Page 16 of Echoes of the Sea (Storm Tide #2)

Kip couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent a night plunking out tunes on a piano and just talking.

His days were usually filled with scrolling on his phone or streaming something online.

But his phone was probably somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, and there were no computers or televisions anywhere on Guilford.

There were also no outlets, no lightbulbs, no cameras.

There wasn’t even electricity. And to his horror, no plumbing.

He’d finally gotten desperate the day before and gone on a search to discover how it was that he was meant to take care of business.

What he’d found was an outhouse. And he’d discovered it because he’d spied Mick and, later, Marsh stepping out of it, having made use of the “facilities.” Not the sort of bare-bones campground bathroom with a flush toilet in an otherwise empty room.

It was an honest-to-goodness, no-toilet-paper, no-sink, wooden-bench-over-a-hole-in-the-ground outhouse.

If he hadn’t lost his phone in the world’s biggest dunk tank, Kip would have sent Malcolm a series of devastating GIFs over that discovery.

And if not for the fact that such an authentic setting would actually make him more convincing when Osbourne eventually visited, Kip would have quit right there on the bench.

Amelia—it felt too strange thinking of her as “Miss Archibald,” even if he’d be required to speak of and to her in the formality of the nineteenth-century—had indicated that the place was struggling. But that wasn’t much of a mystery.

What tourist would want to spend an entire day on an island where their only option for facilities was a literal outhouse?

And many historical and cultural sites around the UK had tea shops attached so visitors could linger over a bite to eat.

Guilford House was so dedicated to history that the kitchens for the house itself were historic.

And the food he’d had thus far had kind of felt too authentic as well.

He assumed the village was more updated, and people came out to the island for brief jaunts and tours rather than spending an entire day there.

Once the sea road was accessible again, he intended to go see if he could switch roles and do something in the village instead.

Surely Osbourne could be just as impressed with him in a location with plumbing.

Still, he’d enjoyed himself the night before, which had helped him feel more patient with the situation.

It had also made him worry about Amelia.

She’d spoken of herself in terms of being trapped in this job.

Her career had likely not gone as she’d hoped; he hadn’t heard of her, and he knew a lot of people in the industry in the UK.

Maybe her aspirations weren’t in acting but in history.

Still, to take a position on an island when she was afraid of water seemed unnecessarily torturous.

Maybe she could be reassigned to the village as well.

She’d provided him with a list of things that needed repairing around the place.

It was exactly the sort of carpentry he would have expected a man of olden times to work on: furniture that was unsteady, broken balusters, split stair treads.

Nowhere on the list was anything like “wire the house for electricity” or “install a toilet.” He wasn’t an electrician or a plumber, so he would have struggled with that, but he felt like it should have at least been thought of.

He nailed the list to a wall in the tool shed, then made his way toward the lighthouse.

He needed to return Mr. Ivers’s clothes.

If there had been such a thing as a washing machine on this site, he would have cleaned the clothes before bringing them back.

As it was, all he could really do was fold them and hope they didn’t stink.

Mr. Ivers had said that he lived near the lighthouse—well, he’d nodded when Kip had asked him if he lived near the lighthouse.

So Kip was looking for a house somewhere close by.

And if the Iverses did indeed have a child, which Mick probably wasn’t wrong about, surely that house would have the most basic of amenities.

Children’s Services would have had something to say otherwise.

With that possibility dangling in front of him, Kip was determined to go form something of a friendship with the man he had only two days before assumed was a serial killer.

He watched the water lapping against the rocky shore below as he made his way along an island path.

His eyes wandered now and then out to the horizon and the Channel beyond.

He even sometimes spun about to look behind him at the distant shore of the mainland.

It was a shame Amelia was afraid of the ocean.

This place was beautiful. He could understand why someone had built a home here.

At the time, things like the ability to run electrical wire or set up internet access hadn’t needed to be taken into account.

As he drew closer to the far side of the island, he spotted Mick scrambling over some rocks in the midst of some sort of adventure.

Why was it Children’s Services hadn’t taken him into care yet?

He was orphaned; Kip was absolutely certain the boy hadn’t invented that as part of his character’s history.

He lived on this island in the company of adults who clearly didn’t rein him in or really look after him.

Kip didn’t think it was neglect or indifference; it seemed to simply be the arrangement of things.

And even if Mick were employed to portray the island’s resident orphaned scamp, there were laws to protect him from being overworked or put in dangerous circumstances. It was worrying ... and weird.

A rise in the path revealed a humble house not too far distant from the lighthouse.

Smoke rose from a stone chimney. It was precisely the sort of opening shot that would have been used in a drama about life on the rugged shores of England in centuries gone by.

Kip could practically hear any number of the directors who had undertaken various episodes of The Beau expounding on how perfect it was.

Perhaps it was the view that kept people coming back to Guilford, even without any of the amenities.

If Kip could negotiate a new character for himself, one who occasionally visited the island but didn’t have to actually live there, he might be able to survive the summer.

He made his way to the door of the little cottage and gave a quick knock.

If his previous encounters with Mr. Ivers were any indication, he would need to do all the talking.

And it would be a short visit. But hopefully long enough to spot an electrical outlet or beg for a chance to use their bathroom.

He would never again look at a toilet without tremendous gratitude.

The door was opened, but it wasn’t Mr. Ivers who stood on the other side.

It was a woman, likely about Kip’s same age, with a small child on her hip.

Mrs. Ivers, no doubt. Not knowing if she, too, was a super fan of the never-be-out-of-character approach that the rest of this place took, Kip chose to stick with the gentleman-of-the-manner role he had played for so long.

He took off the tricorn hat he’d been wearing since finding it in the trunk and tucked it against his chest. With his other hand, he held Mr. Ivers’s clothing. “Pardon the interruption to your day, Mrs. Ivers, but I’ve come to return the clothing your husband so generously lent me upon my arrival.”

A look of understanding flashed over her face.

He did think he’d guessed her age right, but she had the look of someone who’d experienced a lot in those thirty-something years.

Her head twitched him inside, and he gladly accepted.

He took a quick gander at the wall near the door.

No light switch. Another quick look around showed a few lanterns and unlit candles.

The windows were uncurtained, allowing sunlight in, the only source of light in the place.

It was not promising for his search for civilization.

“Where would you like me to place the clothing?” he asked.

Again, she motioned with her head, this time toward a small bureau. “In there’ll do.”

Here, at least, was something he didn’t have to worry about not doing historically accurate enough. He crossed to the chest, pulled open the top drawer, and set the items inside along with the other items of clothing in there.

He turned back around in time to see Mr. Ivers step in. He offered his wife a smile, which detracted from the potential-mass--murderer vibe he had given off before.

“Sir’s brought back your clothes,” Mrs. Ivers said. “Him’s younger than you said.”

“I don’t think him actually is,” Mr. Ivers answered. “I only think him’s not aged as much as most do.”

“Could be.”

It felt like the early-nineteenth-century equivalent of wondering who someone’s plastic surgeon was. If he knew how to say it in the vocabulary of the era they were pretending it was, he would have wondered aloud which tabloids they’d been reading.

Mr. Ivers took hold of his little child, then turned to face Kip.

“You have a rowboat,” Kip said. “Do you ever use it to get to the village when the road’s underwater?”

“I do,” he said.

“Any chance I could convince you to take me along if you’re heading there before the road is usable?” He offered a friendly smile, unsure if Mr. Ivers wondered about Kip ’s tendency to murder massive numbers of people. His smile had smoothed over a lot of things over the years.

It didn’t work this time.

“Taking you’d be too dangerous,” Mr. Ivers said.

“Why would it be dangerous?”

“Because I suspect you haven’t sorted it out yet. And until you do, the fewer people you see, the better.”

“Figured what out yet?”