Katie Fforde - Going Dutch

‘We haven't time to fiddle about selling things on eBay! And do you think we should clear out the forepeak?' It wasa relief that she didn't have to explain what this was. 'Do you think we might need it? How many people will Marcus want helping, do you think?'

‘Well, he won't want passengers, that's for sure. But he'll want people who can steer, as well as handle a rope.’

‘Can you steer?'

‘Think so. Haven't tackled anything this size, though. It shouldn't make a difference, but it might.'

‘This lifebuoy looks terribly old,' said Dora, picking up a shabby orange horseshoe-shaped item with grey nylon tapes dangling from it.

‘Marcus will say, and I agree, it looks ancient. I'm not sure if they have use-by dates, but if they have, that's definitely past it. What else have you got in there?' He peered round the corner of the door. 'There's still a lot of stuff in here.'

‘Lots of that is Jo's. I'm only dealing with the stuff that's obviously boat-orientated. Do you want to look in the forepeak? It may be beyond us.'

‘Nothing is beyond us,' said Tom grandly, and disappeared.

He reappeared with the air of someone who'd just decided to row the Atlantic single-handed: he might live to regret it but it was the right thing to do. 'I do think we should clear it out. It could be a useful cabin. I think Marcus quite often brings someone he knows, in case no one on board can do anything.' He sighed. 'Now that's a job I'd like.'

‘What?'

‘Working for Marcus.'

‘I thought you were a boat-builder.'

‘I am, but anything to do with boats suits me.'

‘As long as that includes clearing them out,' Dora teased. He grinned. 'I'm afraid I'll need help with the forepeak.

I'll need someone to help haul the stuff up. We'll make a pile on the deck and decide what to do with it. If necessary, I'll borrow Hamo's van and take it to the tip.'

‘Hamo has a lot of vehicles,' said Dora, remembering the VW Beetle.

‘Yes. He sort of collects them. Or rather, people let him have them and he does them up. He's supposed to sell them on but he can never bring himself to.’

Having reassured Jo that they weren't just abandoning work on the cabin and were going to sort out the forepeak, they went upstairs and out on to the deck.

‘I wonder if Jo knows how many people Marcus will need or if he'll bring his special person,' said Dora, peering down the hatch of the forepeak dubiously.

Tom chuckled, 'I don't suppose he'll be that special. Just a horny-handed old salt.'

‘It might be a glamorous girl who's a dab hand at steering.' She chuckled. 'Or Carole.'

‘I'm sure Carole isn't a dab hand at steering.'

‘You don't know that! Just because she's young and pretty, it doesn't mean she's an idiot.'

‘I know that-'

‘And I'd have thought with your encyclopaedic knowledge of the Dutch barge world, you'd know who he usually took with him.’

Tom sighed, obviously peeved that this top item of barge-gossip hadn't ever reached him. 'I haven't actually met Marcus. I only know him by reputation.'

‘Well, if you're just all talk, let's get this cabin sorted out. Then we can put all the stuff for the tip together. You go down.’

Between them they hauled a large amount of what Tom defined as 'used timber', which meant off-cuts and sheets of marine ply with sections missing. Eventually the fore-peak was sufficiently empty of everything – mouldy mattresses, rotting rope and a huge quantity of paint, the lids permanently seized to the cans – for Dora to join Tom in it. She picked her way down the ladder carefully.

‘It smells,' she said, looking around.

Tom was indignant. 'You'd smell if you'd been full of all this junk for years.'

‘I wasn't being insulting, I was just stating facts. We need something to wash it all down with. Oh, hand me that dustpan would you? Is it damp because something's leaking, or because it was full of damp stuff?'

‘I don't know! What do you need to clean it with? You stay here and I'll go and ask Jo for it.’

Jo was feeling red-faced and harassed when Tom arrived in her kitchen demanding cleaning products. It was a definite improvement on feeling frightened and depressed.

‘Have a look in that cupboard there. I can't help you, I'm afraid, I've just discovered I've got to peel a whole lot more potatoes.'

‘Right.' Tom, apparently missing the significance of this, crouched down and began sorting through bottles of highly fragranced fluid guaranteed to get rid of stubborn limescale and kill all known germs. 'You don't happen to know who Marcus is bringing with him on the trip, do you? If he's happy with just me, we probably won't need the forepeak.'

‘You can ask him yourself,' said Jo, not feeling nearly as calm as she sounded. 'He's coming to lunch.'

‘Yikes,' said Tom, borrowing an expletive from Dora's vocabulary. He removed his head from the cupboard. 'When did this happen?'

‘He just rang up. He wants to check things, the fuel tanks mostly. Michael says they should be fine but Marcus won't take chances. I do wish Michael was here.' Ever since the break-up of her marriage, Jo had told herself she couldn't rely on men and didn't need to. But maybe doing without them completely took practice and she hadn't been single all that long. 'I didn't have to ask him to lunch, of course, but as I was cooking it, the invitation sort of came out.'

‘Shall I get Dora?' Tom had straightened up and was looking at her with such concern, Jo made a big effort to smile.

‘Oh no. You two carry on. But if there was a moment to get the things out of the corridor down here, so the bathroom's accessible, that would be terrific.’

Tom left, clutching a barrage of bottles, a scrubbing brush, a bundle of rags that Jo had rescued from the engine room, and the news that the myth that was Marcus was soon to he made flesh.

Jo stood in her galley considering lunch. There would be enough meat if she carved thinly. She'd already peeled extra potatoes but was it lunacy to try and roast them when she only had one oven? Sunday lunch therapy, which had worked for her so well when she lived in a house with a Rayburn and a conventional oven, seemed to have lost some of its beneficial properties. Was it because Marcus was coming and she wanted to live up to the reputation he had bestowed on her that she was a good cook that she was extra worried? She certainly wanted to be good at something when she was going to be so utterly useless on the boat trip. She looked at her watch for the hundredth time, hoping it held the answer to all her questions.

‘Would you like me and Tom to go to the shops for you?' said Dora, who had appeared while Jo was audibly going through her store cupboard in her head. 'Tom told me that Marcus is coming for lunch too. We need somehard-core cleaning products in that cabin, which includes gloves.'

‘Oh yes, could you? I've been caught on the hop, rather. It would have been fine if it had just been you and Tom but Marcus – well, Marcus is a guest. He'll need pudding.' She remembered how much he had liked the Eton Mess. It was a shame she couldn't do it again – it was so easy.

‘I'll make a list.'

‘Do you think he's a custard or a cream man?' Jo asked a few moments and half a shopping list later.

‘I haven't met him, Jo. Why not get both? Then if he doesn't like cream we can have strawberries another day.'

‘Thank you, Dora, you're a star. Now, you'd better take my card to pay for all this, and you'd better get some cash as well.'

‘But you can't tell me your pin number!'

‘Darling Dora, I've known you since you were a little girl. I think I can trust you.’

After Dora had gone, Jo rushed up on deck and shouted across the water to her and Tom. 'Gravy granules! I can't do without Mother's Little Helpers.’