Chapter 37
A week later, Gemma met Nick in front of the imposing, cream and green British Secret Service building.
Her heart skipped and hopped for a couple of seconds, which made her flustered.
Oh, why were these new feelings trying to get in the way of their friendship?
Thankfully, Nick unwittingly diverted her emotions.
When he saw her, he started talking into his collar from one side of his mouth, making her laugh.
‘Roger that,’ he said. ‘Gotta go. Suspect is approaching.’
‘You’re such a big kid,’ she said.
‘I watch too many crime shows.’
‘And I bet you always want to work out who did it.’
‘Of course! Isn’t that the point? I love trying to be one step ahead of the show.’
‘Doesn’t that take away from its enjoyment?’
‘That is the enjoyment!’ he said, as if he couldn’t believe he had to spell it out.
They walked down Lack’s Dock Slipway, disturbing a bunch of seagulls. Nick started chatting about the TV series he was currently watching and how he’d like to try writing one some time. ‘I might even do a screenwriting course,’ he said.
‘I’m in awe of fiction writers,’ Gemma said. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Trust me, real life gives you everything you need. You just need to be on alert. Everything you do and everyone you meet can form a potential story.’
‘Oh, God, does that mean you could plagiarise something I do or say?’ Gemma pulled a face. ‘I’d better be careful then.’
‘I wouldn’t call it plagiarism as such. Inspiration, perhaps. Anyway, you’re making out that I know what I’m doing. Don’t worry, I don’t. Most of what I write, I end up deleting.’ He laughed as if he couldn’t believe how bad a fiction writer he was. ‘But enough about me. The mud beckons.’
‘Yes, shall we head east first, away from the bridge, then turn back and go west?’
Nick nodded and went a few metres up the beach where there were larger rocks and chunks of pebbles.
Gemma decided to hug the waterline where the stones were small.
For a moment, she paused, closed her eyes and listened.
All she wanted to hear was the sotto voce of the water.
Her heartbeat slowed; her breathing deepened. And so, she was ready to begin.
For ten minutes, they larked together but alone. A stretch of cloud darkened overhead. Although the sun hadn’t yet set, she almost needed her headtorch.
Then Nick started up again. He seemed to have reached his time limit for keeping silent. ‘Found anything?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’
Gemma squatted at the tideline, thinking she’d seen a cloth seal, a lead disc that, between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, was attached to woollen cloth to prove its quality and that its tax had been paid.
But when it started moving and scuttled away, she realised it was a crab.
It took another fifteen minutes of searching to find something much more interesting: half a French franc.
She placed it into the bucket. Then Nick lifted a large key from the mud, crusty with corrosion.
‘Hey, look,’ he called out. ‘I wonder what this unlocked?’
‘Who knows,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the half-metre square in front of her.
‘Another good item for your electrolysis kit,’ Nick said.
‘I’ll get you one for your birthday.’
‘10 January, in case you were wondering.’
‘Ha-ha,’ she said. Yet she couldn’t help but want to try and remember the date.
‘When’s yours?’
‘You don’t really want to know when my birthday is, do you?’
‘Just making small talk.’
‘We’re meant to be mudlarking, you know.’
‘I can mudli-task, or should it be muddy-task?’ He frowned. ‘Sorry, I’ve got a soft spot for puns.’
She laughed. Then, she spotted an iron nail. She scooped it out and found two more, heavy and bent out of shape, half submerged in the mud. She let another slop of water wash them clean.
‘What have you got there?’ Nick said.
‘Nails. Probably from a ship.’
‘Nice.’
They went into the bucket too.
‘Shall we turn around?’ Nick suggested.
Gemma didn’t see why not. ‘How long until the tide turns?’
‘I reckon we’ve got a good couple of hours.’ Nick looked up to the dusky sky as if it might give him the answer.
Gemma nodded and slung her bucket over an arm.
‘You know, someone found an axe head along here,’ Nick said.
‘There’ll be lots of pieces of flint, too, I imagine. Although I’m not very good at spotting those.’
‘Flint?’
‘From the Stone Age.’
‘Wow.’ Nick sighed. ‘Any use for a goose feather?’ He held up a large, perfectly formed feather.
‘Beautiful! You could stick it in that pork pie pot you found,’ Gemma suggested.
‘Nah. I can keep it for you, if you like?’
‘Sure. It’s pretty.’
They mudlarked in silence as they headed towards the arches of Vauxhall Bridge. The London Eye rotated slowly in the background, on the other side of the river. The sky gradually rusted over and cast an eery glow over the water and the buildings.
Even though Nick was with her, Gemma found she was still able to lose herself in the moment, and be completely and utterly absorbed in the past. Adam was no longer dominating her thoughts, and she wasn’t mulling over the death of her birth mother.
There were no feelings of being alone in the world, no inner chatter about whether she remembered to take the washing out of the dryer or how she mustn’t forget her brother’s birthday on Sunday.
She was in a lovely place of peace – even if her attraction to her mudlarking companion was something that was proving difficult to ignore.
‘You know,’ Nick started, his voice quieter, his tone contemplative. ‘I’m really starting to get it now. I mean, I thought I did but now I really, really do. Here, with you, I feel so relaxed. I guess Dad must have felt like this when he was metal detecting.’
‘Was he a journalist too?’ Gemma said.
‘He was a frustrated poet by night and a bored bookkeeper by day. I don’t think he ever achieved what he’d hoped for. But he always made the best of things and we never wanted for much. Do you come from a long line of medics?’
‘Not at all. Mum was an editor and dad was a teacher.’ Gemma looked into the murky water sloshing at her feet. ‘Then again, I could do, I suppose, because they’re not my biological parents.’
‘What’s the latest with the search for your birth mother?’
Gemma gave him an abridged version of what she and Laila had found out, trying to brush over how much it had upset her.
‘But even if your birth mother isn’t around anymore, relatives will be. I’d be tracking them down if I were you,’ Nick suggested.
‘That’s what Laila said. I’ve got a half-brother somewhere but what if he doesn’t know about me? And what if he doesn’t want to see me? I don’t want to be rejected all over again.’
‘Mmm …’ Nick said, having a hard time coming up with a positive response.
They were at the eastern side of Vauxhall Bridge where the lost River Effra once entered the Thames.
They had to jump over a storm relief drain that had been cut into the gravel to get to the other side.
Here, there was more mud, black and sludgy like concrete before it sets.
The sun now resembled a dollop of marmalade hovering between the skyline and the river.
‘I could help you do more sleuthing, if you like?’ Nick said.
‘That’s kind of you to offer—’
‘—I’ve got links to all sorts of people,’ he said enticingly.
‘Sounds dodgy.’
He laughed, then he yawned. It was a long one. ‘Gosh, sorry,’ he said.
‘Late night?’ she asked.
He nodded.
‘With the prof?’ she added. It was cheeky, she knew, but it just came out. Except she wasn’t supposed to be concerned about the professor!
‘Eh? No,’ Nick said, as if being kept up by Rosie was a possibility, which only annoyed Gemma more because she realised the thought of it actually being the professor rankled. ‘I had a deadline. Anyway, why did you think I was with Rosie?’
‘I saw you two at the pub after the talk.’ She tried to say it nonchalantly but it seemed to come out accusatorily.
‘Right,’ Nick said, looking, for a second, quizzical. ‘I was getting her number because I had an idea for another story,’ he explained.
Oh, God, of course he was.
Nick continued. ‘You know she talked about how the Romans were great at recycling? I thought it was a good environmental angle. Very topical. We caught up during the week, and now I’ve got more than enough info for a story.
’ He smiled and got a faraway look in his eye, which made Gemma feel momentarily redundant.
‘Well, that’s nice,’ she said.
‘Yeah. The prof is nice,’ Nick said, mishearing her.
‘I bet she is,’ Gemma muttered.
‘Hey, don’t be like that. I hadn’t been angling for anything more, but she happened to ask if I wanted to go for a drink afterwards and I had no reason not to …’ He smiled sheepishly.
‘Yeah, of course, that’s great,’ Gemma said, wanting to be pleased for him.
‘We were getting on well, you know, and she’s a pretty cool woman,’ Nick added, as if she needed an explanation.
‘She is,’ Gemma conceded, even though she now wished she’d never mentioned the professor. She didn’t want to turn into a sourpuss again, so she bent over to refocus on the foreshore.
‘She’s so intelligent—’ Nick went on.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘— and dynamic.’
Now, the attention on Professor Rosie was really beginning to rile. Was he purposely trying to wind her up because she told him she didn’t want to date?
‘But she can be quite intense,’ Nick added. ‘And I’ve never been out with an older woman before.’
Gemma looked up. ‘How much older?’
‘Seven years.’
‘Oh, well, good for you.’
She smiled, and tried to bring her focus back to mudlarking.
She felt the ground beneath her front foot become quaggy and less stable and reached out for something to hold on to, but there was nothing and Nick wasn’t close enough.
She took a step backwards with her right leg to anchor herself, but that foot began sinking.
She turned and watched as her leg and one of her ex-mother-in-law’s pink wellington boots slowly disappeared into the mud, as if they had nothing whatsoever to do with her anymore.