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Back The Night of the Flood Save as PDF
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

On her side in bed, her body cooling, Verity watched the perfect curve of his sleeping back. The chains around his neck had fallen behind him. The tags, the tiny key and the cylinder dangled in front of her eyes. Tentatively, she reached out and felt the small metal ampoule between her fingers. She unscrewed it gently and tipped it up. Into her palm fell a creamy-white pill. She took a sharp intake of breath and almost dropped it. Jack breathed out and twisted slightly so he was further away from her. In a quick movement, she put the pill back in its case and screwed it shut tight.

On her back, hands shaking, it was as though she could feel the machinery of armies and governments whirring and moving through her. Of the world turning and her, helplessly caught up in a tide of change she didn’t understand. Their lives – hers, Peter’s, Arthur’s – small and insignificant and disposable. And Jack – carrying a drug that could end it, from one heartbeat to the next.

When he woke, she would ask him finally. What are you doing when you leave me and fly east? Do you stop at the Baltic Sea, or do you fly over Moscow to Siberia? Through the Iron Curtain and beyond. Why? And in her heart the real question: Will you always come back?

But when he did wake he turned over and brought his face close to hers, and she said nothing because she didn’t want it to stop.

Afterwards he stood above her, the black rectangle of the camera in front of his face, just a lick of flame-coloured hair above. She pulled the blanket over her head. It was both flattering and disquieting that she was being watched and studied. She wondered what the pictures would show of her, what iniquity looked like.

9.

Friday, 30th January 1953

The day before the flood

Low Z depression, centre moving north-east
Further considerable deepening expected in LZ
in the next twenty-four hours

The old moon reflected bulbous and white on the East Fleet marsh. Muriel could hear the geese honking up a racket in the fields west of Beach Road. Every night in the winter, flocks of pink-footed geese returned to the west marshes to roost. But tonight they were still in the fields. They knew something was coming.

Down by the harbourmaster’s house on the quay, Muriel took the weight off her feet. On the wall it marked the heights of the last ruinously high tides. 1930. 1912.