Fit For Purpose by Julian Parrott (novels for students .TXT) 📕

“Okay Jack, morning piddle.”

Tom picked up the terrier off the bed and put her down on the cabin’s rough carpet. Tom slipped on running shoes, threw two bolts and opened the stern doors off the bedroom cabin and immediately felt a rush of cold air. He kept the roof hatch closed and ducked up the three steps on to the narrowboat’s stern, Jack at his side. The boat was rock still. There was a sheen of ice on the canal, frost dusted the mooring ropes, and the towpath was frozen hard. Tom grabbed the short boat pole off its roof housing and tested the ice. Thin. Thin enough for another day’s journeying. Jack had already jumped off the barge onto the towpath where she was leaving a steaming puddle. Tom grabbed gloves and scarf, padlocked the stern door, and took off down the towpath with his dog.

It was their routine. Although free of the strictures of army life, Tom still liked the cadences of certain routines. He enjoyed the brisk morning jogs, checking what lay immediately ahead on the canal while enjoying the company of the young, inquisitive terrier. Today, however, felt entirely different. He looked down at his watch, it was now seven a.m. He wondered whether she, miles away, was up. He took a huge breath in, the cold air stinging his lungs. There was an incredible stillness across the basin. Tom opened his phone’s music app, decided on Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer Love’ as accompanying music, he liked its ambient, trance-like quality, and he and Jack began to run down the towpath at a decent pace. Tom never really knew how far or how long he’d run. He let the soreness in his right leg be his guide.

Later, he showered, dressed in warm clothes, and quickly finished a breakfast of tea and toast. He listened to the radio news and weather. Freezing temps and snow predicted for the day ahead. Freezing drizzle for London. Her home. Out on the small rear deck he opened the engine compartment. He checked the engine oil and water levels and eyeballed the compartment for any water ingress that needed to be pumped out. He checked the engine was in neutral and then pushed the start button to fire it up. While the engine warmed up, he went back into the cabin, boiling the kettle for a thermos of coffee, double checking his canal guides, he quickly jotted some notes for his own guide. He then cast-off bow and stern, put the engine in gear and pulled out into the canal moving slowly past a couple of lonely looking moored narrowboats. As a distant church bell tolled eight o’clock, Tom swung the tiller and pushed the Periwinkle through the onion skin of ice, out into the main body of water and set off south-easterly down the Llangollen canal. The Dee valley below to his right was shrouded in whisps of morning mist and a low winter sun made him squint. He smiled to himself and found, much to his surprise, that he was whistling something that sounded like a jig and, totally alien to him, he was checking his phone every few minutes to see if he had any new texts.

***

London, Same Day

Nia woke to a pitch-black room. She was momentarily confused as to where she was before she fully remembered she was home. She was still struggling a little with jet lag. The red digits on her bedside clock registered eight thirty a.m. She turned on the radio and listened to the BBC news. She slipped on a nightie and a well-worn dressing gown and went downstairs.

The house was quiet, dark, and cold. Nia cranked up the central heating and made herself a cup of coffee before sitting down. She’d been on a location shoot for a month and she now wanted to get back into what approached her regular routine. She was aware of a vague excitement, the amorphous kind a child nurtured on the run up to Christmas. She took out her phone but then put it down, too needy she thought. She dressed quickly; running shirt, sweatshirt, yoga pants and went to her gym. Once there, she ran on the treadmill as a warm-up before a cardio-boxing session. She stayed and chatted to a few of the session’s participants as they downed smoothies in the gym’s social lounge, they were mostly stay-at-home mums. She had little in common with the group and, although she often grew tired of the cyclical chatter around schools, children’s sports team and demanding husbands, they provided a social connection to a lifestyle very different from hers. It was a glimpse into a life that Nia once wanted although would never admit to. They were friendly, Nia was friendly, but she didn’t consider them friends. Not the type of friends you go out for a drink with, share stories, swap secrets, or ask for advice. Nia had few such friends.

Nia drove from the gym and showered at home. She had renovated her bathroom and had an expansive walk-in shower with multiple shower heads. She stood luxuriating in the hot water allowing the steam to ease the muscle tiredness and tension from her workout and the previous day’s flight. Once out of the shower, she checked her phone and was disappointed that there was no message from Tom but then remembered she’d been quite definitive about her contacting him. She wanted to text him but was still wary. Instead, she called her agent with Tom still very much on her mind.

Nia was going to meet Jane, her agent, for a mid-afternoon coffee in a chic, bohemian cafe. Nia was early, as she often was, she ordered a flat white and found a table that was conducive to conversation. She watched the door for Jane. Jane was more than an agent; she was