The Boat House Read Online Free PDF

around. I haven't decided where I'm going to settle, yet."
    Well, it was probably none of his business, but it struck him as a dangerous kind of thing to be doing. There could be some pretty weird people around, and at this time of night they came into their own. But what was it to him? She was over twenty-one, and at least with him she'd fallen on her feet and would be safe for the next couple of hours. He checked all the doors, and then he got in beside her. She was all ready to go, hands folded in her lap.
    The Zodiac played for sympathy a little, but started anyway. Without looking at the woman, Pete said, "Where are you from?"
    "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she said.
    "Try me."
    There was no reply for a moment, and when Pete glanced up from switching on the headlights he saw that she was looking across at him with an expression that he couldn't make out in the half shadows of the car. It might have been mischief, but it looked like something more.
    "I'm a Russian," she said. "I came here tonight on a stolen passport. I think they may have caught the boy I was with, but I carried on."
    She watched him for a few seconds longer, until he was the one who turned away.
    "Sure," Pete said as they rolled forward and he swung the car around toward the motorway sliproad.
    After all, he could take a hint as well as anyone.

THREE
    About an hour later, he was saying, "You were telling me the truth, weren't you?"
    They hadn't covered much in the way of mileage, mainly due to Pete's mistaken choice of motorway exit that had taken them way out on the wrong side of town before he'd been able to find a place where he could get off the road and turn around. So much for his ability to make it home without a map; even on roads that he was supposed to know, he was no better than a stranger. Motorway lighting was giving the entire night journey a sense of unreality; he wasn't even accustomed to that, any more. He and his passenger had talked about a number of things along the way, but the topic of her background wasn't one of them.
    Perhaps that was it; the way that she'd said it and then said nothing more, while everything else about her seemed to indicate the kind of deep streak of honesty that resists analysis, but calls up certainty like a half awake bear from its cave.
    I'm a Russian. I came here tonight on a stolen passport.
    Could such things happen?
    They could, and they did; sometimes in full colour on the six o'clock news, but never in a way that seemed to intersect with Pete's life in any meaningful sense. She wasn't particularly remarkable. Different, but not remarkable. She wasn't bad-looking, but you could lose her in a crowd without too much problem.
    I think they caught the boy I was with, but I carried on.
    Belief had been simmering in him for some time now, and it seemed that this was the moment that it had chosen to boil over.
    They were off the motorway network and it was starting to get late, but Pete had a kind of instinct for seeking out the lowlife places that traded outside normal hours. The cafe was one of a row of old shops, and the parking area behind the row was a half-acre demolition site that had been bulldozed flat and which now served as rough and unlit standing for heavy lorries. The two of them had picked their way carefully over bricks and glass and half buried timbers. Some of the original street layout of the site was still visible, but only just. The extractor fans over the back yard of the cafe were working full-time, pumping out a steam that carried with it the scents of hot fat and bacon.
    In the doorway, they stopped. And in response to his question she said, "You think these things don't happen?"
    "Not to people I know."
    And then she smiled faintly, as if it really didn't matter whether he believed her or not, because his belief or the lack of it could do nothing to alter the facts.
    And she said, "Well, here's your first," and then they went on inside.
    She was the only woman in the