The Coldest Blood

But they’d been seen, and they were running now, all of them, back along the dyke. He found Dex’s hand in his and they ran together, back to the sluice, the jagged gasping of their collective breath louder than the waves beyond the dunes. But here Philip, haunted by what he’d missed, turned and saw the distant silhouette of a man on the boat against the sky, one arm cradled by the other.

The sister pulled him back, down the path to the leap, then over and on between the chalets. When they reached the lamp by Philip’s they stood for a second, listening, and he saw that the sister had gone.

From the fairground came the ritual screams from the falling big dipper.

Philip waited to catch Dex’s eyes. ‘What?’ he said, knowing he would answer. But Smith dragged the younger boy away. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow.’

23

Flares had been lit on the floodbank, throwing a guttering light across the crowd that had gathered for the races. Dryden, still struggling with the innocent collision of the past and present, left Ed Bardolph with the rest of the volunteers at the boathouse making final preparations for the long-distance skate to Cambridge. He’d found Humph still parked up on the riverbank, the cab resounding to the ritual intonation of the football results being repeated on the local news. He’d rifled half a dozen miniatures from Humph’s glove compartment, grabbed Boudicca’s lead, his skates, and set out for the ice fair.

Railway sleepers had been piled into a makeshift grandstand for the traditional start of the championships: the Flying Mile, four circuits of the oval course Bardolph’s men had earlier marked out. Other spectators were already crowding along the high floodbank, between the flares. Sparklers, sold at the gate, cascaded silver where children stood. Skaters zigzagged between the fairground stalls and the tea bars, one with a hand-held flaming torch which left a wake across Dryden’s eye.

The night sky, clear and crowded, was crushing. Dryden drank one of the bottles from his overcoat pocket, the aroma of the malt sharpened by the frost. Ice was forming in his hair and he took a black woollen hat from his pocket and drew it down over his brow. After buying a ticket, he took a seat on the sleepers at the top. There was a breeze here and he could feel the moisture turning to ice in his eyelashes. The malt made his blood rush, so he had another.

Looking out over the winter scene he tried, once again, to conjure up the heat of that lost summer. He’d met the others on the first day, let loose by his uncle and aunt to wander the camp and find new friends. Taking a book, he’d gone down to the beach and watched the three strange children, the siblings – Dex and the sister – and the brooding presence of the older Smith, with his bleached white hair. And he envied them the familiarity of the triangular world they shared. They’d dammed a stream which crossed the sands, creating a wide deep pool on which Dex sailed a paper boat. Smith had dragged logs from the dunes to reinforce the sand, while Marcie had stood, almost motionless, in the centre of the pool, waiting for the water to rise, as insubstantial as her rippling reflection.