Never Alone (30 page)

The idea for
Never Alone
came to me when we were thinking of moving house. For many months, I spent far too much time browsing through houses for sale on various property websites, and in the course of my search I came across the property that became the inspiration for Four Winds Farm. Alas, it sold before our house was even on the market, but perhaps that was just as well. Personally, I don’t think I would cope with living somewhere so remote!

Looking at the pictures of the grey stone house nestling into the hillside, the valley laid out before it, I could imagine how it might feel to be safe and warm inside when the weather closes in. From picturing safety and comfort, it’s never long before I start to imagine what would be the most terrifying thing to happen next – and Sarah’s story began to emerge.

I hope you’ve enjoyed
Never Alone
. I’d love to hear what you think of it, so if you have a spare minute please do come and say hello on Facebook or Twitter, or email me via the website – all the details are below.

The setting for
Never Alone
is central to the story, and if you enjoyed it you might also enjoy my second book,
Revenge of the Tide
, which is set mostly on a houseboat on the river Medway in Kent. Strange how the most beautiful places inspire the scariest of stories! You can read the first part of
Revenge of the Tide
here – hope you like it.

Elizabeth Haynes

July 2016

@elizjhaynes

facebook.com/elizabethjhaynes

www.elizabeth-haynes.com

Read on for an extract from Elizabeth Haynes’ bestselling novel
Revenge of the Tide.

It was there when I opened my eyes, that vague feeling of discomfort, the rocking of the boat signalling the receding tide and the wind from the south, blowing upriver, straight into the side of the
Revenge of the Tide
.

For a long while I lay in bed, the sound of the waves slapping against the hull next to my head, echoing through the steel and dulled by the wooden cladding. The duvet was warm and it was easy to stay there, the rectangle of the skylight directly above showing the blackness turning to dark blue, and grey, and then I could see the clouds scudding overhead, giving the odd impression of moving at speed – the boat moving rather than the clouds. And then, that discomfort again.

It wasn’t seasickness, or river-sickness, come to that: I was used to it now, nearly five months after I had left London. Five months living aboard. There was still a momentary shock when my feet hit the solid ground of the path to the car park, a few wobbly steps, but it was never long before I felt steady again.

It was a grey sort of a day – not ideal for the get-together later, but that was my own fault for planning a party in September. ‘Back to school’ weather, the wind whistling across the deck when I got up and put my head out of the wheelhouse.

No, it wasn’t the tide, or the thought of the mismatched group of people who would be descending on my boat later today. There was something else. I felt as though someone had rubbed my fur the wrong way.

The plan for the day: finish the last bit of timber cladding for the second room, the room that was going to be a guest
bedroom at some point in the future. Clear away all the carpentry tools and store them in the bow. Sweep out the boat, clean up a bit. Then see if I could cadge a lift to the cash-and-carry for party food and beer.

There was one wall left to do, an odd shape, which was why I had left it till last. The room was full of sawdust and offcuts of wood, bits of edging and sandpaper. I’d done the measurements last night but now, frowning at the bit of paper, I decided to recheck it all just to be on the safe side. When I had clad the galley I’d ended up wasting a load of wood because I misread my own measurements.

I put the radio on, turned up loud even though I still couldn’t hear it above the mitre saw, and got to work.

At nine, I stopped and went back through to the galley for a coffee. I filled the kettle and put it on to the gas burner. The boat was a mess. It was only occasionally that I noticed it. Glancing around, I scanned last night’s takeaway containers hurriedly shoved into a carrier bag ready to go out to the main bins. Dirty dishes in the sink. Pans and other items in boxes sitting on one of the dinette seats waiting to be put away, now I had finally fitted cupboard doors in the galley. A black plastic sack of fabrics and netting that would one day be curtains and cushion covers. None of it mattered when I was the only one in here, but in a few hours’ time this boat would be full of people, and I had promised them that the renovations were almost complete.

Almost complete? That was stretching the truth a little thin. I had finished the bedroom, and the living room wasn’t bad. The galley was done too, but needed cleaning and tidying. The bathroom was – well, the kindest thing that could be said about it was that it was functional. As for the rest of it – the vast space in the bow that would one day be a bigger bathroom with a bath instead of a hose for a shower, a wide conservatory area with a sliding glass roof (an ambitious
plan, but I’d seen one in a magazine and it looked so brilliant that it was the one project I was determined to complete), and maybe a snug or an office or another unnamed room that would be wonderful and cosy and magical – for the moment, it worked as storage.

The kettle started a low whistle, and I rinsed a mug under the tap and spooned in some instant coffee, two spoons: I needed the caffeine.

A pair of boots crossed my field of vision through the porthole, level with the pontoon outside, shortly followed by a call from the deck. ‘Genevieve?’

‘Down here. Kettle’s just boiled, want a drink?’

Moments later Joanna trotted down the steps and into the main cabin. She was dressed in a miniskirt, with thick socks and heavy boots, with the laces trailing, on the ends of her skinny legs. The top half of her was counterbalanced by one of Liam’s jumpers, a navy blue one, flecked with bits of sawdust and twig and cat hair. Her hair was a tangle of curls and waves of various colours.

‘No, thanks – we’re off out in a minute. I just came to ask what time we should come over later, and do you want us to bring a lasagne as well as the cheesecake? And Liam says he’s got some beers left over from the barbecue, he’ll be bringing those.’

She had a bruise on her cheek. Joanna didn’t wear make-up, wouldn’t have known what to do with it, so there it was – livid and purplish, about the size of a fifty pence piece, under her left eye.

‘What happened to your face?’

‘Oh, don’t you start. I had a fight with my sister.’

‘Blimey.’

‘Come up on deck, I need a smoke.’

The wind was still whipping, so we sat on the bench by the wheelhouse. The sun was trying to make its way through the scudding clouds but failing. Across the other side of the
marina I could see Liam loading boxes and carrier bags into the back of their battered Transit van.

Joanna fished around in the pocket of her skirt and brought forth a pouch of tobacco. ‘The way I see it,’ she said, ‘she should keep her fucking nose out of my business.’

‘Your sister?’

‘She thinks she’s all clever because she’s got herself a mortgage at the age of twenty-two.’

‘Mortgages aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.’

‘Exactly!’ Joanna said with emphasis. ‘That’s what I said to her. I’ve got everything she’s got without the burden of debt. And I don’t have to mow any lawn.’

‘So that’s what you were fighting about?’

Joanna was quiet for a moment, her eyes wandering over to the car park where Liam stood, hands on his hips, before pointedly looking at his wristwatch and climbing into the driver’s seat. Above the sounds of the marina – drilling coming from the workshop, the sound of the radio down in the cabin, the distant roar of the traffic from the motorway bridge – the van’s diesel rattle started up.

‘Fuck it, I’d better go,’ she said. She shoved the pouch back into her pocket and lit the skinny cigarette she’d just managed to fill. ‘About seven? Eight? What?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Sevenish? Lasagne sounds lovely, but don’t go to any trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble. Liam’s made it.’

With a backward wave, Joanna took one quick hop-step down the gangplank and on to the pontoon, running despite the boots across the grassy bank and up to the car park. The Transit was taking little jumps forward as though it couldn’t wait to be gone.

At four, the cabin was finally finished. A bare shell, but at least now it was a bare wooden shell. The walls were clad, and
the berth built along the far wall, under the porthole. Where the mattress would sit, two trapdoors with round finger-holes in the board gave access to the storage compartment underneath. The rest of it was pale wood in neat panelling, carved pine edging covering the joins and corners. It would look less like a sauna once it had had a lick of paint, I thought. By next weekend it would be entirely different.

Clearing away the debris of my most recent foray into carpentry took longer than I thought it would. I had crates for the tools. I hadn’t bothered to put them away since I’d started work on the bedroom, months ago.

I lugged them forward into the bow, through a hatch and into the cavernous space below. Three steps down, watching my head on the low ceiling, stowing the crates away at the side.

It was only when I made the last trip, carrying the black plastic sack of fabric from the dinette and throwing it into the front compartment, that I found myself looking into the darkest of the spaces to see if the box was still there. I could just about see it in the gloomy light from the cabin above; on the side of it was written, in thick black marker:
KITCHEN STUFF.

I had a sudden urge to look, to check that the box still had its contents. Of course it did, I told myself. Of course it was still there.
Nobody’s been down here since you put it there.

Stooping, I crossed the three wooden pallets that served as a floor, braced myself against the sides of the hull, and crouched next to the box.
KITCHEN STUFF
. The top two-thirds of the box was full of rubbish I’d brought from the London flat – spatulas, wooden spoons, a Denby teapot with a crack in the lid, a whisk, a blender that didn’t work, an ice cream scoop and various cake tins nested inside each other. Below that was a sheet of cardboard that might, to the casual observer, look sufficiently like the bottom of the box to deter further investigation.

I folded the cardboard top of the box back down and tucked the other flap underneath it.

From the back pocket of my jeans, I took out a mobile phone. I found the address book and the only number that was saved there: garland. That was all it said. It wasn’t even his name. It would be so easy to press the little green button now and call him. What would I say? Maybe I could just ask him if he wanted to come tonight.
‘Come to my party, Dylan. It’s just a few close friends. I’d love to see you.’

What would he say? He’d be angry, shocked that I’d used the phone when he’d expressly told me not to. It was only there for one purpose, he’d told me. It was only for him to ring me, and only when he was ready to make the collection. Not before. If I ever had a call on it from another number, I wasn’t to answer.

I closed my eyes for a moment, for a brief second allowing myself the indulgence of remembering him. Then I put the screen lock back on the phone so it didn’t accidentally dial any numbers, least of all his, and I shoved it in my pocket and made my way back to the cabin.

Elizabeth Haynes is a former police intelligence analyst who lives in Norfolk with her husband and son. Her first novel,
Into the Darkest Corner
, was Amazon’s Best Book of the Year 2011 and is a
New York Times
bestseller. It has been published in thirty-seven countries. Her second novel,
Revenge of the Tide
, was published by Myriad in 2012 and her third,
Human Remains
, was published in 2013. She is also the author of two police procedural crime novels,
Under a Silent Moon
and
Behind Closed Doors
(Sphere).