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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

He manoeuvred himself round to push her off him and sit up but she took hold of his wrists and held them down in the sand and sat astride him. He thought he could break free but her grip was strong and his first effort failed. Her fringe had been cut back and the twin scythes of her black bob cut across her jaw. The sun created a halo glow on the top of her head. He squinted up at her, not wanting any more to release himself from her hold. It was then, he realised later, as he lay pinned down by her on the hot sand, that she had won. She had been trying, ever since he had arrived in their garden, to claim him as her own, playing a silent game with Peter over his loyalty and love. And now she had won, there on the dunes. She had won him forever.

*

From the golf course, you could see out over the fields to a faint sheen where the sea must be. They were the same twisted rope, Verity and this place. He couldn’t unknot one from the other, and yet he knew that he must.

6.

June

Eight months before the flood

From the middle of June onwards, the heat kept rising to an almost unbearable level. Verity was the only one who liked it. Mrs Timms complained about the milk curdling. On the marsh, gnats multiplied, grass withered and mud dried and cracked. Peter kept moving the cows to find somewhere to graze and they slapped their tails against the flies and drooped their heavy heads. A heat haze shimmered between the land and the vast, oppressive sky. Beyond the parched fields and the wilted barley, the sea glittered a bright, blinding white.

But the languid, stifling days and hot nights suited her post-school mood. Her exams were over and she wore a floppy straw hat, one of her mother’s old gardening ones, tried and mostly failed to sketch, left her legs bare and considered reading the pile of books her History mistress, Miss Gardiner, had recommended for cramming for the Oxford entrance in October.

Miss Gardiner. Oh, there was a crush. She was a slim, neat kind of woman, not much older than the students, with very straight hair always kept in a trim bun. She seemed impossibly glamorous and clever to Verity with her little berets and French cigarettes. Verity had wanted to be everything Miss Gardiner was: beautiful, erudite and educated. The mistress had taken her to her bosom and lent her all sorts of books and pictures of art. In the absence of close friends, Miss Gardiner was a worthy substitute.