The Lugger was about a hundred metres away in the middle of the channel. The wind had filled her red sails and she was leaning over and surging through the water. In ten minutes, if Lace could stand to stay there for that long, the ship would disappear around the bend in the mighty Thames, and her lover would be gone. Hornpipe was a captain of the Mudlarks and he had told her that he was going away and she had pretended that he’d forgotten to tell her. It was a low blow and a petty one at that. Their relationship had been heading in the wrong direction for the last couple of months and rather than sort it out, she had tried to force him to do things her way. Something that she deeply regretted standing there on the small wooden wharf with the best thing in her life disappearing from view.
