Free Revenge of the Tide by Elizabeth Haynes Page B

Nothing happened. ‘Charged the battery?’
    Of course I hadn’t.
    ‘You’ve got a decent generator, you know.’
    ‘Have I?’
    ‘Bloody good job too. A new one would cost you a small fortune, and you need a decent generator, if you want to take her upriver. What you going to plug her into, otherwise?’ He indicated the pontoon and the electricity and water hook-up.
    ‘I hadn’t thought.’
    ‘Lots of things you probably haven’t thought. Got a cloth?’
    I found him some old rags from the storage and crouched on the deck next to him, watching as he cleaned black gunk away from joints, dials and levers.
    ‘So,’ he said cheerfully, leaning back on his heels, ‘while I’m doing this, you can tell me all about what happened in London.’
    I hesitated. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’
    He stopped what he was doing and gave me a pointed look.
    ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he said. ‘Just trying to make conversation, that’s all.’
    And he went back to tinkering with the engine.
    It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell him. Lord knew, it would be good to tell someone – it was just where to start.
    And then I had a picture of myself, dancing. How it felt to dance. How free.
    ‘Well, you know I used to be a dancer,’ I said, quietly.
    He carried on tinkering.
    ‘I started with ballet, when I was very small. I carried on with it until I was twelve. I was good at it, but not quite good enough for ballet school. When I got turned down for that I concentrated on gymnastics instead. I was alright at that, too.’
    ‘What happened?’ he asked, without turning.
    ‘Well, for a start, my body changed and suddenly I was the wrong shape for it. Then I got too busy with A-levels, then university. That was it, basically. Then, when I was working in London, I started looking for dance classes – something to do to keep fit. I thought, I’d enjoyed it before; it might be a good way to tone up. And – well – what happened was, I found a pole fitness class.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Pole dancing.’
    ‘Ah!’
    ‘Yes. You can laugh.’
    ‘I’m not laughing. Sounds like a good idea to me. Pass me that spanner? No, the other one.’
    I watched him for a moment, wondering whether I should carry on with this.
    ‘So – you went along? To the class?’
    ‘Yes. It was good fun. Not as easy as it looks, you know. You have to be fit, and physically strong – it’s not like other dancing classes where you can get away with it if you have a good sense of rhythm. And it was a fitness class really, but I loved it straight away.’
    ‘I bet you were good at it. What with all that dancing you’d done. And gym, and that.’
    ‘Yes, I was. Have you been to a club where they’ve done it?’
    He coughed a little. ‘Well, yes. Not very good though. I bet you were better.’
    I found myself laughing. ‘Probably, yes, I was.’
    Malcolm said, ‘Right, that’s all I can do until you get the battery charged up. We’ll have another try tomorrow.’
    I felt a bit bereft all of a sudden, until I realised that he had no intention of ending our conversation there. He wiped his hands on the dirty rag, and handed me his coffee mug. ‘I think I’d like a cuppa tea this time, if it’s all the same to you. I’ll just go back to Aunty Jean and get some Swarfega. Back in a minute.’
    Ten minutes later we were sitting back in the saloon, steaming mugs in front of us. I was glad of the warmth of the mug. I’d started the fire in the woodburner but it would be a while before it started throwing out any real heat.
    ‘I was good,’ I said. ‘The instructor was a girl called Karina. She’d worked in some of the big clubs, earned loads of money doing it. She said I was better than she’d been. She said I should try it. Dancing in a club, I mean.’
    ‘And you did.’
    ‘I needed the money,’ I said. ‘I’d got this plan that I wanted to buy a boat. You know there were times I loved the sales job, times when I hated it