Chapter 18
Tilly wasn't sure what to do next. She was sure that, firstly, she looked quite the picture and secondly, she wished she could somehow be transported far away from Otto and into the shower.
It was fair to say that he did not look impressed.
Stanley, however, looked on with amusement.
She was more than impressed, though. Just so very impressed. Infatuated already.
Otto sounded like a sergeant major. 'Right. Come on. Another thing that you didn't read is that the mud is best not mixed with the skin. There's a tap just behind here. You’ll need hosing down.'
'No, no, I'm fine.'
‘Follow me around to the sorting shed,’ Otto barked.
With Alpha Male daydreams as well as huge pink love hearts in front of her eyes, obviously, Tilly followed.
The view from behind was, frankly, not a hardship, and as fireworks rained down from above, Tilly schlepped along dripping mud.
The sorting shed was round the other side of the slipway with monstrous sliding doors open to the water.
Outside on the wall, there was a heavy-duty tap on a pipe bracket with a coil of industrial hose and a huge nozzle.
Otto turned it on without ceremony. 'Hands. '
Tilly held her hands under the water, which was absolutely, breathtakingly, extraordinarily cold.
As the mud came off in brown rivulets and went down the drain at the base of the wall, Tilly tried not to shiver.
Otto went into the shed and came back with a cloth.
She wiped her hands, and he directed the hose at her right leg and then left.
The mud that had been setting on her jeans came off in a long dark stream.
However, the lovely Tilly Bloomwood, bless her cotton socks, wasn't that interested in the temperature of the water, her jeans, the mud or what day of the week it was.
She was way too busy looking at a rather nice jaw, biceps that seemed to move on their own and little butterflies and daydreams that were currently fluttering around her head.
Putting the hose back on the bracket, Otto’s voice jolted Tilly out of the wildly improper thoughts going through her brain. 'So, regarding before when I saw you. I’ve now learnt you’ve taken on the boat shed.'
Tilly blinked. 'How did you know that?'
'Small island.' Otto shrugged. 'Word gets around. Listen. Those beds are roped off for a reason. Two reasons, actually. First, you can damage things, obviously. You don't need to know the economics of it. Point is, the beds are roped off to keep people off them.'
'I understand that,' Tilly said. 'I didn't see the —'
'The second reason is that what you were just standing in is not sand.
It's not a beach. It's tidal mud flats which have been building up in this estuary for centuries.
In the right conditions, it will take a wellie boot and keep it, and in worse conditions, it will take rather more than a wellie boot.
People have got into serious difficulty in mud flats on this coast, hence why there are signs of such everywhere. '
'There was one sign,' Tilly said.
'There are three signs on three separate posts along the perimeter. You managed to miss all three of them.'
Tilly turned her head to the side, felt a very strange smile cross her lips, and the butterflies which had carried the daydreams now took on a new job of attaching themselves to her eyelashes, making them bat up and down.
'And the chain is not decorative.'
'Noted.'
The look on Otto's face informed Tilly he was far, far, far from having daydreams about her.
Tilly shook her head in a little movement, trying to flick away the notion that just about everything about this man was making her tingle from head to foot.
'I'm sorry about the beds. I genuinely didn't see the signs.
I was thinking about something else. I saw the trestles, and I wanted a closer look. '
'You're completely covered in mud from more or less head to foot. You'll need to get your, err, clothes washed as soon as.' Otto made a face. 'Or just bin them. Where have you been to be coming down the slipway from that side?'
'I've been on the coastal path, and I came back via the headland and down the back track here.'
Otto closed his eyes and tutted. 'Next time, go down the road, that’s why it was built. You know, on concrete. Right, I'll walk you back.'
Tilly blinked. 'You don't have to, nope, as I said, I'm fine. Thank you for, well, for giving me a hand.'
The voice again came out as more of a bark.
'I know technically I don't have to walk you back.
Darling-wise, I do. If someone sees you and asks what happened, you're going to say you got stuck in the Carrington beds, and I'm going to hear about it from three separate people before lunchtime.
So, I am walking you back to deposit you at the shed so you don't do anything as stupid again. '
'What?'
'Don’t even question it. I'm doing it because on Darling Island, if I leave someone covered in mud outside my place, I'll be hearing about it until approximately the end of time.
Darling has opinions. Come on. I really do not have time for this.
' Otto started walking, and Stanley fell in beside him.
As he strode away, Tilly, in her wet bottoms, squelching boots and mud-covered face, had to almost jog to keep up. 'To be clear, I was just about to make my way out when you arrived.'
'Pah. Okay then. You were not even close. You don't know how the mud works. For a start, you were in the wrong direction, which is why you nearly lost it.'
'Oh, come on! Really, it’s just a bit of mud.'
'God knows what might have happened. Really, you can't make it up.
I have been walking on those beds since I was four years old.
I know exactly where it's safe and where it isn't. You cannot tell, from the other side of the rope, which parts will hold and which won't. That's why the rope and signs are there. '
'I'll read them next time.'
'There won't be a next time. Apart from anything else, this whole area is private. You can look at the trestles from the slipway, which is also private, but we let people on it so they don’t have the chance to do stupid things.'
Tilly said nothing.
'So, you've been here five minutes, and you've already managed to leave the deck gates open, get stranded in the oyster beds, and God knows what else.' Otto stopped at the entrance to the jetty. 'Right, hopefully, I won't be setting eyes on you again.'
Hopefully, I will. 'Thank you again. Sorry, to be well, to cause a problem.'
'I presume you've heard about the storm? Are you ready for it?'
Oh, the blooming storm again. Whatever. Tilly had been hearing about the elusive storm for days. Everyone had mentioned it, and it still hadn't come. 'I think so. When is it actually about to hit? The app keeps changing.'
Otto looked at the sky as if it held the answer. 'Later this week. It's coming in from the south-west.' He looked out towards the estuary. 'You can feel it already if you know what you're looking for.'
Tilly followed his gaze to what looked, to her, like an estuary and not an impending storm. 'Right.'
'You'll need to unlatch all of those shutters on the windows and get them in place.
You'll want them closed, or you'll lose the glass.
I think the pots will be safe. What else?
Yeah, we haven't had one like this for years, so the sandbags will need to go up.
Don't go out once it starts. The harbour road floods at the top sometimes, and the jetty boards get water coming up between them on a high tide in a bad one.
It's not dangerous if you know it's coming. It's less ideal if you don't.'
Standing there in her wet jeans and squelching boots, Tilly listened, or pretended to, about the storm. She couldn’t have given a hoot about the storm as inside she swooned.
'I'll send one of my men round to put your sandbags in place. It's mostly just precautionary. None of these buildings has flooded for a long time, but there's no point testing it unnecessarily.'
Tilly gulped. Sandbags. They were talking about sandbags.
All a bit much, she thought. It was the south coast of England, not the Bay of Biscay or the North Sea in January.
She'd been through a typhoon in Fiji, technically, and that had involved the bar shutting early and some palm fronds on the path the next morning.
She was fairly sure that Darling Island could be navigated without military-grade flood defences but kept this opinion to herself.
'That's very kind. Thank you. You really don't need to… '
'Don't go out once it starts. I mean it.'
'Right.' Tilly managed, just about, not to roll her eyes. 'I'll shut the shutters, bolt the doors top and bottom, and I'll stay inside. I have been outside in bad weather before, you know. I’ve been through a typhoon, actually.'
'Not on Darling, you haven't.'
'How bad can it actually…?'
'The fog horn will go off, and when the storm comes in, you'll understand why I'm telling you to stay in. The back decking takes the worst of it. Don't go out there once the wind picks up. The boards are slippery, and the rail needs replacing. See you.'
Tilly stood at the entrance to the jetty and watched Otto walk back along the harbour road, hands in pockets, Stanley's lead loose. She was watching for geographical reasons only. To orient herself. That was all.
Letting herself in, she pulled the door shut behind her, stood by the door on the mat in her squelching boots, wet jeans and her mud-situation and tried to control her breathing. What in the world had just happened? Whatever it was. More of it was needed. Pronto.