Chapter Seventeen
THE NEXT MORNING WAS clear and cold. Thankfully, the chill rain had stopped during the night. Rafferty, in order to avoid any more questions or sulks from Abra, was up while it was still as dark as the midnight hour. He didn’t even stop for a hot drink in case his clattering about in the kitchen should waken her.
As he had strode from the warmth of his small block of flats and headed across the car park, the stiff, North Sea breeze made his cheeks tingle. Even the eternally argumentative seagulls, who had risen as early or earlier than him, seemed less shrill and merely swooped and circled lazily on the wind like so many aerial ballerinas.
Fanciful, Rafferty, he had smiled to himself. The sea’s champion crappers as aerial ballerinas was surely a fancy too far even for
