to cry whenever she felt like it, always making sure the solar panels that helped power some of the dashboard instruments and the equipment in the tiny kitchenette were wiped clean.
There’d been a few hairy moments around Land’s End where she’d been afraid to sail after sundown, but somewhere around day three she’d settled into a fine routine of sailing a little, turning in wide aimless circles just to slow her journey, stopping to watch the seals or racing the dolphins whenever they appeared alongside her, and drinking endless cups of black tea, huddled inside her father’s long leather ferryman’s coat from decades ago and still somehow smelling of him; Paco Rabanne, sea salt, tobacco, and pure love like only a good dad can give.
She tried not to think of what he’d have to say about all this, the absolutetalking tohe’d give her about needing to head straight for shore and a nice B&B with a bar stocked with brandy where she could get her head straight and have a long, hot bath.
That had been his cure for almost everything. ‘You’ll feel better after a nice long bath,’ he’d tell her in those early days when she was desperately missing her mum and couldn’t get to sleep, or when she had a tummy ache or a cold.
After she’d had a long soak he’d sing her fisherfolk songs and tell stories about mermaids and kelpies in his soft Cornish accent and, even when she was a young teen, he’d rock her in his arms like theDagalienwas rocking her now.
