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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

A shout behind her. But she couldn’t turn back and she ran, stumbling and crying, for the road. She heard the rumble of his machine coming up behind, the lights on her back illuminating a strip of road with her long shadow ahead. She turned to the glare.

‘I never lied,’ he said. ‘You all created a version of me that suited you. Ask your brother. You wouldn’t have looked at me twice if you thought I was a nobody from nowheresville. And you’re wrong. I do care. I care about you, Vee, no one else,’ he said. She wanted to believe it so much, to get on the bike and go back to the old marsh shack and for him to touch her and to do it all over again. She wanted to believe it so much that her body was already there.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, wearily. ‘I don’t believe anything you say.’

‘Screw you then,’ he said. He revved the engine and drove off.

The lights of the bike receded into the distance towards the town as she half ran in a blur of rage and tears, until the rear light became a pinprick and then faded altogether. She ran all the way home, a harsh east wind against her face and it began to rain.

PART 3

HIGH TIDE

Saturday, 31st January 1953

The day of the flood

A vigorous trough of low pressure moving
east across the British Isles
Full moon, spring tide

1.

Funnelling surge 8–10 ft above sea level in the North Sea

They used to kill witches by the incoming of the tide. Muriel’s grandmother loved telling stories of the old days, delighting in the most gruesome of details. The old ladies, for they were usually old, were tied to a post on the ebb tide. Muriel imagined her own grandmother, stringy and sea-tanned, hair like iron filings, when she told her of the women, drowned as the tide came in over them, a crowd watching from the safety of the shore. Did this happen in Wells? she asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Oh yes, her grandmother said.

Muriel had always had a fascination with the foreshore. She was like a Victorian mud lark when a child, a cloth bag over her shoulder, hair wild about her face. A relic from another age. There was treasure here when the tide turned, when the storms came and left their bounty on the strand line.