It would have been easy just to go to bed, to hide under the covers and cry, for what was left of the day if I needed to. But instead I went and had a shower, got dressed, and tried to get a fire going. It gave me something to concentrate on, with my shaking hands, then sitting in front of the open door, watching it in case it died down, feeding it until it grew strong enough for me to build the wood around it. And then I shut the door to the stove and sat looking at the flames and the logs starting to glow.
I was still sitting there an hour later when I heard a noise outside, and a few moments later a knock at the door of the wheelhouse.
It was Malcolm, complete with his grubby canvas bag of tools. I looked at it doubtfully.
“I thought I’d take a look at your generator,” he said.
“I’ve got tools, you know,” I said indignantly.
“Yeah. So—er—what happened to your new fella? Saw him earlier, didn’t look too happy.”
“Oh, he’s fine. He had to go to work.”
Malcolm gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me. He lifted the hatch in the wheelhouse that accessed the engine and peered down into the engine space.
“The batteries should be all charged,” he said. “Then once I reconnect them you can transfer over—here—like this . . .”
I looked and tried to pay attention while he showed me a series of buttons and switches.
“The generator will run off your fuel supply so that’ll go down quicker than normal. But you won’t need to use it all the time, like, during the day and stuff. You’ve still got gas bottles for the stove, haven’t you?”
I nodded. “And I’ve got the wood-burning stove.”
“Exactly. Electricity is overrated,” he said with a smile.
He went back to tinkering with the generator, connecting wires and tubes and bashing things. I clambered over him and went down into the cabin.
“I need to turn the power off,” Malcolm shouted down the steps.
“All right,” I called back.
The main cabin was nice and warm now. I sat in front of it, hugging my knees, trying not to think about Dylan and Jim, but thinking about nothing else. I’d thought about Dylan every day since that last time, but not like this. I wanted him to come back for me. I wanted him to be here, with me. I wanted it so badly it was like an ache, like a void inside me.
And Jim—what was I supposed to do about Jim? The thought of him made me shiver. There was something irresistible about him, some force that made me lose my senses and want him, no matter what he said or did. And he was maddening at the same time.
I would call him tomorrow, once I’d had a chance to catch up on some sleep and get my head straightened out.
“Genevieve!” Malcolm shouted from the deck.
“What?”
“It’s all connected.” He came down into the cabin.
I didn’t turn around. It must have looked a bit odd, me sitting there on the floor facing the stove.
“You all right?” he said.
I didn’t answer and he came to sit on the sofa. “Gen? What’s the matter?”
“It’s been a tough day,” I said.
“What happened? Is it that policeman? He been bothering you?”
“No. He’s been fine, Malcolm, honest.”
“Maybe you should go and stay with him for a bit, then, till it all quiets down again.”
“I’m not leaving the boat.”
“No one else been around—you know, like before?”
“No.”
“I haven’t seen anybody,” he said, quickly.
I looked at him then, turned my head slowly. He was sitting on the edge of my sofa, hands hanging between his knees. He looked wired. His left knee was jiggling up and down.
“Malcolm?”
“What?”
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing, nothing.” He looked almost afraid, just for a moment.
“Hey,” I said.
He looked back at me. There was something in his expression; I should have been able to tell what it was. But I was too tired and too numb to think hard enough about it.
“I just wanted to say thanks, for helping with everything.”
“Okay,” he said.
We stood awkwardly in the cabin, Malcolm shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “You know, I used to live in London,” he said at last.
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Before I met Josie. I lived all over, but for a while I lived in Leytonstone. In a squat. Well, digs. I guess it was a kind of a squat, anyway, since we didn’t pay anyone any rent. But still.”
“What were you doing in London?” I asked, wondering where this was going.
“Oh, this and that, you know—some construction work, some plastering sometimes when someone would take me on. Just earning enough for beer, really. It was all right.”
He looked at me sideways.
“What is it, Malcolm? What are you getting at?”
“Well, I knew of this Fitz. The one you mentioned, the one who was your boss at that club.”
“You knew Fitz?”
“I never said that. I said I knew of him. Some guys I knew from the pub, they was talking about stuff one night, where to score drugs mostly, and they was complaining about the quality of the gear on the streets at the moment, and they said it was because Fitz had moved on to something else.”
“Something else?”
“Like he wasn’t supplying anymore. Or he’d moved on to supplying different gear.”
“Oh,” I said, sitting back. “Doesn’t mean it was the same Fitz, though.”
“He used to hang around with this guy, Ian Gray. He was a hard guy, like his protection, you know? His muscle.”
“Gray?”
“Big guy, tattoo on his neck. He was missing half his earlobe.”
That was Gray, all right. No wonder Malcolm had been so interested in hearing about life at the Barclay.
“I should have said something earlier,” he said.
“Yes, you should,” I said.
“I was thinking—you know—I might be able to call a few people, find out who it is who’s putting the pressure on you. Tell them to lay off.”
“Are you kidding? If you know of Fitz, then you know these people aren’t going to lay off just because some nice guy calls them and asks them to.”
“Yeah, all right!” he said, affronted. “I’m not a complete moron. I just meant—you know—I could do some digging for you.”
“I somehow doubt that’s going to help,” I said. “But thanks anyway. They might just get bored.”
“Or they might come along tonight and kill you.”
“If they were going to do that, they would’ve done it by now,” I said.
“Yeah, you say that. But they never got their hands on that package of yours, did they?”
“No,” I said.
“I’d better go,” he said, heading for the steps. “You just shout for me if you need anything.”
“Are we still going to move the boat?” I said. “How about tomorrow?”
“Sure, yeah,” he said. He was already at the door, and moments later he’d waved goodbye and disappeared.
I looked at my phone and thought about calling Jim. I sat in front of the stove for a while, allowing the warmth from it to take the chill out of my bones. I couldn’t stop thinking about Caddy. I kept coming back to Caddy’s last moments, how she must have felt. Had it hurt? Had she had time to feel pain, fear? Had she known she was about to die? And all the time I was so close by—and I’d had no idea she was even there.
I got to my feet and stretched. Everything felt achy, my neck so stiff I could hardly turn my head. I turned off the lights and locked the wheelhouse door and went to bed.