Calling all fans of The Flatshare and The Roadtrip, Beth O'Leary has returned with a brand new novel Swept Away, which is peak forced proximity romance, and we've got an exclusive extract for you below.
In Swept Away, Lexi is looking for just harmless fun and Zeke has his heart on his sleeve ready for a serious romance, but one night of fun with Lexi is worth it right? After a night at the pub, they stumble back to a houseboat, where they spend the night together.
The next morning, they're ready to go their separate ways, that is until they discover the houseboat they stayed on has been swept out to sea....
Read on to find out they react to being swept away.
LEXI
We begin by panicking.
"We can’t be in the sea," Zeke keeps saying, which is infruriating, because, look, there’s the sea, and look, here we are, bloody well definitely in it. The sun slashes bright across the water and the boat creaks beneath us.
I don’t want to think about the creaking. I’ve never been particularly involved with the houseboat – Mum had it for less than a year before she died, and she left it to Penny, so she’s always handled the upkeep and rentals. But I do know it’s a ‘refurbished’ Dutch barge, designed to be more house than boat. Mum bought it to rent out – her ‘savvy business decision’, she always called it, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that she basically just fell in love with the cute little windows and the idea of it all. This boat is supposed to sit in a marina with plant pots on its roof. It’s called The Merry Dormouse, for fuck’s sake. The chances of it being seaworthy seem extremely slim.
"Did someone – did someone untie my boat?" Zeke asks.
He spins to the other side of the deck, leaning so far over the railing I have to resist the impulse to step forward and grab him.
"Penny’s boat," I snap.
Zeke stays unnaturally still, leaning over, ringlets falling forward as he stares into the water. The railing out here on the deck is a thin, rickety thing – just a few poles, really, more a boundary line than anything protective. For a split second I imagine Zeke slipping and sliding out under the bottom rail. My gut seizes. If one of us falls into the sea, can we even get back up here?
"Lexi," Zeke says, "What did you actually do when we re tied the rope last night?"
"What? I did what the busybody neighbour told me to do, I held on to the boat while you got the centre of the rope around that thingy and she did the knots. Zeke. Zeke?"
He is terrifyingly quiet. Eventually, at last, he turns. His hair is wild, and his eyes are so wide I can see the whites all around his irises. Fear congeals in the back of my throat.
"Paige told you to loop the centre of the rope around the cleat on the pontoon," Zeke says. His voice is so quiet I can barely hear him.
"No, she didn’t. She told you to do that. She said . . ." I trail off. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck."
I watch Zeke figure it out. How we both took that sentence. How we both thought Paige was talking to us when she said your boat. How we both thought the other person was the friend who would secure it at the pontoon, and how easily that went wrong in the fog and the darkness.
I feel sick. Not just nauseous, but as if quite suddenly I am going to vomit. I press my palm to my mouth and run to stand beside Zeke, leaning over – not as far as him, but far enough.
The boat is tied to itself.
"Are you fucking joking?" I say, clinging to the rail. "You didn’t loop it around the thingy on the . . ."
"The cleat," he says. His voice is still quiet, but there’s an edge to it now. "On the pontoon. And no, I didn’t. Because you were supposed to do that."
"You think this is my fault?" I say, voice rising.
"Well, I don’t think it’s mine."
With his jaw clenched and fear all over his face, he looks about eighteen. Which isn’t that far off, really. He is just a kid. Which means I have to be the adult here, when all I want to do is panic.
"We need to stay calm," I say, looking back at the rope with another lurch of nausea. It’s just looped there, lying against the round punchbag-type things that hang on the side of the houseboat to stop it getting damaged if the water jostles it into the dock. Or the pontoon. Or the . . . whatever-it’s-called.
Zeke breathes out slowly through his nose. "You’re right. It doesn’t matter how we got here. Just how we get home."
"Our phones," I say, scrabbling in the back pocket of my trousers. Never have I felt so grateful to hold my mobile in my hand. It lights up, showing my screen lock image: Mae beaming and bright-eyed on the beach, trousers rolled up to her knees, arms up stretched to the sky.
There are a few WhatsApps waiting from Marissa, and one from Penny – Lexi, please, just call me. On the top right of the screen there’s an empty triangle and an exclamation mark. No signal.
If I was scared before, now I’m terrified. Horrified.
No signal? At all? Not even one of those random letters that comes up sometimes, an E, an H?
"Is your phone . . ."
"No signal. I can’t even call 999." His voice is heavy with horror. "I thought you could always call 999."
"I think phone signal goes if you’re far enough out to sea," I say. I’m flicking through my phone settings. My battery is at thirty-six per cent. "Shit. I’m going to turn mine off, save battery."
"We might just be in a signal black spot. How far could we get in, what, ten hours?" Zeke asks, swiping his hair out of his face with both hands, one still clutching his phone. He blows out between his lips. "Maybe twenty kilometres?"
"Twenty kilometres?"
"Yeah, now you say it like that, it sounds quite far," Zeke says, voice weak.
I have to get back before anyone finds out what’s happened to us – I can’t have Mae knowing I’m in danger. I lean against the large wheel fixed to the body of the boat. My hangover loiters at the edge of my consciousness: slick, sweaty hands, dry throat, pounding head.
"That bang we heard last night," Zeke says, staring at me. I see myself reflected in his pupils, a tiny person, small and lost. "I bet that was us hitting something as we floated out of the marina. The sea wall, maybe."
"Can we steer this thing? Get the motor going?" I say, realising the significance of the wheel I’m currently propped against. It looks ridiculously oversized, as if it belongs in a Pirates of the Caribbean film, but presumably it isn’t just ornamental. There’s white tarpaulin here, retracted so this section of the boat is exposed to the sun and connects seamlessly to the deck, but it’s definitely some sort of steering . . . space. There are dials and handles and a lever that looks like it’s from the TARDIS.
"I don’t think so," Zeke says, swallowing. "Battery’s flat. When I bought it, your friend said the houseboat needed refuelling."
I flinch at the reference to Penny. She really did sell it without telling me, then. Penny, my Penny, who always cuts herself shaving (‘Lex, it’s happened again! Bloodbath! Bring chocolate!’) and who once described talking to me as ‘having an inner monologue’. Thinking of her makes me want to turn my phone back on; my phone is never off. But if the battery dies . . .
"Would a houseboat like this have a radio, or a sea . . . phone, do you think?" I say, trying to remember the few times I dropped in to check on the boat for Penny.
"Dad never had that sort of stuff. Would your friend have installed anything?"
I make a face. Penny outsourced general upkeep of the house-boat to a local agency, but I think they were just responsible for plugging holes and varnishing things, not installing radios. And there’s no way Penny would have sorted that herself. She’s really not a details person.
"I’ll go look," Zeke says.
He ducks back inside. I let out a slow, shaky breath and try experimentally turning the wheel. Nothing happens. I’ve never had a panic attack before, but I’ve seen people have them on the telly. Maybe I could give it a go. I have the vague sense that it would make me feel better, like the thought of throwing up when you’re nauseous.
"No sea phone," Zeke says shakily, re-emerging up the steps. His pupils are so dilated his eyes look black. "Not that I can see, anyway."
The fact that he has taken my ‘sea phone’ term and run with it is not encouraging. One of us, ideally, should know what that device is called.
"I have to get back," Zeke says, his voice a little strange. "I have to work tomorrow. I’m booked on the three-fifteen train home." There is a pause as we dip gently back and forth on the ocean and contemplate how surreal concepts like trains and homes and jobs feel right now.
"That’s fine. That’ll be fine." My voice sounds strange too.
"That’s hours. We’ll be rescued any minute now, definitely."
Swept Away is published by Quercus on 8 April, pre-order your copy now here
