CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Now there was a new rhythm for her days. Mostly it revolved around the stove and the engine: stoking, keeping the fire going, checking, re-filling with diesel. Keeping warm. Making food. The engine throbbed like a beating heart, a constant sound that soon became part of her, so she only noticed when it stopped. Evie seemed brighter now they’d got on to the canal and were moving slowly along. They were making good progress, Evie said. She seemed to have got used to the idea that Shannon wasn’t there, and Mia was doing her best to be helpful.

Most days Evie spent drinking, smoking, even while she was steering the boat. Mia began to wonder where she got the money from. It didn’t seem to add up. What else might she be selling, as well as the Indian stuff, the hair braids and tattoos? Mia did not want to think about it. And Evie’s mood swung dramatically, one day to another. She was worst at night. Mia started to go to bed earlier to avoid the long, dark silences.

Evie was oddly forgetful too. On the third day they were sitting together in a rare moment of warm sunshine on the deck, drinking tea before they started up for the morning. A woman walked past them along the towpath pushing a small child in a buggy and it reminded Mia about Lainey.

‘So how did you get to meet Lainey?’

‘Who?’

‘You know, the little girl in Ashton.’

‘What little girl?’

‘You know, who brought me the first time to your boat.’

Evie just shook her head. ‘I don’t remember. I first saw you around town in that awful shopping precinct where Shannon and I had the stall. You were always hanging about by yourself. We noticed you because you looked too thin, and scared. Like you were in trouble.’

‘Was it so obvious?’

‘Only to us. Because we’ve been there. Know what it looks like.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Shannon, she was pregnant about your age. She had a baby too, once. That’s why she’s hanging around Joe so much. Wanted to stay longer with him.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘She’s desperate. For a baby. She fancies Joe, thinks he might be a good bet. For a baby.’ Evie’s face clouded over. She stared absently for a few minutes. Then she seemed to come back to Mia from wherever she’d been. ‘It’s hard for her around you, I think. You didn’t even want a baby, but you got pregnant just like that. And she hasn’t.’

‘What happened to the baby?’

‘You don’t want to know, Mia.’

‘Yes I do.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t want me to tell you.’

‘Can’t you tell me about it? Just a bit?’

‘Well, you mustn’t tell Shannon. It’s too awful. No, I can’t tell you.’

‘Please, Evie.’

‘You won’t like it.’

‘Please.’

‘I warned you, remember. It’s not very nice.’ Evie’s face darkened. Mia could feel her own heart thumping, not sure what she was about to hear.

‘She was only about eleven months. Eden, we called her. She was just beginning to walk, you know, pulling herself up on things and taking a few steps, and you have to watch them all the time then, but Shannon was in a bit of a state. I didn’t really realize, otherwise I could have helped more.’

Evie’s eyes filled with tears.

‘She wasn’t coping, I suppose. Drinking too much, and getting stoned most of the time, and not eating properly. The baby – Eden – well, we don’t really know what happened, but she must have got out on the deck when Shannon was out of her head down in the cabin.’

‘Oh no – no –’

‘I told you you didn’t want to know.’

Mia waited, horrified, for what she now knew was coming.

‘She must have fallen in. It’s easy enough, there’s no edge or anything up here. It was the river, not the canal. Not your river, at Ashton. Further north. It was in the papers and everything. About three, four years ago. They didn’t find the baby’s body for ages. It got washed up at some weir, eventually. It was terrible. So now you know.’

Mia watched the innocent green water of the canal as the boat bobbed on its mooring. It didn’t bear thinking about. A small child, slipping over the edge. No one hears the splash. Circles of ripples; a spiral of bubbles. Silence.

Poor, poor Shannon. How did you carry on after something like that?

Evie and Mia watched two damsel flies hovering along the line of reeds. A moorhen scuttled out from under the bank.

‘So, what’s going on with Shannon and Joe?’

‘He’s not really interested. Doesn’t want to be tied down with a child. Who does?’

Mia frowned.

‘Sorry, but you’ll find out. You don’t think so now. But you will.’ Evie started to untie the mooring rope. Mia took the empty mugs back down into the darkness of the cabin.

No I won’t. It’ll be different with me and my baby.

Mia curled herself up tighter on the bed. She rubbed a space in the condensation on the window and looked outside on to the canal. The water was smooth, not like the fast flowing river they’d left behind.

The small child toddles along the uneven deck. Ducks squabble among the reeds. A swan, perhaps, hisses at the hand stretched out towards it. Then the splash, the flailing arms. Bubbles.

Up till now Mia had felt quite settled, almost comfortable with Evie, in spite of her moods. Today though it felt different. There was a new note in Evie’s voice. An edginess in the way she moved. Mia wondered again what had happened to her. What sort of ‘trouble’ she’d been in. Was her story as terrible as Shannon’s?

The more she thought about it, the less it seemed to make sense. Shannon hadn’t seemed like someone who’d lost a baby like that. The way she’d talked to Mia. You could tell she liked the idea of Mia’s baby, was a bit jealous even, but not like someone who’d had a baby and it had died. If anything, it was Evie who seemed to be the troubled one. The moody one. What if, Mia started to wonder, what if it was Evie’s own story she’d just told, and not Shannon’s at all? She shivered.

She ought to go up and help Evie on deck, but instead she got out the two new postcards she’d bought at the post office in the last town they’d travelled through.

Dear Dad, just want you to know I’m still OK, but I’m sorry for all the trouble and I miss you. I don’t have any money left so could you put some in my account and I promise I will pay you back when I can get a job or something. Love Mia.

She turned the second one over. She was about to write Dear Becky, but on impulse she wrote Will instead.

*

Dear Will, how’s things? Miss you lots. Think of me next time you go along the beach. Pick up a pebble and wish me luck. Mia.

Writing their names made them feel closer. She put the cards in her pocket ready to post next time they stopped. She liked the feel of the card against her leg, a sort of connection with Will and Dad, reminding her they were there. Even as she travelled further away.

Instead of backs of offices and houses and narrow gardens stretching down to the scruffy towpath, they’d now reached open countryside. The canal kept parallel with a road for a while longer; heavy lorries whined up the hill and there was a background hum of traffic, but soon the canal wound in a broad curve along the valley bottom away from the main road and the only sounds were the engine throb and the gently swooshing of water against the bows. Mia went out on to the front deck. It was cold this morning, although the sun was shining through a thin veil of cloud. She could see her breath. White puffs of smoke.

Dragon’s breath, they used to call it on frosty mornings when they walked down the lane to the primary school at Whitecross. Dad walked them down there, Mia, Laura and Kate, and usually he carried Mia’s bag because she was the littlest and got tired. He’d be there again in the afternoon, waiting in the playground in the sea of mums. He was quite a novelty: not many other fathers did the daily pick up. The women teased and joked with him and it made Mia cross even though she didn’t know why back then. She didn’t know the word flirting, which Kate used accusingly.

Back then, the three of them were still waiting for Mum to return. They expected her any day. They hadn’t understood that she was never coming back. When Mia ran out of her classroom at the end of the day, she’d throw her book bag into Dad’s stomach, and he’d whisk her up in his arms and hold her close. He didn’t say how much he was missing Mum. None of them did. When they walked back up the lane Dad held her small hand in his large one. ‘Car coming!’ he’d yell, and they would squeeze into the hedgerow out of the way. She could feel his body trembling as he pressed her back from the edge. Danger, safety. Always the two together, one edged around with the other.

Mia wrapped her fleece round her tighter. She hadn’t thought about all those things Dad had done for her in a long while.

Ahead of the barge, mist rose like steam above the water. A moorhen peeped and scurried into the reed bank. On both sides of the canal the view opened up on to fields and distant hills. Hardly a house in sight now, just the odd cluster of farm buildings and every so often a stone bridge over the canal where a lane crossed over.

Mia watched the way sun reflected off the water on to the stone sides of the bridge in ripples of light. She was beginning to notice things she would never have bothered with before. Moving so slowly, the little things that changed seemed more important. Underneath, though, the bubble of worry was growing. How much longer could she really keep going like this, on Evie’s boat, with no money and no idea how to get any? She still hadn’t phoned Mum to say she was coming. In her own mind, she couldn’t see further than the long line of canals and rivers crisscrossing the map. She couldn’t imagine ever reaching anywhere.

‘Do you want to steer for a bit?’ Evie called from the back of the boat. Mia edged her way along the side, balancing herself. She’d got used to the feeling now, was less scared that she’d tip backwards into the water. She knew it wasn’t very deep, even if she did; nothing like the river that would whirl you along and under as if you were a dead branch or a bundle of rags.

Or a drowning baby.

Evie sat in the open doorway while Mia took the tiller.

It was an easy straight stretch of water. She plucked up courage to talk again.

‘Evie? Would you tell me? What happened to you? You said you’d both been in trouble. You and Shannon.’

Evie sighed. ‘Very boring. You don’t want to know.’

‘Yes I do. Please.’

‘Not now. Not right after telling you about Shannon. Another day maybe. See how I feel.’