Free The Hook by Raffaella Barker Page A

in the ground above the main lake. The porch broke up the long side wall and its weather-bleached timber made everything new and just finished look old and permanent. In the roof, bedrooms with pointed ceilings faced out above the porch, window frames curved like plough yokes over glass which time would twist and warp. The house was Frank’s surrogate wife andhe treated it with the clichéd romance that he had long ago stopped offering Jessica. Every week, he came home from Lynton with flowers. Sometimes he gave them to Christy saying, ‘These are to go on the kitchen windowsill and those are for the sitting room,’ so she knew they were not meant for her.
    Once, after a trip abroad, Frank unwrapped ornaments like jewels: a red glass inkwell, oily as a boiled sweet, a pair of emerald flutes to hold single roses, a tear-shaped turquoise ashtray. He arranged them on a small table, placing them then standing back, pushing them an invisible distance then standing back again, in a trance until they sparkled in an arc around the photographs of Jessica on their wedding day. Christy watched him from the hall. He didn’t know she was there and she couldn’t disturb him even though a man was waiting to see him. Later, when Frank had gone out to the lake, she pulled a chair up to the little table and sat down in front of her laughing mother. Sunlight tilted through the glass ornaments leaving a rainbow smudge on the table. A tiny insect landed, its body a pea-green glow between transparent wings, whirling as it changed its mind and flew off again. Christy leant back in her chair and closed one eye and for a moment before the sun was swallowed up by cloud she could see Jessica dancing in red and turquoise.
    That summer there was no rain for six weeks. The lakes sank as the sun scorched rays across the bakedearth and the trout hid themselves in cool deep hollows. Christy helped a small boy dig for worms while his father was fishing, but there were none; they too had forced their way deeper down, to a subterranean layer where soil was damp. The first fishermen arrived at dawn, and Christy woke every morning to the purr of an engine, the clunk of a car door closing.
    She asked Frank to restrict the hours.
    â€˜I had to get up at five today, Dad. Can’t we stop them coming so early?’
    But Frank laughed.
    â€˜It’s good for you, and we’ll lose business if we don’t let them come early. It’s too hot to fish during the day. The trout won’t rise.’
    He was right. Walking out as the sun rose, rubbing her eyes, Christy was glad she had to be up. White mist lay over the water and low across the fields, rising to drape tree trunks, thinning in patches warmed by the sun. Her feet left a dark trail through dew-powdered grass as she walked around the lake to a solitary fisherman. A clatter of beating wings broke the silence and three ducks skidded on to the water shouting a warning to one another as they landed. She recognised the fisherman as a regular, and passed him with a professional blinkered smile and muttered greeting. Frank insisted that all members were greeted, and if no one was in the office when they arrived, Christy had to walk around both lakes making sure they had seen her.
    â€˜It means they know we know they are fishing; there are always some who want to poach, and this stops them.’
    This technique seemed to work. The last time Christy had had to stop a fisherman and ask to look in his bag was three months ago. She remembered it with a shudder. Usually when she thought someone was poaching she called Frank to deal with them, but on this occasion he was away. The man had not been to the lake before; he arrived early, paid a day’s membership fee and settled himself on the far side of the big lake. Christy hadn’t taken much notice of him. Her paperwork preoccupied her, and the book-keeper had come. But at five o’clock he appeared outside the office to pay