CHAPTER 1
Down by the river, Kate can finally breathe. The sun is not quite up as she sits on the end of the pontoon dangling her bare toes in the murky green water, feeling suspended between night and day. Everything around her is dim and quiet, a light mist resting on the surface of the river, broken by the slender arms of the willow trees that dip down into the water.
As her light brown hair tickles her face in the breeze, she scoops it up into a messy bun using the hairband that lives permanently on her right wrist, trying to remember as she does when she last showered. But the trees and the birds don’t care about the state of her hair or her thrown-together outfit of tracksuit bottoms and hoody. There’s no judgement here by the river in the early hours of this late spring morning.
Leaning back on her hands, she practises the breathing exercises she has mastered over the years.In, one, two, three, out, one, two, three …After each deep inhale, she pauses, noticingthe quiet gurgles of the water and the smell of wild garlic in the air.
Her shoulders sink down as she exhales. For once, she is able to hear the thoughts in her own head. Not that she wants to listen to them. Instead, she tunes in to the swishing of the long grass in the meadow behind her. The freedom she feels down here by the water feels stolen, but she grabs hold of it anyway.
The truth is, she shouldn’t be here. Not this early in the morning and when nobody in the entire world knows where she is. It’s not the kind of thing that someone like her should do, someone who, despite how she might sometimes feel, is undeniably a grown-up with grown-up responsibilities. She is thirty-two and has a mortgage andlife insurance, for goodness’ sake. But oh, the water feels so delicious against her toes.
A sound draws her attention to the riverboat moored a little way upstream, its roof covered in raucous flowerpots and a couple of beehives. It seems as though its inhabitant must be getting up, confirmed a few moments later by a curl of smoke escaping from the chimney. Kate takes the smell of the woodsmoke as her cue to reluctantly leave, glancing down at her watch and realising she’s already stayed here far too long.
It’s not just the activity on the riverboat that hints at a place that is poised to spring into life. For now, the doors on the brightly painted beach huts on the bank are closed, but the stacks of kayaks and paddleboards leant against them are waiting to be pulled down onto the water. A little way down the meadow, people sleep beneath canvas in a collection of old-fashioned yurts strewn with bunting, but before long thedoorways will be peeled back and the smell of sizzling bacon will rise on the air, along with the sound of giggling children running about in pyjamas and wellies.
There’s a big part of Kate that wishes she could stay here. Stretch out on the pontoon beneath the rising sun and pretend she is somebody with nowhere to be and nothing to do. Or maybe finally find the courage to slip her whole body down into the cool water. She has thought about swimming, but the water always looks so dark and deep here that the furthest she has made it has been dipping her toes. The water still calls to her, though, with its cool promise.
But Kate’s time is up. There’s only so long you can press pause on your life. It’s time to get back to the reality of everything that is waiting for her. As she pulls on her socks and shoes, she tries to push down the rising sense of dread that bubbles up at the thought of returning home. And to not think too hard about what it means that for the past few weeks she has woken in the early hours and tiptoed out of the house to come down to the river alone. So far, she has always made it back in time before anyone has noticed she has gone. She never mentions where she’s been. Instead, she slips back into bed, catches a bit more sleep if she can and then cracks on with the day as if everything’s fine, all the time itching to get back to the river tomorrow morning so that she can breathe again.
Everythingisfine, isn’t it? So what if she goes off on secret morning jaunts and sometimes fantasises about hopping in a canoe and paddling off into the distance? That doesn’t mean there’s anything out of the ordinary, she tells herself as shesets off through the fields towards home. Who doesn’t want to escape their life sometimes?
Kate lets out a sigh as she climbs over the stile and joins the lane that heads back into the village. However much she tries to justify things to herself, deep down she knows that what she’s doing is wrong. It’s why she’s been keeping these visits and the sense of release she gets as soon as she closes the front door behind her each morning a secret. Because you shouldn’t want to escape your life when you have everything you’ve ever wanted waiting for you back at home.
CHAPTER 2
The motorbike rumbles beneath Phoebe’s leather-clad legs as she zips down the country lane, cherry-red hair trailing behind her in a blaze as it escapes from beneath her helmet. She had left the village quietly, aware of her neighbours still asleep in their beds, but now she has reached open countryside, she revs the engine, relishing the tiger’s purr that reverberates around her, sending a pheasant squawking up and into the air in the field beside her. She slows as she approaches a bend obscured by bushy hedgerows teeming with cow parsley and nettles, leaning her body with the bike. But then she turns onto a straight, wide road that cuts its way like an arrow across the green expanse of Somerset countryside. God love the Romans. She twists the throttle, really giving the crows on the telephone line above her something to flap about and making her heart race with the thrill of it.
The motorbike was a gift to herself on her thirtieth birthday five years ago. She’d always dreamt of owning one and it’s every bit as fantastic as she’d hoped. But Max has been on at her eversince they started dating three years ago to sell the bike and pool their resources on a new Land Rover. He says it would be more practical and that having the bike is irresponsible. But there’s no way in hell she’d ever let go of this. God knows she’s got enough responsibility in the rest of her life. When she’s out on the bike, she forgets everything else except the feeling of the wind on her face, the hyperfocus of following the curves of the road and feeling at one with the machine beneath her. Fat chance she’d feel like that behind the wheel of a bulky Land Rover. She keeps telling Max she’ll think about it, though.
She makes it to the supermarket as they are opening the doors, smiling at the sleepy staff and nipping inside for a pint of milk. Really, the milk is just an excuse. Mostly, Phoebe just needed to get out and clear her head. It’s been a long week. And it’s only Tuesday morning.
She lets herself back into the flat quietly, the silence telling her that Max is still asleep. Their apartment is above a shop, although the premises has been empty for a couple of months. Phoebe still misses the little newsagent that used to be there. The owner, Amit, was an ancient man who had the expression of someone who had seen some serious shit in his time, which Phoebe always appreciated because, despite being less than half his age, so has she. He never raised an eyebrow at a woman in her pyjamas clutching two bottles of wine and several packets of biscuits. He closed the shop when he retired and a new business is yet to move in. Phoebe thought she saw someone going inside yesterday but was running late for work so didn’t have time to investigate.
She unclips her bulky boots and unzips her leather jacket,hanging it on the peg. Underneath, she is already dressed for work, today opting for a denim shirt decorated with daisies that hugs her curves, the sleeves rolled up to reveal the tattoos that wind their way up her forearms. She tries to use her outfits to show when she turns up on someone’s doorstep that she’s a human being just like them, not just Community Mental Health Nurse Phoebe Harrison. It still doesn’t stop people shutting the door in her face sometimes. Not that she ever blames them. It’s a huge thing having a stranger come into your home wanting to give you meds and talk about the dark thoughts that have sent you down a spiral. She has to earn their trust before she can make any progress and, God, life hasn’t always given her patients many reasons to be trustful.
The open country roads she zoomed along earlier couldn’t feel further away as she grabs her laptop and immerses herself in prep for the day ahead. Even after all these years working as a mental health nurse, reading some of the new histories that have been added to her caseload still brings a lump to her throat. Not that she’d ever let anyone see it when she’s on the clock. At work, she’s as upbeat and chipper as her bright hair and fun outfits.
After an hour of work, she needs a break so grabs her phone to scroll through Instagram, craving the eye bleach of cute videos of pets being reunited with their owners or pictures of beautiful clothes she will never be able to afford to buy. As her finger drags its way across the screen, her attention snags on the holiday snaps of someone she went to school with but has fallen out of touch with, along with most of her friends,each lost one by one to her long hours and, later, their marriages and children. She never meant for it to happen and yet, as she’s got older, holding onto friends has felt like trying to clutch rainwater between her hands.
She flicks through glossy snapshots of sea, sunshine and heaped piles of pasta. A holiday. God, just the thought of it makes something inside her relax. When did she and Max last go on holiday? They had been planning a trip for the new year, but then a few of her patients had got really unwell – Christmas is always a hard time of year – so they’d had to cancel. And now it’s May and they’ve hardly spent any proper time together recently. She hasn’t been to visit her family in Cornwall for a long time either, she thinks guiltily, picturing her nan, who broke her hip a month ago, the final straw that led her to reluctantly leave her flat and move in with Phoebe’s parents.
She starts browsing a few holiday sites on her laptop, images of villas and beaches transporting her to a happier, sunnier place than her case notes and email inbox. As she scrolls, she can almost feel the sea breeze on her face, taste the pina coladas she and Max could drink in a little beach bar where she could feel the sand between her toes and watch the waves. Or maybe they could go for something more remote. A little log cabin in the woods somewhere, a place with no Wi-Fi or phone signal where no one could contact her, needing her. Where she could read a book and take a bath and actually find the energy to have sex with her boyfriend. They could even tag on a trip to Cornwall too on the way back, to see her family.
After extensive scrolling, she finds herself coming back to the first photos she saw on Instagram of her old friend’s Italianbreak. You can’t go wrong with Italy. Pizza, pasta, sunshine, wine. Perfection. Just the thought of it makes Phoebe smile.
But her patients … How would they cope if she went away for a week? It’s hard enough as it is to keep in touch with them when she’s working five days a week with more overtime than she’d ever admit. But she hasn’t used any of her holiday allowance for the year and still has some left over from last year too. Provided there are no emergencies and she finds cover for while she’s gone … Maybe shecould?
A loud banging rises up through the floorboards.
‘Fuck!’ she lets out with a jump.
The building below has been empty long enough that Phoebe has got used to the quiet. But now she can make out muffled voices, followed by the sound of the radio. Glancing out the window, she spots a van parked up on the street below and a couple of guys heading to and fro, carrying boxes. She tries to make out any branding that might give her a hint about who her new neighbours might be, but there’s nothing discernible.
The sound of footsteps closer to hand makes her look up towards the doorway. ‘Oh hey, you’re up.’
Max is standing in the hallway, dressed but rubbing his eyes, a strand of his blond hair sticking up and making her heart skip a little.
‘How was last night?’ she asks him. ‘Sorry I couldn’t make it in the end. I’d hoped to get there in time to meet you all, but something came up …’
