The Lost

If nothing else, it gave him a sense of purpose he hadn’t felt in a long time. And behind it was something else, something so fragile he was afraid to consider it. Because despite everything Gavin had told him, despite everything logic said, there was still no proof that Theo had been killed. Jonah had spent the last ten years wrongly believing his son had drowned, based on nothing more than a shoe found in a culvert. This time there wasn’t even that. Only the assertion that what had happened ‘couldn’t be undone’. Jonah knew how dangerous self-deception could be, but this didn’t feel like denial. It wasn’t even hope, just the barest sliver of possibility.

That was enough.

‘You Jonah Colley?’

He turned, rising to his feet as a stocky man with barrel legs approached. He wore a grubby plaid lumberjack jacket, unfastened despite the cold. A gold chain glinted around his neck.

‘That’s me,’ Jonah said, retrieving the walking stick.

‘You’re early.’ The man had bushy eyebrows from which longer hairs protruded, like the legs of dead spiders. He eyed Jonah’s walking stick doubtfully. ‘You going to be OK getting on board?’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘Up to you.’ He took a bunch of keys from his jacket pocket, attached to a cork float. ‘So, you a fan of tjalks?’

‘Of what?’

He gave Jonah an odd look. ‘Tjalks. That’s what this is, a Dutch sailing barge. Don’t you even know what you’re buying?’

‘I might not be buying it yet.’

After what had happened on Gavin’s cabin cruiser, Jonah knew it was perverse for him to be even considering it. But the idea had been at the back of his mind since before then, and he hadn’t been able to shake it. It was time for a fresh start, and no matter what associations this place might hold for him, from the moment Jonah had set eyes on the old barge he’d been drawn to it.

It just felt... right.

‘It needs a lot of work, I’ll warn you,’ the man told him. ‘My brother was in a nursing home for the last two years, and wasn’t in any state to look after it much before then.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘You know you won’t be able to keep it moored here?’ the man said, looking around the quayside. ‘They’re clearing out the whole place. Redeveloping the entire thing. Not before time, if you ask me.’

‘I wouldn’t want to stay here anyway,’ Jonah told him.

‘Don’t blame you. Wait there.’

Surprisingly nimble, the man climbed over the handrail of the smaller barge moored alongside the pontoon. Waddling to its stern, he swung his legs one at a time over onto the larger deck of the tjalk. Bending out of sight, he lifted a battered gangplank and slid it over the water until the other end rested on the quayside.