Love on the Waterways
Page 35
‘Duck,’ screamed Verity. As they did, bits of brick hit the bank. ‘Not us, not this time, it’s those poor beggars over there,’ Polly coughed, pointing to the smoke. ‘And not for Timmo and the boys either.’
‘Bet?’ Sylvia groaned. ‘She’s a bit ahead with the new trainee crew.’ She could taste blood in her mouth and realised she had bitten her tongue.
‘She was well ahead. She must be at Limehouse,’ shouted Polly. The cut was settling, the rocking becoming less violent but still enough for them to hang on to the tillers. Polly continued, ‘If the girls handled the locks without mishap, that is. Come on, let’s get out of here, what the hell did I cut the engine for?’
Verity and Sylvia checked the boats for damage but there were only superficial scrapes as the fenders had taken the worst of it. Verity restarted the motor in the engine house, and ran back across the roof of the cabin, doubling over, while debris still rained down. Within seconds they headed under another bridge, safe for those few seconds, then out again while Dog remained on the roof, dusty hair still standing up along her back, small bits of debris caught in it. She was sniffing the air, for they were heading nearer the black smoke that the breeze was carrying across the cut. It was pungent with destruction and mingled with the looming clouds.
Distant cries reached them, and the bedlam of rescue vehicles which set Dog barking, but there was no more of her unearthly howling. Polly yelled, as she motored on, ‘Hang on to her collar and keep her with you on the roof, Ver. Sylvia, keep your eyes peeled for any warehouses about to fall, and for Bet, of course.’
Polly needed both hands on the tiller to steer them almost straight as the boats bucked against the unsettled water and they all peered ahead, and then there they were, Bet’s breasted motor and butty crashed lopsidedly into the bank, both cabins damaged, and no sign of life. Verity wailed, ‘Bet? Oh no? No, dammit. No.’
Dog leapt from the roof to the counter, barking frantically. Sylvia felt she could hardly breathe. Not Bet. Not their old trainer, their best friend. Please, God, not Bet.
Polly steered into the bank too, then cut the engine, her face deathly pale, Verity held back Dog. ‘Wait, Dog.’ Her voice shook. Sylvia leapt on to the towpath, her eyes fixed on the damaged boats. Were the girls hurt? Please no, Bet had just got over her latest chest infection, but how stupid, what was a chest infection here, now?
She moored up the prow while Verity hauled on the stern mooring rope, securing it on the bank stud as the bucketing cut slapped the boats backwards and forwards against the bank. ‘Think it’ll hold, Sylvia?’ she yelled.
‘It has to,’ Sylvia called as Polly jumped from Marigold’s counter on to Horizon’s and then to the bank. Then they all began running along the towpath, desperately calling Bet as the smoke and dust thickened, engulfing them so that it stung their eyes; they choked and coughed. Still they ran, calling Bet’s name, but there was no reply from the butty and motor.
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20 September 2018
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Epub ISBN: 9781473538801
Version 1.0
Published by Arrow Books 2018
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Copyright © Milly Adams 2018
Cover photography by Silas Manhood except background images © Getty Images
Milly Adams has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain by Arrow Books in 2018
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781784756925