Daisy in Chains(2)

‘Daisy! Don’t be scared. Just come towards me.’

Fewer than a dozen steps into the drain and water is covering her ankles, surging higher with every wave. The grandmother and the fisherman are still yelling for the child, which is good, because Maggie doesn’t want to open her mouth in here again if she can help it. A dozen steps more. The water is almost at her knees. Her back is starting to ache and the muscles of her thighs can’t hold her in this position for much longer.

‘Daisy?’

A big wave strikes, hitting her full in the face. The child is gone. This is hopeless. She turns back, just as another wave throws her off balance. As she stumbles to her knees, Maggie hears a scraping noise behind, followed by a strangled cry and then heavy breathing. A shivering body is pushing against her. She turns to see terrified eyes looking into hers, hears a desperate, grateful yipping.

Daisy is a dog.

She can curse her own idiocy later. Maggie grabs hold of the dog’s collar, just as another wave tries to pull the animal back out to sea. As the wave recedes, the dog kicks back against Maggie’s body and scampers towards the hatch.

Another wave, a bigger one. For a second Maggie is beneath the surface, feeling herself sliding along the concrete base of the drain. There is nothing in the smooth, circular pipe to catch hold of. Another wave, she slides back again. The waves are giving her no time to recover before the next strikes. She is being dragged deeper into the tunnel.

Some yards away, Daisy, unable to leap to safety, is barking. The woman and the fisherman are still yelling. Almost too cold to keep moving, hardly able to get her breath, Maggie crawls forward.

She is going to die saving a dog. How completely ridiculous.

Then the dog is on top of her, its sharp claws digging through her jacket, using her as a stepping stone. Claws scrape against stone and then the dog, at least, is safe.

Maggie plants her feet, holds on tight to the sides of the manhole and jumps. Safely on dry land, she falls to the ground beside the exhausted Daisy.

‘Oh, good girl, clever girl, well done.’

Unsure whether the woman’s praise is for her, or the creature she’s just rescued, Maggie runs her hand down the flank of the wet, trembling dog. Big, brown eyes stare up at her from a sweet canine face. The white, smooth body is peppered with black spots. Daisy is a Dalmatian.

‘Hey, beautiful.’ Nudging the dog out of the way, Maggie lowers the hatch again just as a wave – the one that could have killed them both – comes racing up the pipe. She hears something metallic clanking against the grille and knows instinctively what it is. A quick check in her pocket confirms it. She has left her car keys in the tunnel.

‘I’m Sandra,’ says the woman as she starts her car engine and waves goodbye to the fisherman. ‘I’ll have you home in no time.’

‘Thank you.’ Maggie watches her own car getting smaller in the wing mirror. She will have to cycle back to collect it. Or call a cab.

‘I think there’s another rug in the back.’

Maggie already has a travel rug around her shoulders and the heating has been cranked up to maximum but she can’t stop shaking. ‘You’re sure you can get into your house? Because I’ll take you back to ours, run you a bath there. I’m Sandra, by the way.’

‘I keep a key hidden in the garden.’ Maggie would prefer to take the two-mile journey in silence.

‘I can phone my husband. Get him to turn up the heating, make you some hot chocolate? My clothes would probably drown you, but they’ll be warm and dry.’

‘Thank you, but I left the heating on.’

‘Do you have dogs?’ Sandra isn’t an attractive woman. Her face is too thin, her lips almost non-existent, her jaw too prominent. Probably almost as cold as Maggie, her skin is mottled, the tip of her nose bright red. She needs to get home too.

‘It would be with me, don’t you think, if I had a dog?’ Maggie turns to look at the Dalmatian, fast asleep on the back seat. The Raggedy Ann doll, sniffed out and claimed by the dog before the two of them had even got back over the fence, is just visible beneath its head. ‘I’m glad Daisy is OK.’

Sandra pulls over to let another car pass. ‘I came here today to talk to you,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want to come to your house, I didn’t want to intrude, so I thought I’d wait for you at the beach. And then Daisy ran off just before you arrived. It all nearly went so horribly wrong.’

Maggie fixes her gaze straight ahead. ‘The road’s clear,’ she says.

‘I drove over this morning,’ Sandra says before she’s even changed gear. ‘And yesterday morning too. I watched your car pull out of your drive. I guessed you were coming here. And that you come at high tide.’

To have made that guess, the woman must have been watching her for more than two days, has probably followed her here before now.

‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ They are almost at the main road. She can walk from here, if necessary.

‘I’ve read all your books.’ Sandra is breathing heavily, as though walking at speed, not driving a car along a country lane. ‘Someone sent me three of them, about six months ago. A well-wisher, I never did find out who. I bought the others.’

‘Thank you.’ It will take between ten and fifteen minutes to get home from this point. Longer if she is forced to walk.