The Split - Sharon Bolton Page 0,21

sea has crept in here too. He is on the brink of leaving the kitchen when he spots a towel hanging from a rail. He touches it and finds it damp.

The next room he comes to is the bathroom. Again, no sign of occupancy. He walks on to the first bedroom. Empty, like the rest of the place. Without much hope of finding anything, he opens the cupboard door. Rolled on the top shelf is a padded blue sleeping bag. He pulls it down and presses his face against the slippery fabric. The faint floral scent he remembers from her room back at King Edward Point. This is hers. She is here.

He feels excitement building. He is close.

He puts his gear in the other bedroom and leaves the station, quickly crossing the few hundred metres to the main settlement and trying not to be unnerved by the great ghostly shipwreck that rears above his head. He tries the foreman’s residence first. He isn’t surprised to find her gear beneath canvas sheeting but there is no sign of Felicity herself.

Outside again his nerve breaks.

‘Felicity!’

His voice echoes back at him. Christ, she could be anywhere. They could spend all night dodging each other around this ghost town.

‘Felicity, we need to talk.’ The wind takes his voice and whisks it away.

The shipwreck is freaking him out. Leaving it behind, he walks inland. At this end of the settlement, there are several buildings more or less intact.

He takes a detour around the oil tanks, banging on the rusting iron and calling her name again.

‘Felicity! For God’s sake, where are you?’

Reaching the end of the tanks he thinks he sees the shadow of a woman slipping inside a building directly ahead of him. He follows, running over the rough ground and finds himself inside an old provision store. He shines his torch around. Nothing, but beyond a central counter is a chaos of fallen shelving units.

‘Felicity?’

‘Felicity isn’t coming.’

He jumps round. She’s tricked him somehow, slipping outside and doubling back to block the doorway. Except, it isn’t Felicity. The height is similar but her posture is all wrong. This woman’s voice is entirely different and her walk, as she steps inside the store is nothing like the way he always pictures Felicity’s graceful way of moving.

He moves his head, trying to focus the beam of his torch on her face, but she half turns away. Not before he’s seen what she is carrying in her right hand. Christ. Whoever she is, she is armed.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he asks.

His headtorch beam reaches her face a second before she raises her arm. Jesus wept, how is this—

‘I’m Bamber,’ she says. ‘I won’t let you hurt Felicity. Never again.’

She fires.

Part Two

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND

Nine Months Earlier

‘The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing.’

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

19

Felicity

It is unseasonably warm in the city of Cambridge. As dawn breaks on the morning after the Trinity May ball, chiffon-clad girls are sleeping on the lawns and river banks, their heads resting on the dinner jackets of boys with whom they may, or may not, have begun the previous evening. The boys lie beside them, still as fallen statues.

Yards from where they sleep, the River Cam winds its way through trailing willow fronds, relishing the silence. Within hours the punts will be out, and punts cannot move through water without an accompaniment of shrieks, cries and general merriment. For now, only the college rowing teams skim across the surface like water-borne insects. Below Jesus Lock, the canal boats, like dusty jewels, begin to rock on their moorings as their occupants wake up.

In the market square, traders greet each other with the news that it’s going to be a scorcher. They’ve said the same thing every day for over a week now and will go on doing so without embarrassment for as long as the heatwave lasts. The early sunshine lifts their spirits, though, and the two carrying crates down the main thoroughfare don’t even grumble as the androgynous figure on roller skates speeds past them, almost sending everything tumbling.

Through the claustrophobic heart of this medieval city, a crocodile of choristers winds its chattering way to choir practice, or maybe back for breakfast. It is impossible to silence pre-teenage boys and the choir master has long since given up trying. The line weaves its way around the woman with pink hair who