The House at Mermaid's Cove(43)

“That’s our boat—the one at the end.”

Half a dozen fishing trawlers were moored in the harbor. The one Jack was looking at was painted blue, with a narrow red stripe. As we got closer, I could read the name on the side: La Coquille. The Shell.

“The others will be up and about in a minute,” Jack said. “Remember—it’s code names only when you talk to them. But keep conversation to a minimum: the less you know about them, the better.” He rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. “Once we get the other boat onto open water, you and I are fishermen. If anyone stops us and asks you to identify yourself, you’re Jean-Luc Piquemal. You’ve got your papers?”

I patted the pocket of my oilskin trousers.

“You’ll need to get some sleep before we get to Brittany; otherwise you’ll be of no use at all. There are hammocks belowdecks on La Coquille—they’re quite comfortable when you get used to them.” He turned away from me in answer to a shout from the quayside. A white-haired man in a striped jersey was waiting to tie our boat to a docking post.

“Good morning.” A woman’s voice behind me made me jump.

“Good morning,” Jack replied, as he tossed a rope over the side of the boat. “Did you sleep well?”

“Not very—one of the others was snoring like a steam train.”

I could only see her eyes, nose, and mouth. Like me, her hair was hidden under a fisherman’s hat, and the upturned collar of her jacket hid her throat and chin.

“Miranda.” She smiled, holding out her hand to me. “And you must be Ariel.”



I’d never even sat in a hammock before, let alone tried to sleep in one. Miranda was a couple of feet away. Without her hat, her hair spilled over the side of her gently swaying bed. She looked very young: about the same age as Janet, the Land Girl. She’d told me that she was half-French and came from a small town not far from London. I lay watching her, wondering what had made her decide to put herself forward for such dangerous work. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but after a while she wriggled around to face me.

“Not very comfortable, are they?” She swept her hair off her face.

“No.” I tried to prop myself up on my elbow. The hammock swayed violently and we both laughed.

“We used to have one in the garden at home,” Miranda said. “But my dad set fire to it when he fell asleep with his pipe in his hand.”

“Oh—I hope he wasn’t hurt.”

She shook her head. “Mum turned the garden hose on him. She hates him smoking. He’s a doctor and she’s always telling him he shouldn’t inflict his bad habits on his patients. His consulting room stinks of tobacco.”

I told her that my father had been just the same, that I could always tell which room in the house he was in because of the telltale odor wafting out under the door. Like me, she had sometimes accompanied her dad on his rounds as a child. We swapped stories of the grisly things we had seen, heard, and smelled: people with severed arms and legs, women screaming out in childbirth, elderly patients whose ulcerous legs tainted the air and made us gag.

“It put me off any sort of career in the medical profession.” She huffed out a laugh.

I didn’t know if I was supposed to let on that I was a nurse, so I didn’t reply. She said she thought she’d better try to get some rest, and she turned over. I must have drifted off to sleep, too. When I woke up, Miranda had gone. I scrambled up the wooden ladder and heaved myself onto the deck. I blinked as the sunlight hit my eyes. I saw Jack emerge from under a blanket. His hair was sticking up, and the shadow of stubble on his jaw was darker than when I’d last seen him. The five agents were sitting in a circle, eating something.

“Would you like some?” Miranda was holding out a plate of thickly sliced brown bread spread with butter and jam. The sight of it made me ravenously hungry.

“You’d better eat some now,” Jack said, reaching across to take a piece. “You might not feel like it once we get underway.”

It wasn’t an idle warning. We left the shelter of New Grimsby Sound as the sun dipped below the craggy outline of Bryher island, and within an hour of reaching the open sea, the boat began to pitch alarmingly. I think I was the only one, apart from Jack, who wasn’t sick. It must have been sheer terror, freezing my insides.

I went to stand beside him at the wheel. In the orange glow of the sunset, I could see the white of his knuckles. “How long until we get there?” I had to raise my voice to be heard.

“Depends on whether this wind dies down,” he replied. “If it was calm, we’d do it by one or two in the morning. But at this rate, it’ll be touch and go whether we make it before daybreak.”

“What happens if we don’t?”

“We have to mingle with the French fishing boats and sit it out until tomorrow night.”

“What about the people we’re picking up? How would they know?”

“They won’t be there unless they get the tip-off on the BBC broadcast. Merle will only give the go-ahead for that when I message her. If she doesn’t hear from us by nine o’clock tonight, it won’t happen.” He twisted the wheel as a big wave surged against the port side of the boat. “How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad,” I replied.