Alfie had always helped Audrey on board, and the memory of her brother’s tanned, smiling face impelled her forward. She crossed the rolling deck to the wheelhouse and sank down in the captain’s chair behind the windscreen. The boat seemed bigger than Audrey remembered. Alfie had taught her the steps to take in order to start the engine and navigate it out of the slip, and she struggled to remember what they were.
She felt victorious when the engine sputtered and rumbled to life with a belch of oily smoke. Eve cheered. She seemed to know how to unfasten the ropes from the bollards and push away from the dock. Audrey felt the boat drift free. She peered out at the black sky and dark water, indistinguishable in the gloom, and gasped. “Oh, my! I can’t see a thing!”
“I’ll look for a torch.” Eve ducked belowdecks and Audrey heard her rummaging around in the dark. She emerged topside again, carrying a battery-operated light.
“I know there’s a blackout,” she said, crawling forward onto the bow, “but I think this qualifies as an emergency.”
“Shout if you see something before I do,” Audrey called to her. With the dim torchlight shining down into the water ahead of her, Audrey was able to inch the boat forward and reach the pier where the officer and the other boats waited for them, dark shapes outlined against the churning water. She and Eve were the only women.
“Good show, ladies,” the officer said as Audrey cut the engine to neutral. “I’ll put you in the middle of the flotilla, shall I? There will be someone ahead of you and behind you all the way to Dover. Just keep one of the other ships in sight and you shouldn’t go wrong.”
A dozen other engines sputtered to life and they began moving away from shore into the channel. Audrey shivered from raw nerves and the cold wind. Neither she nor Eve was dressed warmly enough, but then she’d never imagined she would captain the boat herself. Eve went below again and returned with two blankets, wrapping one around Audrey before wrapping the other around herself. “What else do you need me to do?” she asked.
“Sit beside me and help me stay close to the others,” Audrey said through chattering teeth. Her fingers felt numb from gripping the wheel with bare hands. She’d hoped they would hug the shoreline all the way to Dover, but the flotilla picked up speed and headed away from land toward the open sea. The bow reared up and down as the boat plowed against the thudding three-foot waves, and Audrey had to resist the urge to slow down, to turn back. She longed to close her eyes and wake up in her bed in Wellingford Hall, where there would be no war, and Alfie would be asleep in his room down the hall. Instead, she was living a nightmare.
“You’re doing great, Audrey,” Eve said, a dark shadow beside her. Audrey nodded and gripped the wheel tighter.
She could do this. She had to.
Eve kept her gaze fixed on the boat ahead of them, a dim, bobbing shape in the darkness that retreated from sight as the front of Audrey’s boat heaved up and down in the waves. They were out in open water now, far from shore, and Eve was terrified. She never should have forced Audrey to do this. Eve clung to her seat for dear life, fighting the urge to vomit over the side, silently reciting every Bible verse she could remember from her Sunday school lessons in the village. “The Lord is my shepherd . . .”
“How will we get back to our car from Dover?” Audrey asked, interrupting her thoughts. If Eve was terrified, Audrey must be half-dead with fright. Was she even strong enough to handle this big, powerful boat? Eve hadn’t considered that when she’d pressured Audrey to sail it. She’d thought only of Alfie and hadn’t wanted to give up the idea of rescuing him after motoring all the way down from London in the rain.
“I guess we’ll have to wait until morning and try to hitch a ride back,” Eve shouted as the wind and the engine’s roar snatched her words. “We can walk if we have to.”
“I’m getting quite good at walking,” Audrey said. Eve leaned closer to hear her above the drone of the engine and the pounding waves. “You’d never believe it, but I walk from Wellingford into the village and back at least once a day, sometimes twice.”
“Well, if you can drive this boat, you can drive a car, you know. I’ll teach you on the way back to London.”
Audrey offered a weak smile before fixing her gaze straight ahead once more. Her face was as pale as death, her knuckles white as she gripped the wheel. Eve needed to keep her talking so she wouldn’t faint. Hours had passed since they’d left London and they were both growing tired. Neither of them had eaten anything. “By the way, ‘Good show, Miss Clarkson,’” she said, imitating the naval officer’s accent.