All on BOARD

Lily may not have shared Tom’s vision, but if this was important to him, she’d make it work

- Claire Buckle

Lily squelched through the mud in her wellingtons, following Tom as he strode towards the dilapidated boat. He’d spotted it a few minutes ago, lopsided on the sludge, a few metres from the bank of the Hollyhill estuary.

‘This was supposed to be an afternoon stroll, not a mission to investigate some old cabin cruiser,’ Lily said, watching her boyfriend run his hand over the hull’s flaking paint.

Ignoring her grumbling, Tom walked around to the other side. ‘No sign of a name – I wonder what she was called.’ He came back to Lily grinning. ‘I’d love to renovate this, blog about it, make a YouTube video.’

‘You’re joking,’ she said, pulling the hood of her padded jacket over her dark curly hair and folding her arms against the chilly breeze.

Tom’s smile faded. ‘You know I’ve always dreamt of finding one we could do up.’

Lily grimaced at the ‘we’. ‘I didn’t think you’d want something in such awful condition,’ she said. When he’d spoken about it before, she’d had visions of herself in the brilliant sunshine, wearing dungarees with her hair tied on top of her head, paintbrush in hand, doing a bit of revarnishing or sanding.

‘Come on, let’s check it out,’ he said, holding out his hand.

She shook her head. ‘We’d be trespassing.’

He shrugged. ‘We won’t be doing any harm. I just want a closer look to decide if it’s worth trying to find out who owns it. If it’s got a hole in the floor or likely to have one soon, I won’t bother.’

‘All right,’ she said reluctantly, and took his hand.