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Back Limelight
Chapters (49)
  1. Cover
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Also by Graham Hurley
  4. LIMELIGHT
  5. Copyright
  6. Dedication
  7. Epigraph
  8. ONE
  9. TWO
  10. THREE
  11. FOUR
  12. FIVE
  13. SIX
  14. SEVEN
  15. EIGHT
  16. NINE
  17. TEN
  18. ELEVEN
  19. TWELVE
  20. THIRTEEN
  21. FOURTEEN
  22. FIFTEEN
  23. SIXTEEN
  24. SEVENTEEN
  25. EIGHTEEN
  26. NINETEEN
  27. TWENTY
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. THIRTY
  38. THIRTY-ONE
  39. THIRTY-TWO
  40. THIRTY-THREE
  41. THIRTY-FOUR
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. THIRTY-NINE
  47. FORTY
  48. FORTY-ONE
  49. AFTERWARDS

‘That’s what I asked them. Andy wouldn’t say a word. Chris was crying. They had a bottle in the bag, wine I think, and she kept taking mouthfuls, big swigs. Then they both got out, and I did, too. It was cold that night, and quite windy, no one around, the whole place completely dead.’

I nod. I know the dock. Pavel’s apartment block was a couple of minutes away, at the end of the marina, and I often walked the path that skirts the little beach beside the dock entrance.

‘The tide,’ I ask. ‘What was happening to the tide?’

‘It was rushing out.’ Beth has turned to look at me. ‘You know the strength of that tide? It was like a river. I remember looking down at it. It was dark, of course, but there are lights around the corner on the prom and you could see this torrent of water pouring out to sea.’ She shivered at the memory. ‘Horrible.’

‘You guessed what they were up to?’ Nathan can’t let this go.

‘I guessed what she was up to, yes.’

‘And Andy?’

‘He was just holding her. Keeping her away from the edge.’

‘He didn’t want her to do it?’

‘He didn’t want me to watch. In fact, he didn’t want me there at all. He asked me to go.’

‘And?’

‘I went. Just drove away. Left them to it. Came home.’ She pauses, shaking her head. ‘Andy phoned me in the middle of the night, said she was at peace. He told me he’d walked back from Exmouth. Starry night, he said. Not a cloud in the sky …’ Her voice begins to catch, and she fumbles for a tissue as Presley gets to his feet to comfort her.

For a moment, no one says a word. Then Nathan seizes the bottle.

‘Christ,’ he says. ‘What a story.’

SIXTEEN

I lie awake for most of the night, haunted by the image of Christianne’s body being carried away by the ebbing tide. I’ve ridden that tide myself. I was aboard a sizeable sailing boat, outward bound for Brittany, standing on deck, yet I could still feel the fierce tug of millions of tons of water, emptying into the open sea. Drunk, helpless, Christianne would have been carried deep into the darkness, way beyond the curl of the beach and the red and green buoyage lights that flag the deep-water channel. She may have jumped with some kind of weight belt. She may have died hours later, miles out to sea. Either way, I’m praying she found just a moment or two of peace.