Katie is a runaway, running to escape a suffocating family life of respectable deceit. Janey is a one-time drifter and petty crook: cleaned up, stabilised in a welfare life of free home and support. But fitting-in comes hard to Janey, the working day in a scruffy bar seems stagnant, unfulfilling. Until Katie erupts in her life.
Janey’s apartment sits by the canal in the Kings Cross district of central London. Dowdy by day, the neighbourhood lives by night as its exotic tribes emerge from the scrap land and abandoned factories to a dizzying whirl of music, parties and backstreet deals. Katie loves it all and quickly submerges herself in the shady scene. But for Janey - a veteran of all these things - her accidental housemate’s new appetites are troubling, bringing memories of old times she would better not recall. A time when this was her world. A time when Janey was in love.
Hers is not the only forced clean up. The neighbourhood is being cleansed as property speculators move in on the old wharfs and warehouses, with plans for shopping malls and canalside apartments. Blocking their way are the squatters, Katie’s new friends, who face the money men in an increasingly desperate stand-off. As the summer air grows charged with menace, Janey and Katie’s fevered existence edges from mistrust to the start of a grudging care, a spiky need of each other as the violence around them threatens their hothouse world.
With her family’s search for her getting increasingly frantic, Katie hits on a plan for escape with Janey that tests their fragile affection almost to destruction, as they seek a route out by the one constant of their restless neighbourhood: the dark waters of the canal.
Janey is street-smart. She knows that the speculators, the squatters, Katie’s family can all be eluded. But there are other intrusions not so easily run from: intrusions of the past, of times and places and people gone that will not stay buried. Not until the past has been answered and proper amends made. And the greatest intrusion of all is the knowledge that only one person can answer that past: the beautiful, wild, compelling young woman who brings such unexpected, overwhelming feeling, and whose road now leads down to the canal.
The Canal tells how love sown in the hardest ground can grow to make peace with memories too deadly to outrun. The women’s care and need for each other - which even they barely recognise - from cautious seeds blooms to a love that defies both workaday blandness and easy rebellion. A simmering passion, forced to high pressure in a long, hot summer.
--This text refers to the
Kindle Edition
edition.
Janey’s apartment sits by the canal in the Kings Cross district of central London. Dowdy by day, the neighbourhood lives by night as its exotic tribes emerge from the scrap land and abandoned factories to a dizzying whirl of music, parties and backstreet deals. Katie loves it all and quickly submerges herself in the shady scene. But for Janey - a veteran of all these things - her accidental housemate’s new appetites are troubling, bringing memories of old times she would better not recall. A time when this was her world. A time when Janey was in love.
Hers is not the only forced clean up. The neighbourhood is being cleansed as property speculators move in on the old wharfs and warehouses, with plans for shopping malls and canalside apartments. Blocking their way are the squatters, Katie’s new friends, who face the money men in an increasingly desperate stand-off. As the summer air grows charged with menace, Janey and Katie’s fevered existence edges from mistrust to the start of a grudging care, a spiky need of each other as the violence around them threatens their hothouse world.
With her family’s search for her getting increasingly frantic, Katie hits on a plan for escape with Janey that tests their fragile affection almost to destruction, as they seek a route out by the one constant of their restless neighbourhood: the dark waters of the canal.
Janey is street-smart. She knows that the speculators, the squatters, Katie’s family can all be eluded. But there are other intrusions not so easily run from: intrusions of the past, of times and places and people gone that will not stay buried. Not until the past has been answered and proper amends made. And the greatest intrusion of all is the knowledge that only one person can answer that past: the beautiful, wild, compelling young woman who brings such unexpected, overwhelming feeling, and whose road now leads down to the canal.
The Canal tells how love sown in the hardest ground can grow to make peace with memories too deadly to outrun. The women’s care and need for each other - which even they barely recognise - from cautious seeds blooms to a love that defies both workaday blandness and easy rebellion. A simmering passion, forced to high pressure in a long, hot summer.
