Exit Page 29

  ‘I’m not coming.’

  ‘Winner decides,’ said Felix.

  The queen was still wide open at the back. ‘Right you are,’ said Skipper.

  ‘Checkmate,’ said Felix.

  Skipper glared at the board to make sure it was true.

  It bloody was.

  ‘There she is,’ said Felix.

  Skipper Cann’s heart skipped a beat – and then almost burst out of his chest.

  ‘Susanna,’ he whispered, and lifted himself out of the wheelchair they’d borrowed from the Red Cross.

  Felix grabbed his arm to steady him.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said anxiously, but Skipper couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t speak. Not for a bit. He just nodded. Kept nodding. Kept looking.

  He thought he’d never see her again. And he’d forgotten how beautiful she was. She looked sleek. Cleaned up. De-rusted. New ropes, new cables, even new brass cleats. The cracked glass in her wheelhouse replaced and polished. Her hull repainted in the same sky blue, with her name across the stern – Susanna – and her registration on the bow in bold black letters.

  BD77.

  ‘You want to go aboard?’

  Stupid bloody question!

  Felix went ahead of him and Miss Knott behind. They all helped each other and the dogs down the grassy bank and across the new gangplank.

  Skipper’s feet touched the deck and a great surge of energy ran up his old legs like electricity. Suddenly he was no longer part of the land, but was part of the sea. And he knew the sea in a way he’d never known the land or wanted to know the land. The thought that from this very spot he could go anywhere in the world. Anywhere! And the Susanna would carry him there . . .

  He felt young again. Alive again. In love again. And he stood on the fresh white deck and had to blow his nose with happiness.

  Miss Knott hugged him, and Felix tried to shake his hand, but Skipper ignored it and hugged him too.

  He strode into the wheelhouse. The wooden interior was freshly sanded and varnished but still as familiar as his own face in a mirror. The wheel with the one repaired spoke, the compass he’d taken off the Megan II, his trusty old fish-finder. All just as he’d left it, but better now for having been lost to him.

  The key was in the ignition. He turned it and the engine chugged into life. He laughed like a child.

  Then switched off and the silence felt louder.

  ‘You did this?’

  ‘Not personally. I found a local chap who did her up. Tovey.’

  ‘Tovey Chanter?’

  ‘Yes. You know him?’

  ‘I do,’ nodded Skipper. ‘Know him well.’ He hesitated, then smiled and looked around at the Susanna again more carefully. ‘He done a proper job, Felix. And this is a proper day out.’

  Felix beamed, as pleased as punch, and Miss Knott squeezed his arm, and Skipper could see they were going to be in love, even if Felix didn’t know it yet.

  What he wouldn’t give to be seventy-five.

  ‘Are you going to take her out?’ said Felix.

  Skipper looked across the river and scratched his chin. The day was bright and sunny, but it was blowy and the tide was on the turn, and there was a chop on the Torridge that was quite daunting. Not for an old salt like him, of course – he knew the river like a lover – but even before the treacherous Bar that had to be crossed before reaching the sea, there were sandbanks and gullies and cross-currents to catch out the unwary.

  ‘Not today,’ he said. ‘But another day, we must all go together.’

  They both looked a little disappointed. Probably thinking he might not last till another day, thought Skipper, with no little amusement.

  ‘Bring the dogs too,’ he smiled. ‘And a picnic.’

  ‘Oh, that would be lovely,’ said Miss Knott. ‘Wouldn’t it, Mabel?’

  ‘Grrrreat,’ growled Felix, and they both laughed.

  ‘Can you take a picture, Miss Knott?’ said Skipper. ‘Me and Felix?’

  She had bought a small disposable camera. One with real film in it, for added expense and inconvenience.

  Felix stood beside him at the wheel and Skipper put his arm around his shoulder and Miss Knott took a little while to work out how to press the button, but got there in the end.

  ‘And one from the shore? Get the Susanna in?’

  They helped Miss Knott on to the gangplank and then Felix shepherded her and Toff and Mabel carefully up the grassy bank so they could get the whole boat in the picture.

  By the time they turned around at the top, Skipper had cast off and the Susanna ’s bow was already swinging lazily away from the shore.

  ‘Skipper!’

  He started the engine and turned the wheel and adjusted the choke, and the deck throbbed like a heart under his feet. He looked out of the wheelhouse door. Watched them grow smaller. Miss Knott clinging to Felix – worried for him – as if he didn’t know what he was doing.

  But he knew the Susanna.

  And he knew Tovey Chanter.

  Skipper didn’t know how much Felix had paid Tovey, but it was sure to be too much. And it was just as sure that Tovey had done a horrible job where it mattered most – in all the places Felix would never see.

  And all those places were under the water.

  Yes, Tovey had been most liberal with the paint, but paint was not planking or caulking. Paint didn’t hold a boat together . . .

  Skipper opened the little porthole, the better to hear the gulls arguing overhead. A swan made way for him with a bow. A Bideford Blue slid past in a single scull, working hard to get home, and a man and his boy in a dinghy made jagged little turns in the eddies near the slipway over East-the-Water.

  Learning the ropes.

  Skipper looked back at the grassy bank. Felix and Miss Knott and Mabel and Toff were still easy to see with his seafarer’s eyes. Miss Knott was animated. Waving her arms a bit. Wanting to go for help, most likely.

  But Felix just stood.

  Stood and watched him steer the Susanna down the Torridge and under the new bridge and towards the open ocean.

  Skipper felt an unexpected lump in his throat.

  Felix knew what he was doing. He knew. Had probably known for a while.

  Maybe right from the start . . .

  The first proper wave slapped the boat sideways. Skipper snatched at the fish-finder to steady himself and it came away in his hand. He looked at it and started to laugh. That was so Tovey! It wasn’t even wired up! The lazy old bastard had just glued it to the dash! He’d probably nicked it and then charged Felix a fortune to put it back where he’d found it. Skipper doubled over with laughter.

  The Susanna would never make it over the Bar.

  Lost at sea.

  The wind freshened and blew salt spray into his face. He licked his lips and smiled.

  As they passed through the towering portal of the new bridge, he stepped out of the wheelhouse and looked back at the riverbank one last time.

  Miss Knott had gone for help, but Felix still just stood.

  Skipper Cann waved goodbye, and his friend waved back.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Jim Maxwell and other Bideford police officers who were helpful during the writing of Exit, and to Richard Harris at the British Dental Association.

  As always, I’m grateful to the whole team at Transworld, who work with unflagging enthusiasm to make each book the best it can be. Special mention to my lovely publicist, Becky Short, who makes being on the road so much easier for me, and to Richard Shailer for his beautiful book covers, and to the World’s Greatest Driver, Bradley Rose. Thank you all.