Dark Echo by F. G. Cottam

was he had there. He had retired from the business of making money and, with his marriage already consigned to the past tense, I imagined Chichester was the location for a romantic encounter. It was a place redolent in my own mind of pretty antique shops and quaint, half-timbered pubs. Its narrow Georgian streets would provide a cosy refuge from the elements. I pictured logs in the grate of a saloon bar, horse brasses glimmering on the wall and brandy burnishing in balloon-shaped glasses as warmth and alcohol and the expensive gift on the table between them kindled a seductive mood. My father was the sort of man who stayed friendly with his ex-mistresses. The arctic aftermath was reserved for those he persuaded up the aisle. The old flames were nurtured and cherished in the belief that one day they might flare again in the heat of rekindled passion.
    I reckoned he’d had half a dozen girlfriends in the twelve years since my mother’s death. The quantity and the variety inevitably begged questions about his extra-curricular activities prior to it. But they were not questions I felt anywhere near strong enough to face. All I had in the way of a parent,my father was nevertheless sometimes a difficult man to love. The knowledge that he had been a serial cheat during his marriage to Mum would, I think, have meant final estrangement between us. I said earlier I was not a physical coward. And I really don’t believe I am. But the thought of being cut adrift from family has frightened me since Mum so abruptly left us. There were questions I simply did not dare ask my father. The answers might lead to consequences I was not brave enough to face.
    ‘I’d like to read the
Dark Echo
’s log,’ I said.
    ‘By all means. I’ll arrange it after the weekend.’
    It was now a Thursday. And it was approaching lunchtime.
    Chichester had announced itself in a dripping road sign. It was a city virtually without suburbs. In a moment or two he would get out of the car. ‘And I’d like to borrow the swipe key Hadley gave you to the yard. I’ll return it to you tomorrow.’
    He turned to me. ‘What on earth do you want that for?’
    ‘I want a look at the boat.’
    My father laughed. ‘In weather like this?’
    ‘In precisely this weather. I want to know if Hadley was telling the truth about the extent of the work he says they have accomplished.’
    ‘They have done quite a bit.’
    ‘I’d like to see it for myself.’
    ‘Very well.’ He took the swipe key from his pocket. Stubbornness was one of the few traits I think he really admired in me. But then, I’d inherited it from him.
    The key wouldn’t get me into Hadley’s inner sanctum. That did not matter. I had no interest in stealing computer files or tinkering with his cappuccino machine. I felt an urgent need to get aboard the boat and experience for myself the baleful atmosphere I believed he’d hinted at. My earlier desire to see her wrecked suggested I disliked the
Dark Echo
more than she disliked me. But that antipathy was itself a mystery I wanted solved. A surreptitious visit, under cover of the storm, seemed just the thing. Suzanne was back in Dublin on the trail of the Big Feller. And I had no other pressing engagements. I dropped my father, who made his way quickly through the torrent to the shelter of an awning over one of Chichester’s narrow pavements. I saw him reach into his overcoat pocket for his mobile phone as he nimbly took the kerb. I was reminded afresh that he neither moved nor looked like a man of fifty-five. But then, nor did he act like one, either. Then, through the rainwashed windscreen, I struggled to find a route to take me back to where I’d come from.
    The boatyard looked deserted when I arrived back there at just after two thirty. Even if Hadley had hired a fresh team of craftsmen with every inclination to work on the
Dark Echo
’s restoration, it would hardly have been possible in the prevailing conditions. The wind was whipping in from