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Back The Night of the Flood
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. 1954
  7. PART 1
  8. 1.
  9. 2.
  10. 3.
  11. 4.
  12. 5.
  13. 6.
  14. 7.
  15. 8.
  16. 9.
  17. PART 2
  18. 1.
  19. 2.
  20. 3.
  21. 4.
  22. 5.
  23. 6.
  24. 7.
  25. 8.
  26. 9.
  27. 10.
  28. PART 3
  29. 1.
  30. 2.
  31. 3.
  32. 4.
  33. 5.
  34. 6.
  35. 7.
  36. PART 4
  37. 1.
  38. 2.
  39. 3.
  40. 4.
  41. 5.
  42. 6.
  43. 7.
  44. 8.
  45. 9.
  46. 10.
  47. 11.
  48. 1954
  49. Acknowledgements
  50. About the author
  51. An Invitation from the Publisher

She pulled up her knickers, put her vest back on and drew the old blanket up around her. Dazed and sore, her limbs were still burning. It was not romantic, it was a kind of glorious, awful violence. Even with him. That’s what it felt like: something taken away from her and something given too. She wanted to dismiss it, to make it nothing, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t nothing. Her body was not the same, she was not the same, everything she touched, everything she looked at was left with a kind of mark. Before, she thought he was marking her body. Now it was inside her too. He was inside her. This girl is no longer a virgin. While he slept next to her she cried hot tears quietly into the pillow with the shame of allowing it to happen, that she had betrayed Arthur so thoroughly. But after a few minutes, she sniffed and wiped her eyes. Something had changed. And there was triumph in that, whatever other discomfort and doubt she might feel.

In the newspaper reports of the atom bomb test it said the heat was scorching and the power of the blast created a blinding light. If Russia bombed them, then all of Norfolk would be effaced, wiped out in a white-hot flash. Nothing else would matter then but that she and he had been here, in a damp marsh shack on the edge of the sea. It wasn’t nothing.

8.

January 1953

‘You’re late.’

Arthur stood on the threshold of Howe Farm and stared at Verity. ‘But I’m so glad you’re here. I can’t bear all the rigmarole. You can keep me company while I sort out the breakfast.’ She seemed hopped up on something, all twitchy and her words running on. Her face was flushed and shiny. She barely let him take off his coat before she dragged him by the sleeve through the hall towards the kitchen.

‘I can’t. I’ve got to go with them. I’d rather stay here.’

She stopped at the kitchen door, swung round and looked at him accusingly. ‘What? Why? What on earth possessed you? You hate hunting.’

He shrugged. He didn’t see why he should explain himself to her. And there was no easy way to explain the lust for destruction he was feeling. ‘Peter asked,’ he said. Something about the way her face creased in disgust made him want to hurt her. He thought about telling her about the man in the café and the metal case Jack had handed over. But it seemed like a scene from a thriller with no bearing on their lives.

‘He took Peter to a prostitute in Norwich, you know.’