High Tide by Veronica Henry Page B

leopardskin baseball boot. ‘I broke my leg. I couldn’t do a thing. She was so helpful. She got me back on track. I was right depressed.’ Debbie tickled Leanne under the chin. The little girl giggled. ‘I’m going to try and get to the funeral later if I can get someone to pick up Leanne.’
    ‘That’s really kind of you. But you don’t have to.’ Kate was touched.
    ‘No. I want to! She was a very special woman.’
    ‘Yes. I know.’
    ‘Shout if you want anything. I’m usually about. Got my hands full with this lot – she’s number four.’
    ‘Goodness.’ Kate couldn’t imagine having four children. ‘They must keep you busy.’
    ‘Just a bit. I work down the Neptune weekends to keep body and soul together – Scott has the kids. Gives me some of me own money and gets me out of the house.’
    Debbie shook back her long black hair with the thick blunt fringe and smiled. She was as thin as a rake with tattoos on her shoulders; her arms muscular from lifting her children. Kate supposed she didn’t need an expensive gym subscription to keep her figure: running around after four kids probably did it.
    She thought about the nights she and Debbie had spent in the Neptune, eyeing up the boys they fancied, getting drunk on cheap vodka cocktails. They’d had so much in common then. Homework stress, clothes stress, boy stress. The boredom of living in Pennfleet stress. Debbie had pierced Kate’s ears with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a needle in her bedroom. They’d painted each other’s toenails and dreamed about getting away. Kate had managed it. Debbie hadn’t.
    What was the difference between them, she wondered?
    And who was the happier?
    ‘You got any?’
    ‘Any?’
    ‘Kids.’ Debbie looked her up and down and decided that gave her the answer. ‘Nah. You look way too together.’
    Kate managed a laugh. ‘I live in New York. I’ve got this crazy job. No way could I fit kids in. I can’t even fit a boyfriend in.’
    ‘It sounds perfect.’ Debbie laughed, crooked her spare arm round Kate’s neck and hugged her, swamping her in a cloud of cheap perfume and hairspray and cigarettes. ‘I’ll see you later, sweetheart. I’ve got to get this one to nursery.’
    She ran off down the hill.
    Kate watched after her. It had been strange but lovely to see her. She had often wondered where her mates were now, what they were doing, and she always felt a tiny needle of guilt that she hadn’t kept up with any of them. When she’d left for New York social media hadn’t been established in the way it was now, making it easy for people to keep in touch. She didn’t have time to trawl through Facebook looking for old schoolfriends – and none of them had ever tracked her down. Re-connecting with Debbie had given her an unexpected lift. Debbie had been so kind, so genuine. Their friendship, it seemed, had survived the intervening years.
    As she climbed further up to the crest of the hill, Kate reached the point where she could see right over the top of the town and out to sea. She had forgotten quite how spectacular it was, and stopped for a moment to drink in the infinite shades of turquoise and ice blue and slate and silver and steel and glittery deep green. The slightest change in light could change the colour of the water, depending on where the sun and the clouds were hovering.
    Summer had long slipped away on the tide, disappearing over the horizon to the other side of the world, and in its place was autumn, demure and subtle and in many ways more alluring, with her softer, more mellow light and her wispy, misty mornings.
    Her mother loved this time of year. Kate remembered Joy’s hands snagged by blackberry tangles, and the ritual making of bramble jelly and sloe gin. There would, she knew, be ranks of jars lined up in the larder, all labelled in her mother’s comforting handwriting. What was she to do with them? She couldn’t take them back in her luggage. She couldn’t imagine them lined up