Revenge of the Tide Read Online Free PDF

months since Dylan, five long months waiting for him to make contact with me again. He obviously wasn’t missing me as much as I missed him.
    ‘Where the fuck’s Ben?’ Lucy said.
    ‘What’s up, princess?’ Gavin asked, getting to his feet.
    ‘I want to go somewhere else!’
    ‘Have some of this,’ Roger said soothingly, ‘it’ll make you feel better, I promise.’
    ‘What is it?’ Lucy sounded suspicious.
    ‘It’s magic potion,’ said Gavin, giggling.
    ‘What?’
    ‘No, seriously, Luce. Give it a try. I’ve never had anything like it, honestly: it’s like drinking the earth and the moon and the stars…’
    ‘Gavin, you’re so crap, you’ve been smoking skunk again, haven’t you? I thought you said you hadn’t got any left?’
    ‘Rog here gave me a puff. But I tell you what, lovely Princess Lucy Loo, it’s not nearly as good as this stuff. Here.’
    ‘Eww! It tastes like shit!’
    Laughter from the wheelhouse and the deck.
    Ben was kissing me. He’d taken my face in his hands and kissed me, before I had a chance to protest, before I could say no, before I could move away. He was good at it. I could feel my barriers, my resolve and my resistance disappearing. It would be so easy to tell him to come back later on. Nobody would even notice. There was a good chance that the other liveaboards would all just disappear back to their own boats in the next hour or so. Once Lucy and the other London lot had gone to the pub, then on to Rochester or Maidstone or even, if they were desperate enough, back to London, the boatyard would be empty and quiet and nobody would even see him come back; nobody would ever need to know…
    ‘Ben! There you are!’
    The kiss ended abruptly. Lucy fixed me with a hard stare, as though it was all my fault that she had been irreparably insulted by these river people, the man with the mad hair and the girl with the black eye; clearly now to find Ben down here in the semi-darkness, with his mouth on mine and his hand inside my top, was pretty much the final straw.
    ‘Are you staying here or are you coming with us?’ Lucy asked, her voice chilly.
    Before he had a chance to answer, I stood up. ‘You should go,’ I said softly.
    ‘Why?’
    Lucy had gone to herd up the rest of them, including Simone and Carla. Presumably they were expected to fit in the boot of the car.
    I gave a little shrug.
    ‘You’ve got someone else?’
    ‘I’ve got a different life.’
    He tried again, with his best cheeky smile to go with it. ‘I’m not talking about any sort of commitment, Genny. Just one more night. Go on. You want me really, don’t you?’
    Despite myself, I laughed too.
    ‘Amazing as the offer sounds, Ben, I would rather be on my own than have you here, even for one night. But thank you.’
    He gave up, at last. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, and turned his back on me to find Lucy.
    They left, with promises to text or phone, hugs, professions of what a fabulous night it was and such a shame it had to come to an end, while I hugged them all in turn, and all the liveaboards carried on with the beer and the lively conversation and the last few bits of Liam’s lasagne.
    As I waved them off and the motion sensors triggered the lights in the car park, Lucy tripped over something and fell on her face – fortunately on the grass. Malcolm let out a hooting laugh.
    Diane and Steve went soon after that. The baby monitor gave every indication that the children had got out of bed and were playing some kind of console game on board their boat – either that, or the boat had been stormed by terrorists who were shooting everything in sight.
    Downstairs in the main cabin the conversation had turned to milder topics.
    Joanna handed me a beer.
    ‘Sit down and join us,’ she said.
    ‘I’m sorry they were such louts,’ I said.
    ‘They weren’t louts.’
    ‘I thought they were alright, on the whole,’ piped up Malcolm, who seemed to have forgiven Lucy already.
    ‘Thanks,’ I said.