The Rising Tide: the heart-stopping and addictive thriller from the Richard and Judy author(2)

Lucy’s gaze returns to the balance sheet, then the framed photograph where Daniel is looking out to sea. Only last night, in the darkness of their bedroom, she’d entwined herself around him and vowed they’d survive this. He’d muttered a reply, rolled on to his side. And Lucy, sensing his despondency, had felt her eyes fill with tears.

Beside that photo of their family is a time-battered Polaroid, creased and sun-faded. In it, eight-year-old Daniel, all elbows and knees, stands on the steps of Plymouth’s Glenthorne Hostel for Boys. Lucy recognizes his expression. He was wearing it the day they met: a startled-prey wariness more suited to an animal than a human; a heart-rending fusion of fear and hope and longing.

That day, she’d felt a powerful compulsion to put her arms around him.

Whenever Lucy sees this photo – the earliest image of her husband that exists – she feels exactly the same way.

On the steps beside Daniel stands Nick, broader and taller despite their similar age. Whereas Daniel squints at the camera, Nick glowers. His arm is thrown protectively around his smaller friend. Lucy knows more than most how it’s lingered there ever since.

Scowling, she rips open the remaining envelope. Realizes, too late, that the letter’s addressed to Billie. Tossing it down, Lucy re-checks the balance sheet. She makes a fist, thumping the desk so hard its drawer rattles in its frame.

And then she hears a response, echoing along the hall. But it isn’t another drawer rattling. It’s the front door. Someone is pounding upon it.





3


Lucy blinks. Tilts her head. A cold pearl of water rolls down her neck. The sound of hammering ends as abruptly as it began. All she hears now is the tick of the wall clock.

A commotion at the window draws her attention. She turns in time to see a herring gull land on the frame. The bird is so large that it struggles to balance, flapping its wings for stability. It peers in at her with one pale eye. Then it taps its beak against the glass.

Her great-aunt Iris, since succumbing to dementia, has grown darkly superstitious of seagulls – doesn’t like any part of them touching her house. Lucy glances away from this one to the clock. Just past two. Roughly an hour since high tide.

Did she imagine what she just heard? Nobody in this family uses the front door, nor anyone else who knows them well. Good friends and associates, in long-standing tradition, don’t even announce their arrival; they wander in through the kitchen, reach for the biscuit barrel, whatever makes them feel at home.

The hammering resumes. Four emphatic bangs. With a cry, the herring gull flaps off the ledge. Lucy stands, gripping the bath towel to her chest. She moves to the study door.

Looks out.

Like the rest of this sprawling clifftop residence, the hall is grander in dimensions than repair. Duck-egg-blue walls – long in need of repainting – support a chipped yet finely stuccoed ceiling. On the parquet floor, a threadbare runner does little to deaden sound.

The house stood abandoned on Mortis Point for two decades before they bought it. Four years on, Lucy knows that even the pittance they paid was a ransom. Wild Ridge, as the place is named, is still salvageable, but they’ll never afford the repairs. Certainly not now.

The front door is an immense mahogany slab. A transom window above it admits a rectangle of slate sky. The door itself features two panels of sand-blasted glass. As Lucy watches, a shadow moves across them. Proof, if any were needed, that the interruption wasn’t illusory.

She calls up her mental map of Skentel, populating it with the people she loves most. Fin at Headlands Junior School, where she dropped him just before nine. Billie at college in Redlecker, further along the coast. Daniel in his workshop, on the backshore above Penleith Beach.

Lucy steps into the hall and pads along it. The hammering starts up again, so violently that the door shakes in its frame. From the force of the blows, and the size of the shadow, she assumes her visitor is a man. Could it be a creditor? A bailiff? One of Daniel’s customers, intending to surprise him at home?

As she draws closer, the banging falls silent once more. Her fingers reach out, touch the brass latch. Hesitate there.

Something about this feels wrong. Portentous. To be avoided at all costs. Lucy’s never been one to doubt her gut, but she can’t ignore the intrusion. This is her home – until someone with authority says otherwise. No way she’ll cower inside it.

Flipping up the latch, she hauls the door wide.





4


It’s Bee.

Lucy’s so surprised that she glances up the lane, expecting to spot an accomplice. Bizarre that someone so petite could create such a racket. Or cast such a deceptive shadow.

Dressed in black with bubblegum-pink hair, Bee peers up at her through lashes as extravagant as a giraffe’s. What she lacks in height she compensates for in girth – wide hips, heavy shoulders, a pleasing roundness of belly. On her T-shirt is a rainbow unicorn with the legend: I DON’T BELIEVE IN YOU EITHER. Lucy’s known her five years, ever since Bee walked into the Drift Net and demanded a job.

Bee jerks backwards when she sees Lucy’s towel and wet hair. Her bangles ring like windchimes. ‘Hey, Luce. Daniel in?’

Lucy’s fingers fall from the latch. ‘Bee?’ Again, she glances along the lane. All she sees is Bee’s electric scooter, leaning against a hedge. ‘Who’s running the Drift Net?’