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“Also not good.”
“Frankly, I’m thinking of escalating to bad.”
This generated a faint rumble from deep within his chest, which I was in no place to interpret. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
“Insidewhere?”
He gestured over his shoulder.
“Are you a kelpie? That’s the Thames.”
“That’s my boat,” he corrected me.
“Oh.”
I’d been vaguely aware of the various cruisers and narrowboats moored by the towpath, but I’d assumed they were for summer boating, not that any of them might be inhabited. It probably didn’t help that the vessel in question was a blue or green so dark it might have been black. The stranger’s torch—for he did have a torch, a proper one, with a wide beam—revealed the lustre of the paintwork. Caught upon the fittings and made them gleam like a smile in the night. I wasn’t sure how I felt about being taken onto some stranger’s boat. Did it matter that it was a well-kept boat?
“Problem?” he was asking.
“Not really.” I tried to get his face to resolve from the blur. As it was, all I had was an impression of something shaggy and disconcerting. “Just wondering if you’re going to murder me.”
“On my boat?”
“Mm.”
Once again, he seemed to be considering it. “Too much mess,” he concluded. “Can you stand?”
“Yes,” I said in the face of all available evidence.
What followed was brief and undignified and ended me with hoisted across his shoulders like I was a wounded solider he was bearing valiantly back to base across a minefield.
I gave a futile squirm, feeling about eighty-seven different kinds of out of control and not liking any of them. “What the fuck.”
He didn’t answer. But he didn’t put me down either. Just carried me across the towpath and stepped into the back—stern?—of the boat, something I definitely couldn’t have done with my fucked-up ankle and probably wouldn’t have been sensible for him to attempt with me held any other way. It didn’t make me resent the sack-of-potatoes approach any less, though.
More light spilled like pirate gold from the interior of the boat as my rescuer pushed back the hatch and opened the doors. Three neat steps, clearly intended for one person with two feet, not two people with one and a half feet on average, led into a kitchen area. It was honestly a wonder we got down them at all. On my part, it was little more than a controlled fall. Everything was far too bright. The sudden heat was as wild as a tiger, leaving me weak and mauled and breathless.
I managed a vague protest that I would ruin his sofa as he half carried, half dragged me towards it, so he threw a blanket over the cushions and then set me down. For a moment or two, I was too dazed for anything, even shame, and just sat there, trembling. My rescuer had busied himself with…whatever. The doors. The stove. I heard the same purpose in his footsteps as before, as if each movement was deliberate, taking him somewhere.
Eventually he returned to me, sinking unselfconsciously to his haunches. My sense of him hadn’t been entirely inaccurate. He was one of those big, careful men and wouldn’t have looked out of place scything shirtless in a field with Poldark. A decade or so ago, the long beard and shoulder-length hair would have been a mark in the “potential murderer” column. As it was, I half expected him to start serving me an artisanal muffin and a flat white.14
“Are you allergic to anything?” he asked.
“Being fussed over?” I suggested.
“Medically.”
I shook my head.
He offered me a glass of water and a packet of ibuprofen. “For the pain.”
And such was the pain in question that I took the tablets—which I would normally have refused on principle, out of stubbornness or machismo—without complaint. His eyes were concerned. But my lips felt their attention anyway.
“We should make sure nothing’s broken,” he said, distracting me.
“Good luck with that.”15
“What?”
