Blue Skies Over Wildflower Lock (The Wildflower Lock)

Chapter 42

Whenever someone asked if Daisy liked her lifestyle change, she would always tell them that canal boating was a peaceful way of spending one’s life. There was a limit to how fast one could go in a narrowboat, and it wasn’t much faster than walking.

Only at that precise moment, it was. At that precise moment, they were soaring down the Thames through Central London, and there was nothing Daisy could do to stop it.

‘Yvonne!’ Daisy screamed. Her lungs burned with the taste of the water as she yelled as loudly as she could.

A moment later, the dog disappeared into the boat.

‘What are you doing now?’ Daisy called after him.

The fact that Daisy didn’t want the dog inside was now irrelevant. She didn’t feel like she was in a boat at all now. She had lost control of the September Rose and it felt like they were in a hollowed-out tree trunk, about to go cascading down water rapids, the way you saw in children’s cartoons. Only this wasn’t a cartoon.

‘Yvonne! Dog! Will you both get out here? Please!’

A moment later, Yvonne stumbled out, limping, partially from her foot but also because the dog was pulling the bottom of her cardigan. If it hadn’t been the most terrifying moment of Daisy’s life, she may well have thanked him, or at least laughed at the situation, but that wasn’t possible.

‘Yvonne, something’s gone wrong.’ The warble in her voice made it clear that she was about to burst into tears, though from the pace at which Yvonne acted, it was like she couldn’t tell at all.

With a slight twist of her neck, she scanned the scene from port to starboard before nodding.

‘Well, we’ve picked up some speed, haven’t we?’ The way she spoke made it sound as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Flying through the Thames. Hurtling faster and faster with every second.

‘Walking pace, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing?’ Daisy stressed.

If walking pace was how she normally drove the September Rose, then this was the hundred-metre sprint. Usain Bolt would have had difficulty keeping up with the September Rose the way it was currently moving. Still, Yvonne didn’t seem that concerned at all.

‘I don’t get what’s going on?’ Daisy said, unable to hide the panic in her voice. Yvonne had got her out of all the stressful situations so far and she needed to do the same now, but she wasn’t doing anything other than looking at her watch and checking the yellow notebook with all the tide times in. ‘The throttle is all the way back.’ Daisy carried on talking, hoping Yvonne might realise the issue and jump in and save them. ‘I think it must’ve jammed somehow. I think there’s too much fuel getting to the engine.’

Yvonne pressed her lips together tightly, looking over the edge of the boat as she went back to the notebook. When she finally looked back at Daisy, her cheeks were decidedly pink.

‘I think I must have got the tide time slightly wrong,’ she said.

Daisy frowned. ‘What do you mean? I didn’t think it mattered when we went out. We can travel on high and low tide.’

‘That is true, technically, yes…’ The way Yvonne was slowing her tone and avoiding making eye contact made Daisy feel like this really wasn’t a good thing.

‘Yvonne?’

‘It’s fine… Really, it’s fine. We’re just going in with the tide, that’s all. Tends to make things a bit faster.’

‘A bit faster?’

Daisy’s hair blew behind her with a gust of wind, stressing her point. ‘This can’t be safe.’

‘Don’t be silly. My Harry used to love coming in like this. Wouldn’t travel any other way. And it’ll save us a bit of time getting to our mooring. You might be able to open up the coffee shop for a bit too. And it saves on fuel. Positives all around, if you ask me.’

Daisy didn’t reply. Her eyes were still on the barge in front of her. The distance between them had shrunk, only marginally, but still. If she kept going in such a manner, she could well collide with the back of it.

‘Just steer around it, the way you would any boat,’ Yvonne said, obviously reading Daisy’s concern. ‘Honestly, I thought the incident with the sailboats would’ve calmed you down a bit.’

Daisy couldn’t reply. Her heart was hammering in her chest and she longed to return to the mild panic she had felt when swarmed by sailboats on the River Crouch. After all, those boats had been tiny. It wouldn’t have been good for the people on board if they collided with the September Rose, but as selfish as it was, Daisy and her boat would’ve likely received little more than a scratch on the paintwork. This was a whole different matter. She was nothing to these massive barges. An insignificant ant that could be crushed with the slightest sideways swerve.

I was calm until this happened.Daisy wanted to respond to Yvonne’s comment. I was calm when I was steering my boat at a sensible pace and didn’t think I was going to crash. But her throat was closed shut with fear.

‘What if I put her in reverse?’ she said, voicing her thoughts aloud, hoping they might spark an idea that could get her out of this catastrophic situation. She looked at Yvonne. ‘Would that work? If I put the boat in reverse, that would slow us against the tide, wouldn’t it?’

‘You can try, but it’ll be a waste of fuel,’ Yvonne said with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘Honestly, this is what it’s like on the tidal Thames. Obviously, not all the time, but we were bound to pick up a bit of speed while we were on here. What else did you expect?’

Daisy pondered the question for a moment. She hadn’t really thought about it long enough to know what she expected.

She’d envisioned moving along the water at a leisurely pace, like on Wildflower Lock, just with more tourists to wave at on the banks of the Thames. She’d envisioned being able to wave up at dog walkers and children and catch wafts of the burgers cooking on Southbank. That was what she expected. Not this.

She looked at her fuel gauge. Did she want to risk using it up to slow down when Yvonne thought they were perfectly fine? Daisy wasn’t sure what it would do to the engine, pushing back against such a powerful tide with the current pulling it forward. It didn’t seem like a sensible thing to do. But the throttle was already as low as it could go. Which meant there was only one other thing she could do to slow them down and give her enough time to manoeuvre around the barge.

She passed her idea to Yvonne, who gave a nonplussed nod. It was as close to an agreement as Daisy thought she was going to get. So, holding her breath, Daisy took the key and switched the engine off.