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Alex didn’t hesitate. ‘Maybe. If we started all over again, as ourselves, and not keeping things bottled up, and just trying to laugh a bit more. We were good at laughing, in between the fed-up bits and the waiting-around-for-two-crap-men-to-notice-us bits.’
Eve laughed now, and moved as though to hug her friend, but stopped herself. Alex didn’t hold back, and stepped towards her, pulling her into her arms. She’d take her up to the bookshop now and introduce her to Magnús. Maybe the electricity would be back on and they could have some lunch.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ Alex said, lifting the little gas stove. It would come in handy for someone in the village if there was still no power. She took one last look around the cabin, and then clasped Eve’s hand. ‘No regrets.’
Eve seemed younger and less careworn than Alex had ever seen her.
They made their way towards the prow, checking locks and securing the tarps and canopies as they went.
Only when they were in the fresh air ready to clamber onto the beach did Alex realise there was no beach.
Instead, there was mud-brown water at least two foot deep and concealing the entire trailer the boat was raised upon, and that water was flowing, gushing hard in fact, under theDagalienin the direction of the ocean.
‘What’s happening?’ Eve asked, glancing all around them.
‘Look!’ Alex lifted a finger to the slope where a river of water was careering Down-along, past the door of Jowan’s cottage, past the lifeboat building. The same brown water poured off the cliffs all along the headland.
‘Run-off,’ Alex said darkly.
‘What?’
‘Run-off, from the storm. The whole village must be flooding with water running off the land. And there’s only one place it can go.’
The women screamed as the beach pebbles shifted and theDagalienjuddered and moved upon the trailer.
‘We have to get off! Jump!’ Alex shrieked, but it was too late. The ferry had come loose from the trailer with the force of the water and was turning like a toy in a bath tub, swirling and bucking. It was being forced out to sea.
