The Rising Tide: the heart-stopping and addictive thriller from the Richard and Judy author(12)

To Daniel, out there all alone, that swell will feel enormous. With such a low vantage point, he won’t even see land. She imagines him battling those waves in a simple immersion suit. Or, even worse, with no buoyancy or insulation at all.

There’s a third option, of course: empty ocean; a liquid graveyard.

Lucy stops dead. When she blinks, the world seems different, as if she’s come alive in a different reality.

‘Luce?’

‘What if—’

‘Don’t,’ Noemie says.

‘I lied earlier. Things haven’t been fine. Recently, they’ve been even worse. All this stuff with his business, and with Nick. Daniel’s always needed to be in control – and now he isn’t, and everything he built has fallen apart, and I haven’t even known how to help him. I just have this horrible—’

‘Luce, no. Just don’t, OK? Save your energies for Fin.’





4


Noemie offers to drive, but Lucy can’t be a passenger. On Fin’s booster seat she sees Snig, the comfort blanket he’s had from birth. It’s a tattered thing of white cotton, stretched out of shape from so many repairs. To her son, it’s an artefact of near-mythical power. Climbing behind the wheel, Lucy wonders what she’s going to tell him.

Halfway up Smuggler’s Tumble, rain starts crackling off the windscreen. At the top, rounding the last switchback, they emerge on to the exposed coastal road. With no trees to deflect it, the wind is formidable. Westwards, white breakers rib the sea all the way to the horizon. Waves are bursting against the shattered stacks beyond Mortis Point.

She’d always thought that nothing bad could happen to Daniel while she loved him this deeply; that her love could protect him like it protects Billie and Fin. But recently her love hasn’t been enough, even though it’s been just as strong. It hasn’t protected any of them.

Why has nobody seen a light? The Lazy Susan’s parachute rockets discharge their flares nine hundred feet above the sea. Lucy knows how bright they are because Nick detonated one from their garden last year. The whole peninsula glowed red. Why didn’t Daniel launch the Seago life raft? She can think of no explanation that’s bearable. And the one that’s most likely is the one that terrifies her most of all: that Daniel, in his desperation, decided he was more valuable to his family dead.





FOUR




1


Three o’clock. Nearly two and a half hours since the distress call. In the playground, waiting with other parents, Lucy paces back and forth. Beside her, Noemie looks like she’s craving a cigarette.

Headlands Junior School sits along the coastal road between Skentel and Redlecker. It’s a low-rise modern building, the classrooms opening directly on to the playground.

A volley of rain pings off the tarmac. Overhead, the sky is a steel sheet. Lucy’s phone buzzes, then chimes. As she hauls it from her pocket, it chimes again. Three bars of reception, suddenly. Sixteen missed calls. The voicemail prompt appears and the phone begins to ring. Lucy raises it to her ear.

Come on, Daniel. Give me a clue. Something, anything. Help me figure this out.

Deep inside the school, a handbell starts ringing. Classroom doors fly open. Teachers emerge smiling, ready to pair parents with kids. Lucy spots Miss Clay, Fin’s teacher, in one of her trademark outfits: today, a tartan shorts suit matched with Day-Glo orange tights.

‘You have five new messages. Message one, received today, 9.56 a.m.’

The voice changes. ‘Hey, Lucy, Graham Covenant from Covenant Logistics, just following up on that chat we—’

With a stab of her finger, Lucy erases him.

Miss Clay summons Ellie Russell to the door, sweeping the playground for Ellie’s mum.

‘Message two, received today, 10.04 a.m.’ Again, the voice changes. ‘Hey, Lucy, Graham Covenant again. Didn’t want you to miss out on—’

Swearing, Lucy consigns him to the ether. Kids are streaming out steadily now. The air fills with screams and shouts.

‘Message three, received today, 11.26 a.m.’

‘Hi, Lucy …’

That voice belongs to Ed, Billie’s boyfriend. From his words, it seems they’re having problems again. Lucy can barely tune in. She saves the message, skips ahead. At the door to Fin’s classroom, Miss Clay spots her and waves.

‘Message four, received today, 12.17 p.m.’

Crackles on the line. Clicks and whistles.

‘… Lucy …’





2


It’s him. It’s Daniel.

And yet something in his voice – dark, alien – isn’t Daniel at all. In an instant, Lucy knows she’s utterly unprepared for how bad this might get.

Around her, the playground darkens. The sound of children’s voices fades. Time slows, then stops completely. Parents and offspring become graveyard statues welded to a tarmac sea. Colour seeps from their skin, their clothes. Lucy feels no wind in her hair, no speckling of rain on her cheeks. Her heart doesn’t beat. The blood in her veins doesn’t flow.

The phone is clamped so tightly to her ear that the hiss and burr of static fill her head. She concentrates hard, as if by deciphering those electronic shrieks she can divine Daniel’s location, his intent. She hears wind, or what sounds like it. A chaotic symphony of whistles and chirrups, as if the broadcast is reaching her from deep space.