Lexi
Lexi
We begin by panicking.
“We can’t be in the sea,” Zeke keeps saying, which is infuriating, because, look, there’s the sea, and look , here we are, bloody well definitely in it. The sun slashes bright across the water and the boat creaks beneath us.
I don’t want to think about the creaking. I’ve never been particularly involved with the houseboat—Mum had it for less than a year before she died, and she left it to Penny, so she’s always handled the upkeep and rentals. But I do know it’s a “refurbished” Dutch barge, designed to be more house than boat. Mum bought it to rent out—her “savvy business decision,” she always called it, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that she basically just fell in love with the cute little windows and the idea of it all. This boat is supposed to sit in a marina with plant pots on its roof. It’s called The Merry Dormouse , for fuck’s sake. The chances of it being seaworthy seem extremely slim.
“Did someone—did someone untie my boat?” Zeke asks.
He spins to the other side of the deck, leaning so far over the railing I have to resist the impulse to step forward and grab him.
“ Penny’s boat,” I snap.
Zeke stays unnaturally still, leaning over, ringlets falling forward as he stares into the water. The railing out here on the deck is a thin, rickety thing—just a few poles, really, more a boundary line than anything protective. For a split second I imagine Zeke slipping and sliding out under the bottom rail. My gut seizes. If one of us falls into the sea, can we even get back up here?
“Lexi,” Zeke says, “what did you actually do when we retied the rope last night?”
“What? I did what the busybody neighbor told me to do, I held on to the boat while you got the center of the rope around that thingy and she did the knots. Zeke. Zeke?”
He is terrifyingly quiet. Eventually, at last, he turns. His hair is wild, and his eyes are so wide I can see the whites all around his irises. Fear congeals in the back of my throat.
“Paige told you to loop the center of the rope around the cleat on the pontoon,” Zeke says. His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him.
“No, she didn’t. She told you to do that. She said…” I trail off. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I watch Zeke figure it out. How we both took that sentence. How we both thought Paige was talking to us when she said your boat . How we both thought the other person was the friend who would secure it at the pontoon, and how easily that went wrong in the fog and the darkness.
I feel sick. Not just nauseous, but as if quite suddenly I am going to vomit. I press my palm to my mouth and run to stand beside Zeke, leaning over—not as far as him, but far enough.
The boat is tied to itself.
“Are you fucking joking?” I say, clinging to the rail. “You didn’t loop it around the thingy on the…”
“The cleat,” he says. His voice is still quiet, but there’s an edge to it now. “On the pontoon. And no, I didn’t. Because you were supposed to do that.”
“You think this is my fault?” I say, voice rising.
“Well, I don’t think it’s mine.”
With his jaw clenched and fear all over his face, he looks about eighteen. Which isn’t that far off, really. He is just a kid. Which means I have to be the adult here, when all I want to do is panic.
“We need to stay calm,” I say, looking back at the rope with another lurch of nausea. It’s just looped there, lying against the round punchbag-type things that hang on the side of the houseboat to stop it getting damaged if the water jostles it into the dock. Or the pontoon. Or the…whatever-it’s-called.
Zeke breathes out slowly through his nose. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter how we got here. Just how we get home.”
“Our phones,” I say, scrabbling in the back pocket of my trousers. Never have I felt so grateful to hold my mobile in my hand. It lights up, showing my screen lock image: Mae beaming and bright-eyed on the beach, trousers rolled up to her knees, arms upstretched to the sky.
There are a few WhatsApps waiting from Marissa, and one from Penny— Lexi, please, just call me . On the top right of the screen there’s an empty triangle and an exclamation mark. No signal.
If I was scared before, now I’m terrified. Horrified.
No signal? At all? Not even one of those random letters that comes up sometimes, an E, an H?
“Is your phone…”
“No signal. I can’t even call 999.” His voice is heavy with horror. “I thought you could always call 999.”
“I think phone signal goes if you’re far enough out to sea,” I say. I’m flicking through my phone settings. My battery is at thirty-six percent. “Shit. I’m going to turn mine off, save battery.”
“We might just be in a signal black spot. How far could we get in, what, ten hours?” Zeke asks, swiping his hair out of his face with both hands, one still clutching his phone. He blows out between his lips. “Maybe twenty kilometers?”
“Twenty kilometers?”
“Yeah, now you say it like that, it sounds quite far,” Zeke says, voice weak.
I have to get back before anyone finds out what’s happened to us—I can’t have Mae knowing I’m in danger. I lean against the large wheel fixed to the body of the boat. My hangover loiters at the edge of my consciousness: slick, sweaty hands, dry throat, pounding head.
“That bang we heard last night,” Zeke says, staring at me. I see myself reflected in his pupils, a tiny person, small and lost. “I bet that was us hitting something as we floated out of the marina. The seawall, maybe.”
“Can we steer this thing? Get the motor going?” I say, realizing the significance of the wheel I’m currently propped against. It looks ridiculously oversized, as if it belongs in a Pirates of the Caribbean film, but presumably it isn’t just ornamental. There’s a white tarpaulin here, retracted so this section of the boat is exposed to the sun and connects seamlessly to the deck, but it’s definitely some sort of steering…space. There are dials and handles and a lever that looks like it’s from the TARDIS.
“I don’t think so,” Zeke says, swallowing. “Battery’s flat. When I bought it, your friend said the houseboat needed refueling.”
I flinch at the reference to Penny. She really did sell it without telling me, then. Penny, my Penny, who always cuts herself shaving ( Lex, it’s happened again! Bloodbath! Bring chocolate! ) and who once described talking to me as having an inner monologue . Thinking of her makes me want to turn my phone back on; my phone is never off. But if the battery dies…
“Would a houseboat like this have a radio, or a sea…phone, do you think?” I say, trying to remember the few times I dropped in to check on the boat for Penny.
“Dad never had that sort of stuff. Would your friend have installed anything?”
I make a face. Penny outsourced general upkeep of the houseboat to a local agency, but I think they were just responsible for plugging holes and varnishing things, not installing radios. And there’s no way Penny would have sorted that herself. She’s really not a details person.
“I’ll go look,” Zeke says.
He ducks back inside. I let out a slow, shaky breath and try experimentally turning the wheel. Nothing happens. I’ve never had a panic attack before, but I’ve seen people have them on the telly. Maybe I could give it a go. I have the vague sense that it would make me feel better, like the thought of throwing up when you’re nauseous.
“No sea phone,” Zeke says shakily, reemerging up the steps. His pupils are so dilated his eyes look black. “Not that I can see anyway.”
The fact that he has taken my “sea phone” term and run with it is not encouraging. One of us, ideally, should know what that device is called.
“I have to get back,” Zeke says, his voice a little strange. “I have to work tomorrow. I’m booked on the three-fifteen train home.”
There is a pause as we dip gently back and forth on the ocean and contemplate how surreal concepts like trains and homes and jobs feel right now.
“That’s fine. That’ll be fine.” My voice sounds strange, too. “That’s hours. We’ll be rescued any minute now, definitely.”
Three hours pass in a bizarre, unfathomable blur. We search for flares. There aren’t any. We’ve got most of the basic stuff Penny kept for guests on the boat—the IKEA plates and mugs, the two saucepans, the white bedding that fits on the awkwardly sized bed—but either she never had life jackets and flares on here, or she’s taken them off. She left a little first aid kit tucked in a cubbyhole in the bathroom, though, so that’s something. And though the battery is flat, we do have water—there’s a tank set into the frame beneath the bed, labeled “white water (fresh).”
Zeke is in the living space, staring at the battery banks under the trapdoor in the sofa; I’m in the bedroom. I needed to get away. He’s so…I don’t know. So here . Everywhere. This houseboat is very small, and he’s always so close to me, this wide-eyed, broad-shouldered guy somewhere between a sleepy teenager and a confident man.
I press my back to the wardrobe and close my eyes. Breathe. Breathe. I’m sticky with sweat and fear, but of course I can’t use the shower: no power. Earlier I changed into a white T-shirt and gray jogging bottoms, but I’m boiling now—the sun is fierce, and the boat is becoming stifling.
“Lexi?” Zeke calls.
I keep my eyes closed. A hot shiver passes over me. It’s not like I can ignore him; he knows exactly where I am. There’s nowhere I can go, no way to walk away from him.
I’d be the first to admit that I have a pretty low opinion of men, generally speaking. Experience has taught me that they’re useless at best and dangerous at worst. I know that good ones must exist, but I’ve met very few. Instead, I’ve been walked out on, betrayed, let down. I’ve been groped in bars, harassed at work—nothing terrible , nothing that would beat any other thirty-one-year-old woman’s stories, but all that bog-standard awfulness has meant that right now I can feel myself looking at Zeke a little differently as the day wears on.
This morning I saw him as a frightened kid, but just now while he was looking at the battery banks, crouched down on the floor, T-shirt pulled against the muscles of his back, he had looked so male , and like such a stranger. He’s not actually a kid: he’s twenty-three. That’s young, but not that young. A man can do a lot of harm by the age of twenty-three.
We’re stranded here together, and we’re strangers, and all of a sudden I’m feeling so aware of what it means to be trapped somewhere with a man I don’t know.
“Lexi?” he calls again.
“I just need a minute,” I shout back, and I wince as my voice breaks slightly.
“Oh. OK. Sure.”
He sounds surprised.
I know nothing about this man. I have the things he said to me in the pub—which could all be lies—and his own assertion that his father once owned this houseboat, and that now it belongs to him, even though surely Penny would never have sold it without telling me first. What if he did this on purpose? What if he’s faking the shock? What if this isn’t a stupid accident—what if he’s stealing Penny’s houseboat? What if he’s kidnapping me?
I lift my hands to my forehead and look around, trying to calm my breathing. I need to get a handle on this situation. I need to get back in control. My gaze lands on Zeke’s bag, open on the floor by the bed, his waistcoat from last night stuffed into the top. I barely hesitate before dropping to my knees to rummage through it.
Clothes, basic toiletries, his wallet. His driving license says Ezekiel Ravenhill and shows a picture of a man with short hair and a beard; at first glance my stomach lurches, because it looks nothing like him, but actually, once I look at the eyes, I realize this is Zeke with his curls cut off. They’re such a defining feature, he looks totally different without them.
My heart does a little hiccup as I find his phone charger, curled in a neat nest of wire. My phone is still switched off; it looks so sad on the side table, black and dumb. There’s a spare pair of boxers in here, some tissues, gum, plus a pack of condoms I recognize, and another one—flavored. I tend to associate flavored condoms with teenagers, or, occasionally, with men who really want a blow job and have seriously misunderstood the reason they’re not getting one. I’m not sure what to make of this except that it’s surprising.
My hand stills on the last object in the bag.
It’s a soft leather sheath, about thirty centimeters long. I pull it out and unfasten the clasp. I expect it to open like a regular bag, but instead it unfolds, like a wallet.
Inside are six knives.
I breathe in sharply, almost dropping the whole thing. Why the hell would this man have a set of knives in his duffel bag? I put them down on the floor and sit back on my heels, breathing fast. My back scrapes against the side of the bedframe.
This boat. It is too small. I close my eyes tightly and imagine myself safe at home, standing in the middle of the rug, Mae’s pens and coloring books scattered everywhere. I can almost smell the gravy from dinner the night before, a meal eaten on the sofa in front of EastEnders ; I can almost hear the cars shooting by on the road outside, making the window rattle in its frame. Then I open my eyes, and here I am, stuck in the North Sea on a houseboat with a man who might well be planning to kill me in my sleep.
I hitch myself up to sit on the edge of the bed and drop my head into my hands. Zeke seems so harmless. I remember how he was last night, how he made my body light up, how good I’d felt in his arms. But then there’s the aftertaste, the next thought: he’s still a stranger, and he’s a man, which means he’s strong and capable of cruelty.
And then there’s that professional-looking set of murder weapons in his duffel bag. Which is really saying serial killer to me right now.
I hear Zeke moving around in the kitchen, just on the other side of the door, and I flinch, pulling my arms tightly around myself. My heart is thundering in my chest as I wait for him to come in, but he doesn’t—his footsteps move away.
I can’t stay in this room forever. Right now I have the advantage—I have the knives, and he doesn’t know I have them. I shake out my arms, irritated to find myself curled in a ball like this. This isn’t me. I reach down to pull the smallest knife from its sheath, testing the point with one finger and then wincing in surprise as it draws a tiny drop of blood. They’re sharp .
I crack open the door. Zeke is nowhere to be seen, which means he’s on the deck, or possibly in the sea, which right now I am feeling pretty fine about.
The first thing to do, surely, is make sure there are no other potential weapons available to him. I turn to the kitchen, glancing toward the deck before I check the drawer where the knives live.
There are no kitchen knives.
I check in the tiny sink, and the even tinier drying area beside it—no knives. I check the cupboards, my movements becoming increasingly frantic, my grip on that little knife tightening. There aren’t even any scissors. I know there were scissors before—I saw them when I was rummaging around for coffee this morning.
“What are you doing?” comes Zeke’s voice from the doorway to the deck.
I spin, Zeke’s knife in my hand. He pauses on his way down the steps as he clocks my raised weapon. With his ripped-knee jeans, beanie hat and bare feet, he looks more hipster than murderer, but the blood is pounding in my ears and I can’t think straight anymore. I’m in a fighting stance, crouching low, knees bent and feet set.
“Stay there,” I bark.
He frowns with a slow head tilt, as though he’s just taking me in, knife and all.
“Lexi? What’s…going on?”
He looks sleepy from the sun, his eyes still adjusting to being indoors, his face already kissed with the start of a tan.
“Where are all the kitchen knives?” I ask, my voice raised.
“I’ve got them,” he says, nonplussed.
I raise the small knife a little higher. This isn’t feeling quite right, but he’s just told me he’s got all the pointy things, so a raised knife feels wise.
“Why have you got my knife?” he asks.
“I have your knife because you’ve got all the knives. Why do you have all the knives? Why do you have a bag full of fucking knives?”
Realization dawns on Zeke’s face. “Oh. Oh. Lexi. Really?”
My blood pressure is slowly dropping. It is very hard to imagine this man murdering me right now. But his surprise is irritating, too—is it that difficult to believe that I might feel at risk?
“You didn’t answer my question.” I lean my hip against the counter, arm dropping to my side. The ready-to-fight pose is starting to feel a bit ridiculous in the face of his open bewilderment.
He pulls the beanie off and pushes his ringlets out of his eyes.
“I’m making us lunch,” he says, gaze steady on my face. “There was a disposable barbecue in the cupboard, so I’m cooking on the deck. My knives are in my bag, but you were having a moment to yourself in there, so I thought I’d just use the houseboat ones.”
I swivel to look at the kitchen counter, noticing what else is missing besides the knives: the chopping board, the net of onions.
“What do you mean, your knives?” I say, my voice hoarse.
“I’m a junior chef,” he says. “My boss got me my own set of knives at the end of last year, and they always come home with me after a shift, so…they were in my bag. I came straight from London to Gilmouth yesterday.”
I absorb this, my breath still coming fast. I hope he can’t see how much my chest is heaving.
“Why would you— Did you really think I’d hurt you?” Zeke asks, his voice raw now.
My hand is shaking and sweaty on the knife.
“You’re a man, Zeke,” I snap. “A man I don’t really know.”
His hand flies to the back of his head, staying there, braced.
“God,” he says, after a moment. “I didn’t think about it like that.”
“No. Such is the joy of being a man, I guess.”
“But…you’ve…We…” He rubs a hand across his mouth, frustrated with himself, I think. He stays on the steps, that beanie resting against his knee as if he’s just doffed his cap. “You’re older than me.”
It’s interesting how uncomfortable it makes me to hear that out loud.
“And you’re so…tough. And—I don’t know.” He pauses for a long moment, eyes down, thinking, then he looks back to me. “Have you felt safe? Please tell me you’ve not felt unsafe today.”
“On this boat in the middle of the sea?” I hedge, rubbing my thumb along the handle of the knife.
“On this boat with me ,” he says softly. His hair is falling forward again, one dark ringlet across his eye. “Did you think I was going to, like…”
He can’t seem to bring himself to finish the sentence; he’s looking at me with horror, and I feel another flash of irritation at the incredulity in his face.
“I’m going to hazard a guess that when we left The Anchor, you didn’t think twice about how nobody knew who you’d gone home with,” I say.
He shakes his head slowly. “Yeah, no. That didn’t cross my mind.”
“I did. I weighed up that risk. I made sure Marissa knew we were going to the marina. If I’m out late, I walk home with my keys in my hand, because you can do real damage with keys if a man attacks you. I cross the street if there’s a guy coming the other way after dark. And when I’m stuck in a small space with a man I don’t know, part of me will always ask the question, Am I safe?”
“I didn’t…” Zeke swallows. He looks pained, as if he’s bleeding from somewhere, as though he should be clutching a wound at his side. “I would never hurt you. I would never hurt anyone.”
He comes down the steps then, arms out to me. I raise my hand, like uh-uh, no further . He stops stock-still immediately, eyes getting a little wider.
“You can have my knives,” he says, voice soft. “You can have all the knives. Keep them under your pillow. In your shoes. Wherever you like. I can be on a knife ban. I’ll come get you if anything needs chopping.”
I narrow my eyes. “I’m not being crazy. Do not act like I’m being crazy.”
“No, I don’t think that at all. This…” He pauses, trying to find the words. “This situation is crazy. I get why you wouldn’t trust me, especially after finding…” He nods at the knife.
My shoulders relax slightly at the acknowledgment. I watch him for a while, my eyes running over him—the soft curls, the handsome, youthful lines of his face.
“Did it occur to you, too? That I might have kidnapped you, or something?”
The corner of his lip quirks up. “No. Sorry. When you were waving a knife at me, I did start to feel a bit like I might have misread you, but no.” He lifts one shoulder in a shrug, and says, “I got your vibe last night. I know we don’t know each other well, but I feel like…I kind of do know you. In a way.”
My cheeks start to heat. “Let’s just…The knives can go back to living in the kitchen drawer,” I say.
“Sure. Yeah. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
I frown, lifting my chin slightly. “Is something burning?”
“Caramelizing,” he says automatically, then he tilts his head, smelling. “But maybe burning in about four seconds,” he adds, spinning toward the steps to the deck.
I watch him go, and take a quiet, shaky breath.
“I’m going to get changed,” I call after him as the door swings shut. “All right? Just give me some space.”
“Of course,” he calls back.
I stand there for a moment. I feel a little calmer. One problem at a time: I may be lost at sea, but I no longer think the man I’m with is a murderer. I’ll take that win right now. I turn back to the bedroom, pushing the door shut behind me.
The room looks different after that interaction. The sheath of knives on the floor is clearly a set of chef’s knives; the bed is back to being the one we spent our night in, disheveled and warm. My breath slowly steadying, I drag my bag out from the bottom of the wardrobe and rifle through it. I’m so sticky and hot now, I need shorts, but…Ugh. Why is it that when you’re packing a suitcase, you suddenly think you’ll wear things you haven’t worn in years? The only ones I’ve put in are denim shorts, too tight, but it’s that or staying in these thick jogging bottoms, so I wriggle on the shorts.
I brace myself before walking out onto the deck. Zeke smiles at me slightly warily. The episode with the knives has changed things. We were strangers, then lovers, and now we’re back to strangers again. He’s pulled the beanie back on, despite the sun’s heat, and is untangling the necklaces against his chest with one hand while he turns the vegetables on the barbecue. I remember feeling those necklaces trailing against my bare skin last night as he moved up my body to kiss me, and I look away sharply at the thought, staring out at the open sea.
Still no boats. I can’t believe there are still no other boats. The water seems even smoother than earlier, an endless, shining lake.
“Thank you,” I say abruptly. “For having that conversation with me.”
“Of course. I’m so sorry I didn’t…I should have made you feel safe,” he says quietly, looking at the barbecue.
“Well. Yes. But maybe that was a bit of a tall order right now,” I say, raising my eyebrows at the big, blue, yawning emptiness on all sides. I don’t want to undermine what I’ve said to him, but also, I suspect I might not have freaked out to that extent if we hadn’t been drifting helplessly in the middle of the ocean.
“We’ll be OK,” Zeke says after a moment. “People survive at sea for ages just holding on to a plank or a floaty coconut or something.”
Clearly he’s on a being-brave kick right now. Good for him. When I don’t answer, he sets his barbecue tongs down and unfolds one of the striped blue-and-white deck chairs jammed beside the steering wheel. I noticed those earlier, but left them where they were, because sitting down feels like settling in. The sea glimmers in grays and greens, sunlight catching in its surface like silver glitter. Against its depth, the deep blue of the sky is oddly two-dimensional, like a wall painted in one shade of cobalt.
“Sit down. Rest. Someone will rescue us soon,” Zeke says. “A ship will come by.”
I ignore the deck chair. I’m not nearly as confident about being rescued as I was three hours ago. We’ve not seen a single boat yet. We got on the houseboat at about midnight last night, and it’s three thirty now—that’s more than fifteen hours of floating around without seeing another soul.
Wherever we’ve ended up…I’m starting to worry it’s somewhere no one else goes.