William Morrow - 2007 - ISBN: 978-0-06-052527-9

Prologue

Late November

Mist rose in swirls from the still surface of the canal. It seemed to take on a life of its own, an amorphous creature bred from the dusk. The day, which had been unseasonably warm and bright for late November, had quickly chilled with the setting of the sun, and Annie Lebow shivered, pulling the old cardigan she wore a bit closer to her thin body.

She stood in the stern of her narrowboat, the Lost Horizon, gazing at the bare trees lining the curve of the Cut, breathing in the dank, fresh scent that was peculiar to water with the coming of evening. The smell brought, as it always did, an aching for something she couldn’t articulate, and an ever-deepening melancholia. Behind her, the lamps in the boat’s cabin glowed welcomingly, but for her they signaled only the attendant terrors of the coming night. The fact that her isolation was self-imposed made it no easier to bear.

Five years ago, Annie had left behind her husband of twenty years as well as her job with South Cheshire social services, and had bought the Horizon with money accumulated from her interest in her family’s shipping business. She’d imagined that the simplicity of life on a boat sixty feet long by a mere seven feet wide, and the physical demands of working the boat on her own, would keep her demons at bay. It had worked for a while. She’d developed a deep love of the Cut, as the traditional boating people called the canal, and an unexpected strength and pride in her own skills. Her explorations of the inland waterways had taken her from Cheshire to London, then back up the northern industrial route to Birmingham and Manchester and Leeds, until she sometimes imagined herself adrift in time, following the route of all those hardy people who had gone before her.

But lately that ghostly comfort had begun to fade, and she found herself returning more and more often to her old haunts, Cheshire and the stretch of the Shropshire Union Canal near Nantwich. Her memories came thronging back, and against the horrors she’d seen in child protective services, the measure of her own life seemed woefully inadequate. She’d been too afraid of loss to make her own mark against the darkness, to stay in her marriage, to have a child, and now it was too late for either.

She turned back towards the lamp-lit cabin, drawn by the thought of the white wine chilling in the fridge. One glass, she told herself, just to ease the evening in, but she knew her discipline would fail as the long hours of the night ticked away. Just when, Annie wondered, had she become afraid of the dark?

Ahead, the Cut curved away between the overarching trees, offering the elusive promise of vistas unseen, unexplored, and a chill little wind snaked across the water. Scudding clouds blotted the rising moon and Annie shivered again. With a sudden resolve, she leapt to the towpath. She’d take the boat up the Cut to Barbridge before the light faded completely. There, the bustle and sounds from the old canal-side inn would provide a welcome distraction. Perhaps she’d even go in for a drink, leave the bottle of wine safely corked, panacea for another night. Then first thing in the morning she’d move on, away from this place where the past seemed so much more present.

Kneeling in the soft turf with her hand on the mooring strap, she felt the vibration on the path before she heard the rapid footfalls, the quick pant of breath. Before she could move, the hurtling shape was upon her. She saw the boy’s wild, white face, felt the lash of his sodden clothing as he stumbled past her. He muttered something she didn’t quite catch, but knew it for a curse, not an apology.

Then he was moving away from her, and she imagined she heard the sound of his footsteps long after his slender shape was swallowed by the darkness.

Chapter One

December

Gemma James would never have thought that two adults, two children, and two dogs, all crammed into a small car along with a week’s worth of luggage and assorted Christmas presents, could produce such a palpable silence.

It was Christmas Eve, and they’d left London as soon after lunch as she and her partner, Duncan Kincaid, could get away from their respective offices, his at New Scotland Yard, hers at the Notting Hill Division of the Metropolitan Police. They had both managed a long overdue week’s break from their jobs and were on their way to spend the holiday with Duncan’s family in Cheshire, a prospect that Gemma viewed with more than a little trepidation.

In the back seat, her five-year-old son, Toby, had at last fallen asleep, his blond head tilted to one side, his small body sagging against the seat belt with the abandon only managed by the very young. Geordie, Gemma’s cocker spaniel, was sprawled half in the boy’s lap, snoring slightly.

Next to Toby sat Kit, Duncan’s thirteen-year-old, with his little terrier, Tess, curled up beside him. Unlike Toby, Kit was awake and ominously quiet. Their anticipated holiday had begun with a row, and Kit had shown no inclination to put his sense of injury aside for the sake of family harmony.

Gemma sighed involuntarily, and Duncan glanced at her from the passenger seat.

“Ready for a break?” he asked. “I’d be glad to take over.”

As a single fat raindrop splashed against the windscreen and crawled up the glass, Gemma saw that the heavy clouds to the north had sunk down to the horizon and were fast obliterating the last of the daylight. They’d crawled up the M6 past Birmingham in a stop-and-start queue of holiday traffic, and only now were they getting up to a decent speed. “I think there’s one more rest stop before we leave the motorway. We can switch there.” Reluctant as she was to stop, Gemma had no desire to navigate her way through the wilds of Cheshire in the dark.

“Nantwich is less than ten miles from the motorway,” Kincaid said with a grin, answering her unspoken thought.

“It’s still country in between.” Gemma made a face. “Cows. Mud. Manure. Bugs.”

“No bugs this time of year,” he corrected.

“Besides,” Gemma continued, undeterred, “your parents don’t live in the town. They live on a farm.” The word was weighted with horror.

“It’s not a working farm,” Kincaid said, as if that made all the difference. “Although there is a dairy next door, and sometimes the smell does tend to drift a bit.”

His parents owned a bookshop in the market town of Nantwich, but lived in an old farmhouse a few miles to the north. Kincaid had grown up there, along with his younger sister, Juliet, and as long as Gemma had known him he’d talked about the place as if it was heaven on earth.

By contrast, having grown up in North London, Gemma never felt really comfortable out of range of lights and people, and she wasn’t buying his glowing advertisements for country life. Nor was she thrilled about leaving their home. She had so looked forward to a Christmas unmarred by the calamities that had shadowed last year’s holidays, their first in the Notting Hill house. And she felt the children needed the security of a Christmas at home, especially Kit.

Especially Kit. She glanced in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t joined in their banter, and his face was still and implacable as he gazed out the window at the rolling Cheshire hills.

That morning, as Gemma had attempted a last minute sort through a week’s worth of neglected post, she’d come across a letter addressed to Kincaid and bearing Kit’s school insignia. She’d ripped it open absently, expecting nothing more than a fundraising request or an announcement of some school activity. Then, she’d stood in the kitchen, frozen with shock as she scanned the contents. It was from Kit’s head teacher, informing Kincaid of her concern over the recent drop in Kit’s academic performance, and requesting that he schedule a conference after the holiday. Previous notes sent home with Kit by his teachers, the head had added, had come back with signatures the staff suspected had been forged.

Gemma had waited with tight-lipped restraint until Kincaid got home, then they’d confronted Kit together.

Things had not gone well. Kincaid, his anger fueled as much by Kit’s duplicity as by concern over the boy’s school performance, had shouted at his son while Toby and the dogs had cowered in the background. Kit had gone white and balled into himself as defensively as a threatened hedgehog, and Gemma found herself the peacemaker.

“It’s too late to ring the head now,” she’d said. “We’ll have to wait until term takes up again after the holidays. Why don’t we all calm down and not let this spoil our trip.” Glancing at her watch, she added, “And if we don’t get off soon, we’ll never make it to your parents in time for tonight’s dinner.”

Kincaid had turned away with a shrug of disgust to load the last of the luggage into the car, and Kit had retreated into the stony silence he’d maintained since. It was ironic, Gemma thought, that although it was Kit who’d been called on the carpet, she felt that she and Duncan were the ones who had failed. They should have discussed how to handle things before they talked to Kit; perhaps they should even have spoken to the head teacher before tackling the boy.

Having recently come to at least a temporary resolution in the custody battle with Kit’s maternal grandparents that had consumed much of their last year, they’d allowed themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security. Kit had at last agreed to have his DNA tested, and when a match proved Duncan to be his biological father, the court had awarded him custody dependent on the continuing evaluation of the boy’s well being and the stability of his home life.

They should have known better than to take that achievement for granted, Gemma thought. It was too easy, and with Kit, things were never going to be easy. A simple paternity test was not going to magically erase the damage he’d suffered from his mother’s death and his stepfather’s abandonment.

As she glanced at Kincaid sitting beside her, she realized what had prompted his uncharacteristic display of anger that afternoon; fear that they might lose everything they had gained.

A rustle and a yawn came from the back seat. “Are we there yet?” piped up Toby. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry, sport,” Kincaid answered. “And we’re close. Just a bit longer.”

“Will Grandma Rosemary have mince pies for us?” Toby, as always, had jumped from a sound sleep to a high-energy state of alertness without any apparent transition.