A drowning tide, p.1
A Drowning Tide, page 1
PRAISE FOR
A DROWNING TIDE
‘A standout mystery crime thriller, A Drowning Tide is told in first person by Merry, who despite being damaged by her traumatic past is a very likeable protagonist. Set on the Isle of Wight, it’s a really compelling novel of buried secrets being gradually unearthed, which kept me guessing until the final reveal.’
FRAN TAYLOR, author of Wind in My Wings
‘The end was awesome! I felt quite homesick by the time I finished. I miss the island! I loved Sarah’s last book, so I was super excited to get my hands on A Drowning Tide especially when I heard it was set on the Isle of Wight! I fell in love with Merry, foibles and all, and adored being whisked back to my hometown. The island dynamics made me chuckle, the vibes are perfect “off-season seaside town”, and the twisty-turny mystery kept me guessing right to the end.’
KATHERINE ADAMS, author of Tonight, I Burn
‘In this beautifully written book of cryptic clues, doubts and suspense, we are swept up in a current of uncertainty and fear. In Merry, we have a balanced heroine for our time: prickly and flawed, yet ultimately both forgiving and forgiven. A book to dive into!’
ROSIE SANDLER, author of Murder Takes Root
‘I found it – like Merry’s daily saltwater swims – sharply compulsive. In fact in many ways, the story brought to mind the ocean – seemingly calm or ominous on top, with all sorts of currents and debris beneath the surface, ready to snag the unwary . . . The crossword clues were a great hook! After each chapter I found myself mulling events looking for that cryptic clue or meaning . . . I loved the character of Merry – saying or doing all the wrong things, or rather all the right things, that the rest of us think but lack the courage to do.’
JM HALL, author of A Spoonful of Murder
‘A brilliantly crafted story with captivating mystery and a wonderfully unique main character at its centre – I couldn’t put this down.’
SOPHIE FLYNN, author of What Stays Unsaid
‘I loved it – it was the perfect combination of mystery but also appealed to the cottage-core obsessive in me. I loved being in Merry’s cottage and life, it was like a holiday escape I never wanted to leave. An addictive, beautifully written whodunnit that will stay with you long after you’ve raced to the final page. I loved it. Secrets and lies floating beneath the surface – you’ll want to read this in one sitting.’
LEAH PITT, author of The Beach Hut
‘A beguilingly atmospheric, tensely mysterious story with a warm, beating heart.’
GYTHA LODGE, author of DCI Jonah Sheens series
‘Unique, enthralling, unputdownable. Hugely engrossing, quirky and beautifully written. An intriguing, twisting, disarming Isle of Wight mystery. Crossword obsessed Merry is an original and relatable character, forced to swim deep into her own past to solve the mystery of her neighbour’s disappearance.’
LIZ WEBB, author of The Daughter & The Saved
‘A kooky protagonist. A missing person. Dark secrets resurfacing. What’s not to love in this perfectly plotted, gripping mystery?’
MEERA SHAH, author of The House Sitter
‘An engrossing, twisty mystery with an irresistibly quirky protagonist and a setting so richly evoked you’ll be booking your Isle of Wight holiday before you turn the last page.’
TAMMY COHEN, author of The Wedding Party
‘I’m going to send this loud cheer for Sarah Lawton’s terrific book, which I’ve absolutely loved. It’s beautifully written, gorgeously twisty and a complete page-turner. Merry’s damaged, self-protective eccentricity is heartbreakingly real, while her true warmth glows like a furnace. I was rooting for her throughout. Finally, the setting is just glorious – full of brackish, stony, loamy Isle of Wight authenticity.’
FIONA WALKER, author of The Art of Murder
First published in the UK in 2024
This electronic edition published in 2024 by
Black & White Publishing Ltd
Nautical House, 104 Commercial Street, Edinburgh, EH6 6NF
A division of Bonnier Books UK
4th Floor, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1B 4DA
Owned by Bonnier Books
Sveavägen 56, Stockholm, Sweden
Copyright © Sarah Lawton 2024
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Sarah Lawton to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HBK): 978 1 78530 671 6
ISBN (EBOOK): 978 1 78530 673 0
eBook Compilation by Data Connection
www.blackandwhitepublishing.com
For Liz, Katherine, Jo, Marija, and all the Tuesdays.
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
1985
Chapter 35
Crossword
Answers
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
Eagle-eyed residents of the Isle of Wight may notice that I have taken some liberties with small parts of our geography for artistic purposes. For the main part though, all the places I have described within this novel are real and beautiful and well worth a visit.
1
ACROSS: 17. False information is undesirable (3,4)
THE BIG HOUSE IS ENTIRELY lit up, which seems odd for five in the morning. I didn’t hear a party, and I’m a light sleeper. It looks cold out there, the grass of my small patch of lawn and theirs beyond is silver tipped and probably delightfully crunchy. I wonder if I should go over and check up on them, but I haven’t been particularly welcome recently, and it’s five in the morning.
Instead, I crawl back into bed and pick up my notebook. I still have four crossword puzzles to submit on a deadline this week, which is not like me. I’m usually more organised. I should stop noseying at the neighbours and keep working. Maybe they’re going on holiday. Lucas would usually tell me though, ask me to keep an eye on the place while they’re away. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the moon distracting me, shining in my window all night, making me dream of things I’d rather forget, even though it’s only at first quarter. It’s no good.
Thinking of the moon makes me think of tides and that pulls me again from my bed, downstairs, to the kitchen. The smooth tiles are cold beneath my feet, but the familiarity is as steadying as always. My slippers are by the back door and I slide my chilled feet into them, wriggling my toes against the woolly fabric, trying to warm them up. As the kettle boils I look over at their house again, so much bigger and grander than my tiny cottage. Still all the lights on. What a waste of electric.
I take the tea into the front room and tell my contraption to play me Classic FM. It’s nice this time of the morning, they don’t play the louder pieces until later, for now it’s small and soothing for those of us who are awake at ungodly hours. The tide chart is in the neat little drawer of my coffee table, well worn. It’s nearly the end of October, I’ll need to order next year’s soon. The tide was up at 3.53 a.m., only an hour ago. If I hurry, I could still catch a decent depth at Appley, or I’ll have to wait until four this afternoon. I quite like swimming in the dark on a clear night. Though I got a face full of weeds last time, which put paid to my pretensions of being a selkie, all shiny and secretive, slipping through the water. Later then, and only if I’ve finished a whole puzzle and sent it off.
With thoughts now full of seawater and mythical creatures, seal-women dancing on lonely beaches in remote places, I settle on a theme for my crossword, raiding the bookshelf for my Lore of Land and my dictionary. I’ll start, I think, with Selkie, two e’s and an s, it’s a good central word to spread out from. Skin-shedding mythical creature (6). I start by mapping the grid, a rough shape at first, plotting out some words and phrases. Dredging up older clues I’ve used before to tweak, leaving new ones for later. I find the absorption I need as dawn melts away the dark night. My tea has gone cold.
I’m boiling the kettle again and pondering breakfast – Marmite or jam on toast, trying to remember what I had yesterday or if I even ate anything – when there’s a knock at the door. It’s a rather loud knock for ba
We stand staring at each other for a long stomach-swooping moment while my mind trips and scatters to the winds of bad memories, of a scene like this played out once before, but I gather myself and my voice is firm when I speak.
‘Yes? Can I help you?’
The young man talks while the woman watches on. ‘Sorry to bother you so early,’ he says, his accent catching on a nerve. Why do all young people want to sound like they’re from London these days? I recognise this nipper, he’s a look of his mother about him, as local as I am.
‘I’m an early riser,’ I interrupt. ‘What do you need?’
‘We’re here about your neighbour, Lucas Manning,’ he says, and my innards lurch again. ‘His wife Alison has reported him missing.’
‘Missing?’ I parrot back stupidly.
‘She hasn’t seen him since Sunday evening.’ This time the woman speaks, a silky Scottish burr, words as smooth as her shiny black hair. She’s a long way from home. Selkie. ‘D’you mind if we come in for a wee minute? It’s cold out here. It won’t take long.’ She takes out a black leather wallet from her pocket and flips it open, showing me her warrant card. There’s a braille plaque on it beneath the shiny crest which glints in the morning sun.
‘Okay,’ I say, stepping back into the narrow hallway. ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess. Kettle’s just boiled; do you want a hot drink?’ There isn’t a mess but that’s what people say, isn’t it? They follow me through to the kitchen. The young man – is he a Harding, or was that his mother, I can’t recall – waits for his superior to assent before he also agrees. It is very cold this morning. I make them both tea, use the time to gather my thoughts. Missing?
They settle themselves around my small kitchen table and I feel slightly embarrassed at its scruffy and scratched surface and scattered collection of notebooks and pots of chewed-on pens. The boy takes out his own notepad and I could almost picture him licking the end of a pencil before starting to write. I don’t know why silly things like that pop into my head when I’m nervous.
‘Here you go.’ They both take the mugs I offer them and draw them across the table where they’ve sat, cupping them for warmth. A slim band of silver gleams from the woman’s wedding finger. Maybe she married an islander; I can’t think why anyone would move so far from home to end up here otherwise.
‘When did you last see Mr Manning, Mrs . .?’
‘Ms. Ms Merriweather. Or just Merry, if you like.’
‘Merry,’ she says with a small smile as my name rolls in her mouth, a flash of teeth showing past unadorned lips. No make-up at all it looks like, which is unusual. I thought I was fairly alone in my eschewing of powders and pastes. ‘Merry, when did you last see your neighbour? How did he seem?’
I have to think for a minute. I don’t see Lucas as much as I used to or would like to, really, apart from the little jobs he does for me. ‘A few days ago. I saw them going off for a walk, Sunday afternoon maybe, but it could have been Saturday. I don’t think I’ve seen either of them since then.’
She makes a note in green loops on a scruffy pad of paper. I hate green ink. ‘Where did you see them walking? Do you know where they were going?’
‘I’m not psychic, they could have been going anywhere. But they were next to the woods just over the back, so either through there or maybe down to the beach.’
‘How well do you know them?’ She doesn’t look at me as she asks but I hear the interest, and wonder what Alison has said about me, to send them straight over to me like this.
‘I’ve always lived here,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve known Lucas his whole life, his parents lived there before he did and his grandparents before that. They’re all gone now.’
The boy flickers his eyebrows, and I curse inwardly. Always so blunt. ‘I don’t know Alison so much though, she’s a quiet girl. Not from the island. Not like you, I think I know your mother. Catherine, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ he says, with a surprised smile. ‘I live on the mainland now though, come over on the boat. Mum and Dad still live in Ashey.’
‘Thought so. Do they like you being in the police?’
‘I think so. I mean, Dad worked at Parkhurst; it’s not too much of a stretch.’
‘Quite,’ says the woman, not approving of our detour. She must be used to this, everyone knowing everyone’s business, or who they’re related to, or who they’ve been with. It’s not a small place by any means, the Isle of Wight, but it’s surprisingly hard to keep secrets. Most secrets, anyway. ‘So, you saw Mr Manning on Sunday. Did you speak to him?’
‘No, I just saw them through the window when I was washing up.’ I incline my head towards the window above the sink which looks out over their drive and the front of the house, only separated by the long stretch of lawn. The border of the woods runs alongside part of their back garden and mine.
‘You get a good view of their house from here. You can’t see much from the road,’ she says.
‘No, it used to be open though. His father planted those ridiculous trees. Lucas keeps saying he is going to get them cut down. They block the light on the side of my house. But he was funny about privacy, David. Lucas’s father. This house was a staff cottage, back in the old days. For their house. The big house.’
She smiles over the mug, which she’s lifted to drink from. ‘You must know him well then?’
‘As well as you can know a neighbour, I suppose. He’s a lovely man.’ Though I’ve been trying to ignore it, the word missing is pulsing in my head like a migraine. Where would he go? He would never worry Alison like this deliberately. It’s making me feel a bit faint. I need some toast and wish they would leave.
‘So, Sunday, Saturday afternoon, you didn’t speak to him, and he’s seemed normal to you recently?’
‘I haven’t seen him so much lately. They’ve been busy. They’ve just finished building one of those silly garden offices and re-landscaping the garden. It’s been very noisy.’ I sound petulant, but it’s true. It’s probably why I’m so behind on my work, all the thudding and drilling and hammering. Like the house isn’t big enough already without outside spaces too. ‘Is there anything else? Only I have lots of work to do today. I’m on a deadline.’
That gets an eyebrow raise out of them both. I wonder if they know they mirror each other. Not much of a poker face between them.
‘We might have some more general questions. Would it be okay to pop in later in the week if we do? At a more convenient time, maybe?’
‘Mornings are okay this week,’ I tell her, taking away their mugs and putting them in the sink noisily. ‘You should ask his boss; now I think about it, maybe he has seemed a bit stressed these past months. Not like himself at all. Keeping his nose to the grindstone at all hours I expect.’
‘We’ve a few lines of enquiry, Ms Merriweather, don’t worry. People usually turn up. Maybe he’s just taken a breather.’
This ridiculous statement from the Harding boy. What is his father called? It will annoy me all day if I can’t remember. I’ll have to go through the alphabet, Adam, Allan, Andrew . . . ugh.
‘Here,’ the woman says as she holds out a card towards me, sharp edges looming from her small, fine-boned hand. Pale pink nails, no polish, neatly trimmed. That’s a good word for her, neat. I take the card, read the name. Cora Macaulay. Detective Inspector. Must be a slow news day to have come out for a non-suspicious – presumably – missing person case. But this is the Isle of Wight, not many exciting headlines here. This is probably the most interesting case to crop up in months. An actual mystery. I wonder again why she’s come.
They bustle out of my house, leaving silence behind them. I don’t get many visitors these days, nor do I court them. Life’s easier with only yourself to think about. I manage the rest of the crossword and send it off to my editor, promising another tomorrow. The focus helped me ignore my worry over Lucas, little right that I have to worry over him really, now that we aren’t close anymore, but now the afternoon and evening yawn ahead without it. He can’t really be missing, can he? This is a mistake of some sort I’m sure.
