Black Tide by Caroline Clough

travelling at about ten knots, so we should reach Fort Augustus in roughly three hours. It’ll depend on how many other locks there are to get through. And Fort Augustus is about halfway from here to Fort William. With any luck we should be there just before it gets dark .
    Tash was down below, cooking up something or other from the packets and tins filling the cupboards.
    Funny, but some of that stuff doesn’t look that old – certainly not three years old .
    When Toby and his dad and Sylvie had lived in the lighthouse at Collieston, before the dogs had made it too dangerous to travel across land, they had taken the old battered Land Rover and searched for food. He remembered how excited they had been about a trip to the Tesco supermarket at Ellon, but when they had got there the shelves were empty. Someone had already taken all the tins and bottled foods. All that was left were boxes and boxes of stale crackers and plain biscuits. They took themhome and ate them with the vegetables they grew in the compound and the eggs from their chickens. Once his dad had suggested killing a chicken to eat at Christmas, but Sylvie had got so upset at the thought of eating Matilda they ended up having nut loaf instead. Toby hadn’t minded; he didn’t like to see Sylvie cry.
    “Tash? Can you come up here and steer while I check the map?” Toby shouted down the hatch. Tash arrived beside him and took over the controls. “If I’m not mistaken we must be nearly at the end of the man-made canal and about to enter into Loch Ness itself.”
    Toby lowered himself down the steps and into the cabin. He stared at the map. There was a bit he didn’t understand. A faint blue line cut across the loch just after the canal opened up.
    I wish you were here Dad – I could do with your help right now .
    “TOBES!”
    “What?” Toby dashed back up to the cockpit. Tash looked at him in terror.
    “Look!” she screamed. “Which way should we go?”
    The boat had sailed out of the canal and was now powering across an open basin of water as it entered Loch Ness. The Charlotte Rose was speedily approaching a thin sliver of land in the middle of the basin. The narrow island was covered in birch trees and straggly bushes, and split the loch into two. To the left the water was picking up speed as the level of the river fell steeply, causing the fast flow to tug the boatsideways. Toby hit the throttle to pull the boat out of the grip of the current and spun the steering wheel to the right. The boat swerved past the island on its left. At the end of the spit of land, Toby saw a large, yellow, triangular sign:
    DANGER! WEIR! – KEEP TO THE RIGHT!
    “Tash! The sign! You didn’t say you couldn’t read English well!” He turned to catch sight of the foaming waters beyond the spit cascading over a weir. “We’d have been wrecked if we’d hit that!” Toby’s heart was thumping furiously in his chest.
    It’s like I’m responsible for everything and everybody, all the time!
    “Sorry,” Tash mumbled and went back down below.
    Toby realised now what the blue line on the map had meant: it marked the position of the weir on the canal. He brought the boat back to a reasonable speed and tried to concentrate on keeping it straight down the middle of the loch. Loch Ness’s dark peaty waters swirled around them, and he remembered the stories his dad had told about the Loch Ness monster. Nessie was supposed to live in the fathomless depths of the loch. Toby had once seen a very old photo supposedly taken of Nessie, but it just looked like three lumps protruding out of the water.
    The rest of the morning passed quietly. Tash stayed out of sight in the cabin.
    Bet she’s sulking. Well, I haven’t got time for all that sort of stuff. I’ve got to get us safely to Fort William .
    Yet, as he stood in the cold watching the grey clouds racing across the tops of the snow-covered hills, he felt quite lonely. The mottled brown-black landscape stretched into the