Blue Skies Over Wildflower Lock (The Wildflower Lock)

Chapter 67

The walk to the pub, which Shaun had described as ‘just down the road,’ was a fair bit further than Daisy had imagined, and the morning rain had created several muddy puddles, though the longer trip provided Johnny with a much-needed chance to stretch his legs. When they reached the beer garden, Daisy and Yvonne took a seat on a bench with a dog bowl underneath it, while Shaun went inside to fetch them each a glass of white wine. That was the plan, at least. Only when he returned a few minutes later, it was with a bottle.

‘You didn’t have to get that,’ Daisy said as Shaun filled their glasses. ‘Honestly, a glass would have been fine.’

‘Well, I wanted to say thank you properly. Plus, you know what these places are like. It’s normally cheaper to get the bottle, anyway. So what happened today? By the sounds of it, it was pretty stressful.’

For the next few minutes, the conversation was dominated by Daisy’s rundown of the day.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Shaun said in disbelief when Daisy finished the story about the lock and polo-shirt man. ‘His entire boat? On the side?’

‘Well, it wasn’t exactly vertical, but his poor family. I have no idea how they are ever going to cope with another lock again. If I were them, I would have wanted to pack up and never see another boat again in my life.’

‘In his defence, locks have always looked pretty complicated to me,’ Shaun said.

‘I thought that too,’ Daisy replied. ‘But they are so simple. And the mechanisms behind them are amazing. To think it’s the same technology that was used in the seventeen hundreds blows my mind.’

She blushed a little as she spoke. Daisy never considered herself a ‘lock geek’ before, but it was hard not to be when you saw how they worked day in and day out. Particularly ones the size of today’s.

‘What about you?’ Shaun said, turning his attention to Yvonne. ‘Do you have any boat horror stories? Perhaps from before… You know, when health and safety wasn’t such a thing.’

Daisy’s stomach churned. She hadn’t yet got to the root of what happened to Harry and, with a sickening unease, she wondered if perhaps it had been a boating accident. Yet Yvonne offered a slight chuckle.

‘Oh, I’ve got plenty. You know, when I first went out on boats, it was with my grandad, donkey’s years ago, and you didn’t have proper toilets back then. Just a bucket, and more than once, it got knocked over inside.’

Shaun gagged. Daisy had to agree. It would probably be pretty horrific. One side of boating that no one ever talked about was emptying the toilets, and though the modern system she used was a long way from the bucket of Yvonne’s past, it could still be a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

‘What about falling in the water? Have you ever done that?’ Daisy said, having realised there were questions she wanted to know from Yvonne too.

‘Oh, yes, but mostly when I was a child, and it was always my fault. Not paying attention, you know. Most of the time, it was fine, but there was this one winter when I was an adult and I fell in. It was freezing, and I don’t mean that figuratively. It was absolutely freezing. Ice on the canal and everything. I can’t remember what I was doing now. Bringing shopping in, I think. Or maybe more wood for the burner. Anyway, I slipped on some ice and went straight off the towpath and into the canal. I couldn’t have been in the water for more than thirty seconds before Harry jumped in after me and pulled me out, but honestly, I didn’t think I’d ever get warm again. We sat there, right next to the log burner, the door closed so that the whole boat was filled with the smoke and heat and we were still shivering. Looking back, we probably should have called an ambulance, or at least taken ourselves in for a check-up, but people didn’t do that back then. And it was all right in the end. We snuggled together under one big blanket, totally starkers, trying to use each other’s warmth.’

Her eyes drifted off with the memory and Daisy knew that she was back there, in that smoke-filled canal boat, with her husband’s arms wrapped around her. The love of her life.

A sadness was seeping into the air and into Daisy, so she cleared her throat, hoping to say something to break the tension, when Shaun’s phone rang on the table.

Jumping up, he offered them both a broad smile.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I need to get this.’