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tops of all the narrowboats and all the way over to the office.
    I fished around with the boat-hook until it made contact with the object. I jabbed at it. It was solid, and heavy. I tried a couple of times to grab at it with the hook but, when it finally connected, the bundle was too heavy for me to lift. I felt it roll, turn, pulling the pole almost out of my grasp, so I wriggled it until it was free and peered over the edge of the gunwale into the darkness below.
    Something pale, something shapeless, part of the object but somehow different from it. I got the torch, shone it down into the space – and Caddy’s face looked back up at me. One eye closed, one eye half-open, gazing up at me in a bizarre, twisted sort of a wink. Her hair, a dark tangle, swirling and washing over her face in the muddy water.
    I dropped the boat-hook. It clattered at an angle on the gunwale and tipped over on to the pontoon, rolling to a stop. I was breathing fast and hard and then I found my voice and screamed, screamed louder and harder than I ever had in my life.

Five
     
     
    B y the time it was daylight, the shock started to kick in. Josie, who had been a paramedic in a former life, sat with me in the saloon of the Souvenir and was keeping a close eye on me.
    The police were on my boat.
    Malcolm had called them. He and Josie had been the first ones to get to me, although not long after that the whole marina was awake and milling around in various states of undress, waiting for the police to arrive. They all took turns to look down the side of the boat with the torch, at the body. Eventually Malcolm had shouted at everyone to go to one place and wait for the police – they were contaminating the scene – and most of them went back to their boats.
    One police car had arrived, and two patrol officers. We’d met them in the car park of the marina. The automatic lights still didn’t appear to be working, so it was dark and by that time I was shaking, shaking from head to foot. One of them asked me questions about what I’d seen and heard while the other one went to look.
    I hadn’t cried. Instead I’d found myself making a sound that started out like a wail of panic, something I couldn’t control, a noise from somewhere inside which came from fear and horror at finding her like that; finding Caddy of all people, my beautiful Caddy. The noise went on and on, rising and fading again as I ran out of breath, while Josie held me against her bosom and shushed me and rocked me, and I held on to her.
    When I’d calmed down again, they made me go with Sally and Josie to the Souvenir . More police cars came, and a motor boat came up the river with other police on it. They put some kind of net over the end of my boat and tied the other side of it to the pontoon, presumably so the body didn’t float off on the outgoing tide, although it didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. Now it was daylight, low tide, and I was sitting in the saloon with two blankets around me, one around my shoulders and the other across my knees, but even so I was shaking. I couldn’t stop thinking about how filthy my trainers were, and whether anyone would notice if I took them off.
    People kept asking me questions, and to each of them I gave the answer, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ I was only half-aware of all the people in the cabin, and people were talking about me as though I wasn’t there at all. In truth, my presence was mostly physical.
    Caddy was dead. An accident? Had she tripped, somehow, in the darkness? Had she come to the party earlier, and I’d not realised? Had she fallen over, stumbled against something and hit her head on one of the posts? Why hadn’t I heard anything? Why hadn’t I noticed?
    ‘What’s happened?’ It was Roger. He’d managed to sleep through it all.
    ‘It’s a body in the water. Against the Revenge of the Tide. ’
    ‘Is she alright?’ Malcolm’s voice.
    ‘She’ll be fine, I’m keeping my eye on her. She just needs