Excerpt from The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Only when we dock in front of the Cutty Sark do I finally reach for my phone, reacquaint myself with my communications of Monday night and the aftermath of the water rats' Christmas drinks. I scan my inbox for Kit's name. My last text to him was spur-of-the-moment and tellingly free of emojis:

Just YOU wait.

Sent at 11:38 p.m. on Monday, it's double-ticked as read, but there has been no reply. There have been, however, five missed calls from Melia, as well as three voicemails. I really should listen to them. But, instead, I hear Clare's voice from yesterday morning, the "proper" talk we had under a gunmetal northern sky four hundred miles from here:

You need to cut ties.

Not just him, Jamie. Her, as well.

There's something not right about those two.

Now she tells me. And I slip the phone back in my pocket, buying myself a few extra minutes of innocence.

At Surrey Quays, Gretchen gets on. The only female water rat, she's prim in her narrow, petrol-blue wool coat, carrying one of those squat bamboo cups for her flat white. Though I'm in our usual spot, she settles in the central section several rows ahead. Weird. I move up the aisle and drop into the seat next to her. You can't usually take your pick so easily on the 7:20, but the boat is half empty—even excusing the lucky bastards who don't have to return to work till the New Year, I have to admit the river's no place to be in these temperatures. It's one of the coldest days of the year, breath visible from people's mouths on the quayside and from the heating systems of the buildings.

"Jamie, hi," she says, not quite turning, not quite smiling. Her lashes are navy spider's legs and there's a feathering of pink in the whites of her eyes.

"Thought you were blanking me there," I say, cheerfully. "Good Christmas with your family?" She's been somewhere like Norwich, if I remember. There are healthy, uncomplicated parents, a brother and a sister, a brace of nieces and nephews.

She shrugs, sips her coffee. "It's all about the kids, isn't it? And I haven't got any."

There's really no need for her to spell this out: we're connected, our little group, by our childlessness, our freedom to put ourselves before everyone else. To self-indulge, take risks. No parent would do what I've done this last year, or at least not so readily, so heedlessly.

"What about yesterday? Do any sales shopping?"

Gretchen blinks, surprised, like I've suggested she rode a unicorn naked down the middle of Regent Street. She's clear-skinned, delicately feminine, though in temperament a woman who likes to be one of the boys, who laments the complexities of her own gender and thinks men simpler allies (a dangerous generalization, in my opinion).

"You all right, Gretch?"

"Yeah, just a bit tired."

"I don't know where Kit is this morning. I'm sure he said he was working today. Did he say anything to you?"

"Nope." There's an edge to her tone I'm familiar with, a peculiarly female strain of pique. I've wondered now and then if there might be something between Kit and her. Maybe there was some indiscretion on Monday night, maybe she worries what I saw. Did I say something I shouldn't have? God, the "shouldn't haves" are really building: shouldn't have got so drunk, shouldn't have let him goad me.

Shouldn't have sent him that last text.

"What happened there?" she asks, noticing my bandaged right hand.

"Oh, nothing major. I burned my thumb at work. Didn't I show you on Monday?"

"I don't think so." Noticing the music piping through the PA—the same loop of festive tunes we've been subjected to since early December—Gretchen groans. "I can't take any more of this 'happy holidays' crap, it's so fake. You know what? I think I might just book a trip somewhere sunny. Call in sick for a few days and get out of here."

Excerpted from The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish. Copyright © 2021 by Louise Candlish. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.