The other passengers had been glad to see the back of them.

When he realised he was west of Bradfield, he had decided to walk back to town over the hills, in order to calm himself and to think.

The last time he’d stood at this vantage point there had been a vast reservoir beneath his boots, and a man on an embankment, battling the elements. The reservoir and the dam that had failed to contain it were gone. Instead, he was looking down on a ragged gorge between the valley sides, an untidy tumble of escarpments and rocky hillocks with a thin river threading through it. No sign remaining of the monster that had almost killed him. To think, he’d been afraid of re-entering a forge. He wondered what Mr Gunson would say – or Harriet, come to that – if he told them that the ambition he first held, of becoming a steelworker and operating the great Bessemer machine, was back with him, stronger than ever. He would be at the cutting edge. Or he might even start his own business, small scale at first, forging edge tools, saws, knives, then building an empire as big as Atlas. Why not? Anything was possible in a boom town and now he had good reason to make something of himself, the best reason in the world.

And he wondered how his father would react to the letter he now intended to write. Tek on a tenant to run the place, what’s that soft git on about? Does he think we’re made o’ money?

Silas looked away from the scar on the landscape and turned his feet towards the landscape of chimney stacks beneath the steep valley sides. Shandy barked once, a sharp sound in the still air.

‘All right then, girl. C’mon. Harriet’s waitin’ on us.’

Author’s Note

On a stormy night in the early spring of 1864, a reservoir burst its banks above the Loxley Valley and seven hundred million gallons of water were unleashed on the unsuspecting people of the town below.

I came across an account of the disaster whilst researching my grandparents’ early working lives as file cutters and was surprised to find that one of the most significant events of the Victorian era earned little more than a footnote in history. Yet almost two hundred and fifty lives were lost, engulfed by the wall of water that tore through the valley and into the industrial basin; whole families swept from their beds, night shift workers killed in mills and forges with no comprehension of what had befallen them.

Silas and Harriet and most of the characters who appear in this novel are fictional, but the chief engineer is based on the real John Gunson, who continued to build reservoirs for the waterworks company until his death in 1886.

Acknowledgements

This debut novel could not have been written without early readers and cherished writer friends Emma Clark-Lam, Sara Cox, Sarah Daniels, Asha Hicks, Carly Reagon, and my daughter Jess Cooke, or completed without my wonderful agent, Kate Nash, and amazing editor Emily Bedford. My gratitude to Rose Bray, and to Suzannah Dunn and the Curtis Brown Creative team. Loving thanks to my family and friends for putting up with me, especially my husband Alan, who never had a doubt. Finally, apologies to my Labradors, Piper and Mini, who weren’t walked enough by half when deadlines loomed.