Chapter 57

Honor

‘I get tired but otherwise, I’m good,’ Satnam says, helping herself to another biscuit. ‘It’s strange to be on the Kingfisher again, but happy strange.’

Honor, Alex, Nevis and Satnam are taking cold lemonade and shortbread in the saloon. They are tied up on the banks of the Avon upstream of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, awaiting a helping tide. It is afternoon and hot, the water of the Floating Harbour a burnished bronze in the late summer sun.

Honor says, ‘It’s a year since we were last all together on the boat. Can you believe that?’

‘It’s like everything in the meantime happened to another Satnam.’

Honor observes Satnam and Nevis lock eyes, their lips curling upwards, new lives already evident in their smiles.

After the fire and the incident in Leigh Woods, Honor and Nevis went back up to London to recover. But sooner than they anticipated, Nevis missed Bristol and Satnam, Honor missed Alex and after a week on the canal in Hackney, they decided to make the journey to Bristol in the Kingfisher, tie up a while, until they figured out what was next.

Satnam says to Nevis, ‘Will you miss being a student?’

‘Perhaps, if I have the time to think about it much.’

Honor will see to it that she doesn’t. She has signed on for a winter berth on the Montgomery canal on the Welsh Marches where she and Nevis will stay busy during the cold and dark months giving the Kingfisher a facelift, and also a change of name to the Wise Owl. When spring arrives Nevis will head off to her placement at the bird sanctuary at Hermaness. She’ll spend the summer on Unst, monitoring the guillemot breeding season. After that, who knows? Perhaps one day she might even return to her studies.

Satnam says, ‘I’m going to miss Bristol but I’ll be back to visit Luke.’ Tomorrow, Satnam is going back to live with her parents and begin a law degree at Birmingham University. Despite the official apology from the new Vice Chancellor of Avon along with the offer of a place to study law, it has been an easy decision. ‘Biochem was what I thought I should study. But the law is my passion,’ she’d told them. There is a lesson there.

Bikram and Narinder have been very supportive of their daughter’s decision. It appears that, at the prospect of a lawyer in the family, Satnam’s parents have decided marriage can wait. Love, though, has a timetable all of its own. Luke is staying on at Avon to finish his degree, but it’s not far from here to Birmingham and, as Satnam says, there will be visits.

‘We’ll keep in touch, won’t we?’ Satnam says to Nevis now.

‘All the time, forever,’ Nevis says.