Deep Water

by Christine Poulson

And anyway, she had no actual proof, none at all, that the lab book she had seen wasn’t the original. She hadn’t had long to look at it. She might have made a mistake. And was it even possible to get hold of a substitute lab book? They were supposed to be tightly controlled.

  This was no good. She sat up in bed, turned the pillow over, and laid down again, her cheek to the cool side. She did what she always did when she couldn’t sleep. She let her mind drift back and tried to focus on a special memory, something to distract her from the present. That time on holiday on the Peloponnese when she and a boyfriend had found a deserted bay, a huge sweep of sandy beach, and had stripped off and run naked into the sea… The Christmas before last with her brother and his little boys, the feeling of one on each side snuggling up to her on the sofa. A warm drowsiness crept over her. Her body gave a little jerk and then relaxed. She was slipping away.

  Abruptly she was wide awake again, knowing that she’d heard something. There was a creaking overhead. It came again. Then again, exactly as if someone was walking along the roof of the boat. Afterwards she wondered why she hadn’t switched the light on right away, but her first instinct was not to show herself. She picked up a torch from the shelf by the bed and switched it on. Training the beam of light on the floor, she moved silently on her bare feet into the saloon. She could still hear the creaking sound, moving ahead of her towards the wheelhouse.

  She felt for the light switch and flooded the room with light. The ordinariness of the scene gave her courage. There was a scuffling overhead. She jumped onto a chair, banged on the roof, and yelled, “Go away!”

  In the silence that followed she sensed the shock and fear of the creature on the other side. A pattering, a skittering, and then nothing. She guessed it had jumped off the boat. She ran up the steps to the wheelhouse and shone the torch out of the window. She glimpsed a long low shape moving fast along the tow path. A cat? A dog, maybe? But no, more likely to be a fox.

  She sat down on the bench and waited for her heart rate to settle. It was only a harmless animal that was just as frightened of her as she was of it. Why had she assumed that it was a person creeping about overhead? She thought of the past week and all that had happened. It wasn’t surprising that she was so easily rattled, and that she had been so ready to think that someone was trying to get into the boat. Maybe her suspicions about Will were just as ill-founded.

  There was a scrabbling at the window. She saw Orlando looking in and heard a plaintive mewing.

  When Katie opened the door, he dashed past her and disappeared down the stairs. She followed him and found him on her bed, purring loudly.

  “Was it you all along?” she asked him. “You naughty boy! I ought to put you straight back out.”

  He blinked at her benignly.

  “Oh, alright,” Katie said. “I could do with the company, come to think of it. Budge up.”

  She pushed him to one side and got into bed. Orlando arranged himself so that he was curled against her. The warmth of his body against her hip was comforting.

  Living on the boat had seemed such a great idea. And probably in the summer, when it was light in the evenings and there were plenty of people around, it was lovely. But in the middle of winter – in the dark – on her own…

  She wished she’d never agreed to move in.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Aunit of blood is about 250ml and it takes about four hours to get that much blood into a four-year-old child.

  Rachel and Chloe had been at the hospital since half past eight.

  Today, Rachel welcomed the visit. She wouldn’t have got up that morning if she hadn’t had to take Chloe for her transfusion. And now, sitting in the ward, she understood for the first time that the necessity to go on with Chloe’s life wasn’t just a burden, but was a structure that could support her.

  As always, the first hour or so had been exhausting. After the nurse had smoothed anesthetic cream on Chloe’s hand and inserted the cannula, the blood was hooked up to a drip on a stand. Chloe liked to pretend that the stand was a scooter and Rachel struggled to stop her whizzing up and down the ward. Now there was only an hour to go and they were playing snakes and ladders. Chloe’s eyelids were beginning to droop. She often did sleep for a while towards the end. Her energy was getting low by the time the transfusion came round, and she wouldn’t feel the full effect until the next day.

  They had both reached the top of the board. A six would take Rachel to the end of the game. Instead she threw a two and landed on a long winding snake that took her back to the bottom.

  “Oh, Mummy,” Chloe said, looking anxiously into Rachel’s face to gauge how upset she was. “That’s awful.”

  “Yes, it’s terrible!” Rachel said, smiling to show that she didn’t really mind. “Your turn.”

  Chloe threw a four and that took her to the last square. She laughed with delight and then looked serious.

  She patted Rachel’s arm. “Never mind, Mummy,” she soothed. “There’s always a next time.”

  Which was what Rachel always said. She wanted to cry when she heard her own consoling words spoken back to her, but she managed to hold in the tears.

  She smiled. “That’s right, there’s always a next time. Now, how about a little nap?”

  Chloe nodded. Her thumb went into her mouth. They would have to discourage that soon or she’d end up with braces, but Rachel didn’t have the heart just yet.

  They went back to Chloe’s bed. Rachel propped herself up on the pillows and positioned Chloe in the crook of her arm. A few sighs and snuffles, and Chloe was asleep.

  Rachel had brought a book with her, Molly Hughes’s A London Child of the 1870s, an old favourite, comfort reading of the highest order, but today the magic didn’t work. She couldn’t involve herself in Molly’s world when her own was so tumultuous.

  Daniel had been sorry, she knew, that they couldn’t have another child, but largely because of Chloe and the possibility of a match for her. Rachel’s pain was different. Yes, it gave her own sorrow a sharper edge, knowing that a second child might have been the means of curing Chloe. But she yearned for another child for its own sake, and sometimes her longing had been hard to reconcile with the fullness of her love for Chloe.

  The thought of another woman bearing Daniel’s child made her want to double over in pain. Until now, Rachel had consoled herself with the thought that OK, she was the second wife, but hers was the real marriage: she had given Daniel a child. Could it be that even here Jennifer had stolen a march on her? What if Daniel had found out that Jennifer was carrying his baby? Would Rachel have stood a chance?

  Daniel had made a point of getting home early so that they could all eat together, but they hadn’t talked any more about Harry. They went through the routine of Chloe’s bedtime and infusion – Daniel’s turn this time – then Daniel had gone into his study to work and Rachel had gone to bed. When Daniel came up, he touched her tentatively on the shoulder, hoping, she knew, that she would turn to him, but she had pretended to be asleep. He settled down on his own side of the bed and they lay there separately in the dark. At last she had drifted off. When she woke in the early hours, Daniel was muttering something in his sleep.

  She leaned over and heard him whisper, “Jennifer…” It was a lover’s sigh.

  It was as if she’d been slapped in the face. She wanted to shake him awake, shout at him, demand an explanation – but what was the point? He hadn’t done it on purpose; in the morning he might not even remember, and that was what made it so devastating.

  She got out of bed, went into Chloe’s room, and squeezed into bed with her. In the morning Daniel left a cup of tea on Chloe’s bedside table and went off to work while Rachel pretended to be still asleep.

  In some deep recess of her mind she had always known that Daniel had loved Jennifer more than he loved her. What she hadn’t known was that he still did. It was a terrible irony that in Harry Jennifer might have given them the means to cure Chloe, and –

  �
�Mrs Marchmont?” A nurse was bending over her. “Mrs Marchmont, the transfusion’s finished. I need to take out the cannula now.”

  This was sometimes the worst bit, but today the nurse eased it out with no difficulty.

  “Mummy, I’m hungry,” Chloe declared. “Chicken nuggets and chips.”

  They always had lunch at the hospital and Chloe always had the same thing. It was part of the routine, a little treat to look forward to.

  In the café she found a table that she could keep an eye on, and settled Chloe with paper and crayons.

  As she waited in the queue, she was hit by a wave of longing, she scarcely knew for what. For her mother, dead now for fifteen years? For refuge, for somewhere to go that wasn’t Dan’s house? If only she hadn’t suggested that Katie move onto the boat, because that was it – that was where she wanted to be, back in her own place.

  “Mummy, Mummy, it’s Katie!”

  Chloe was waving and pointing. Rachel had the disconcerting sensation of having someone she had just thought of pop up in front of her. Because, standing just inside the café door, there indeed was Katie.

  Katie’s meeting with Paul had gone surprisingly well. He had been unexpectedly sympathetic.

  He gave her his full attention as she told him about how she had witnessed the explosion in the lab and how Ian had come under suspicion. Ian’s condition was unchanged and he was still lying unconscious only a few floors away from where they were sitting.

  “A bad business,” he said. “It’s bound to have knocked you back a bit. I’ve known things like this happen before, though not on this scale. My wife once worked in a lab where there was a spate of malicious damage. They never managed to nail anyone for it, but it all stopped after a particular individual left the lab.”

  Katie sighed. “And then there’s the cell-line getting infected. Can’t blame Ian for that.”

  Paul pursed his lips. “Can’t you?”

  She stared at him. “You don’t think – ”

  “Who knows? Maybe not, but that’s the trouble, isn’t it? A lab operates on the basis of trust, and when that trust breaks down…” He shrugged.

  Katie considered this. “Maybe, but either way, I’ve got to the bottom of it now.”

  “Let me know what happens when you run it again,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “We know it works, don’t we? It’s a matter of getting enough evidence. I’m putting another research proposal together, based on this work. I’d like you on board.”

  This was excellent news, better than she could have hoped for.

  “With a grant in the offing I need to know which way the wind’s blowing as soon as possible,” he said, and this time he did look her in the eye. “The deadline for the research proposal is next week, so I’ll need to see the new, improved western blot in time to incorporate the results.” He flicked through his diary. “Let’s say Friday afternoon.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Friday afternoon,” he said firmly.

  And that was that.

  Out in the corridor, she stood irresolute. It was one o’clock. Should she head straight back to the lab, or grab a bite to eat? A wave of fatigue swept over her. Her bad night was catching up with her. Better to at least have a cup of coffee. And if she had lunch in the lab, she ran the risk of running into Will. The morning light had put her suspicions into perspective. It could all too easily be a product of her overheated imagination. But still she wasn’t in the mood for chatting with Will over lunch. She needed a bit of distance.

  She yawned and pushed open the door to the café.

  She wondered if Rachel would mind if she found someone to share the barge with her. There was a spare room, after all, and it had its own bathroom.

  Above the buzz of conversation she heard her own name. She scanned the room and there, sitting at a table and waving frantically, was Chloe.

  “I’ve been for my blood fusion,” Chloe announced. She showed off her hand with the plaster on it.

  Katie tried to emulate Chloe’s matter-of-factness. “How long does it take?”

  Chloe didn’t know. She looked to Rachel for help.

  “Around four hours,” Rachel said, putting her soup spoon down.

  She wasn’t eating much and it was clear from her pale face and red-rimmed eyes that something was wrong. It couldn’t just be the strain of the blood transfusion, could it? She must surely be used to it by now.

  Chloe turned her attention to her chips and the conversation lagged.

  With an obvious effort, Rachel said, “How’s the research going?”

  Katie gave a grimace. “Not great.” She told Rachel about the trouble with the cell-line, without explaining that it might have been sabotaged by Ian. She didn’t want to wash the lab’s dirty laundry in public.

  Rachel listened sympathetically.

  “It’s so easy for things to go wrong,” Katie continued, “and that’s one of the frustrations of the job. You do everything right – or you think you do – in a long preparation, and then it fails and you have no idea why. That’s what happened to me with my western blot.” She saw that she was holding Rachel’s attention, distracting her from whatever was bothering her. She went on, “And some procedures are just downright difficult. You need a lot of experience to pull them off and you have to have really good fine motor skills. A friend of mine says of one procedure that you should only do it wearing purple on a Wednesday.”

  Rachel smiled. “Before you showed me round the lab, I imagined it would all be much more high-tech. Untouched by human hand. All done by computers.”

  Katie laughed. “Oh, no, no. They play their part, of course, but in the end it’s all down to faulty human beings. You get tired and then you get clumsy and you fumble things or drop them and your confidence starts to slip. You start to think that it’s your fault. That you’re no good. The success or failure of something might hang on the fact that you had a row with your boyfriend before you came into work – or had a bad night’s sleep – and that reminds me.”

  She told them the story of Orlando, making it funny and playing up her surprise for Chloe’s sake. Chloe listened open-mouthed, her fork in mid-air, her chicken nuggets forgotten.

  Rachel laughed too, and some of the strain left her face.

  She said, “I should have warned you about him – actually, you must have got quite a shock.”

  Now was the time, if ever, for Katie to mention that she had made a mistake moving onto the boat by herself. She was still wondering how to put it when Rachel got there first.

  “Are you finding it difficult being there on your own?” she asked.

  “Well, I had been wondering… I know there isn’t much room, but it might be better if I was sharing – ”

  Chloe dropped her fork with a clatter. “Mummy, Mummy, I want to share with Katie! Can I? Oh, please!”

  Katie smiled at her eager face. “I’d love that, but there wouldn’t be room for us all, would there – not if your daddy came too.”

  “Well, actually…” Rachel said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The book was Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf by Catherine Storr, a favourite from Katie’s own childhood.

  It was early evening, and Katie and Chloe were sitting together on the sofa in the saloon, Chloe in her pyjamas. Chloe was leaning on Katie’s shoulder with her arm tucked under Katie’s. She knew the stories off by heart. If Katie got the wording even slightly wrong, she was pulled up straightaway. And yet, when Polly got the better of the wolf, Chloe laughed as heartily as if she was enjoying the joke for the first time.

  From the galley came the clatter of pans. Rachel had offered to cook and Katie had been happy to let her.

  Rachel had explained that there was a problem with the heating at their house and it was freezing cold. It would suit her to move into the boat for a few days while it was being fixed. Chloe could have her own bed and Rachel could sleep in the other bunk bed. Maybe it was true a
bout the heating, maybe it wasn’t, but Katie was certain there was more to it than that.

  When the story was over, Chloe asked to have it all over again and Katie turned back to the beginning. The comments and the laughter became less frequent. Chloe snuggled up closer. Katie looked down at her. Chloe’s thumb was in her mouth and her eyes were vague.

  Suppose this was my daughter, Katie thought, and that was my husband in the kitchen cooking supper. How would that be? It could be good, it could be very good…

  “Dinner’s ready,” Rachel said.

  Chloe roused herself to eat a little risotto, then Rachel took her off to clean her teeth and be tucked up in bed.

  When Rachel came back to the table an awkward silence fell. The very fact that Katie didn’t feel she could ask Rachel what had upset her made it difficult to think of something to say.

  Maybe Rachel felt the same. She toyed with her food and said, “We won’t stay more than a night or two.”

  Katie hastened to reassure her. “I meant what I said. I’m glad of the company. And it’s lovely, spending time with Chloe.”

  Another silence.

  Katie said, “How long did you live here on your own?”

  “Four years.”

  “And it was fine – ”

  “Oh, yes, I never minded that. I always felt safe here.”

  And that’s why you’ve come back here now, Katie thought, to your refuge. She reached for the bottle of wine and gestured towards Rachel’s glass.

  Rachel hesitated. “I don’t usually drink much – oh, go on.”

  Katie filled up her glass, and then her own. There were times when it was a good idea to have a little too much to drink and she thought this was probably one of them.

  “Did you get back on track in the lab this afternoon?” Rachel asked.

  “I hope so,” Katie said. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m really cut out for this. I wonder if I’ve got the right temperament. It’s like I told you earlier. You can work all hours – you can spend evening and weekends in the lab, but you still might not pull it off. You can be the most brilliant researcher that ever lived, but it’s not enough. You have to be lucky too.”