Drew loved to fish, any kind of angling, he was prepared to try. Coarse fishing on rivers and lakes occupied a lot of his spare time and he’d enjoyed a few holidays in Scotland over the years, hunting wild salmon and trout with a fly on a gossamer line; but his real love was sea fishing.

His “uncle” John introduced him to the pastime when he was a kid. Drew lost his father to emphysema when he was very young and inherited a string of temporary “uncles”, few of whom bothered to give a snotty-nosed Drew the time of day. “Uncle” John wasn’t around for that long either but he took Drew fishing for carp at a flooded quarry a couple of times and, in that old cliché, Drew was hooked.

Losing his Dad to an occupational disease put Drew off coal mining. So when he came to choose a career, he decided to sell insurance, mostly life, health and investment plans. Drew didn’t break any industry records but he did OK. The business had changed wholesale since he started. Most of it was done over the phone nowadays but at the outset he put in a lot of door-to-door legwork.

He wasn’t a bad-looking kid and looked after himself, dressed smartly for the job, so he got a lot of offers from bored housewives but turned them all down. He didn’t consider himself a prude, he was as randy as the next man, but these desperate housewives reminded him too much of his Mum.

His Mum had been lonely back then, desperate for love. She had considered herself too young and pretty to be a widow hampered by two young kids, Drew’s sister Alice is two years older than him. Drew’s mum had to settle for short relationships, too much alcoholic drink and, he suspected, occasional recreational drugs. As a consequence of his Mum’s desperation for affection and seeking attention elsewhere, there wasn’t much time or love left over for the children. As a result both siblings found it difficult to establish lasting relationships.

Drew didn’t blame Mum for his crappy childhood, they were just the hands that they were dealt. Both Drew and his sister Alice were still single, now well into their thirties, and both of them cold fish when it came to lasting romance. Drew only seemed to love cold fish.

That’s why he initially cultivated his friendship with Alan when they were about ten years old. Alan’s dad had a little boat moored up in an estuary about twenty miles from their mining village and, by palling up with Alan, Drew wangled a few free fishing trips each summer.

Drew broke off the friendship briefly when they were both 15 and Alan started courting Janice, a girl Drew was sweet on but much too shy to ask out.

After a couple of months had passed, Drew realised how much he missed Alan, even more than he missed the sea fishing. They really turned out to be good friends, after all. So, he approached Alan and Janice straight after school, shaking Alan’s hand and asked if they could be friends again. Alan had embraced him without embarrassment in front of everyone and then Janice kissed him on the cheek and told him that Alan had been really miserable without his best friend to bounce off.

Drew didn’t tell either of them exactly how he felt about Janice at the time, he would have been far too embarrassed. That didn’t stop him telling everyone at their wedding reception eight years later, through the hilarious medium of the best man’s speech, the full story of how he loved them both and always would.

Apparently, everyone knew already, had always known, but it did Drew good to clear the air. Janice kissed him gently when it was his turn to dance with her, assuring him that the couple would both always love him. He was later godfather to both their kids and now they had a third one on the way.

Janice kept trying to fix Drew up with her own friends with little success. The last few years they had almost exclusively been divorced or single mothers. He smiled at the recollection. No, if he was going to fall in love with anyone else it was going to have to be someone very special. Unfortunately Janice had set the bar way too high.

Alan was on board the boat, of course, it was now partly at least his boat. His dad had lasted longer than most, but you don’t get many old miners draining the pension fund for long. Alan didn’t seem to spend much time fishing on this particular trip or the previous one. He was busy tinkering with the blasted engine again, ensuring he got it going again before the tide turned, in order to take them home.

Alan had gone down the mine like his father, shortly after his sixteenth birthday. However, the mine had been shut for over ten years now and he was currently employed as a forklift driver at an out-of-town supermarket. He needed to take the boat that he shared with his three brothers out on his turn every four weeks with a guest or three prepared to chip in for the beer, sandwiches, bait, gas and mooring fees to make the boat pay for itself. Today, Alan’s brother-in-law Jack and a friend Andy were invited but each had cried off at the last minute for one reason or another.

Drew knew the score, and insisted Alan took fifty instead of the usual twenty. Alan knew the score too and accepted the crisp folded notes without objection or argument, the bond between them so strong.

Drew hollered down the engine hatch, “Time for a beer break, Al!”

Alan poked his head, with one cheek streaked with grease, through the engine room opening, just as Drew closed up the cool box, and smoothly caught the tossed can.

“Cheers!” laughed Drew.

“Likewise,” grinned Alan. He clambered out and joined his crew-mate sat on a bench next to the half-dozen rods trailing their lifeless hooks and lines behind and to the side of the boat.

“Wow!” exclaimed Alan, looking around for the first time in a while. “What a lovely day.”

Just a few puffy clouds punctuated the azure sky, a light swell barely disturbing the quiet water all around them.

“You should be up here enjoying the trip, not messing about with that engine,” Drew said. “Get that spare one put in that Pat keeps offering you.” Pat ran the marina where the boat was moored when not in use.

“We can’t afford it, Drew, you know, with the baby coming.”

Drew knew the situation and wished he could help. He was working on it, actually. Old Pat down at the boat chandlers was a shrewd old sea dog, he knew the dilemma that was faced by the owners of the boat and had come up with a solution with Drew. Alan and his brothers couldn’t afford to replace the engine but Drew could. The engine would cost half the value of the boat, so if he had a mind to he could probably negotiate a half share in the boat without the brothers having to fork out the capital investment. The difficulty then was with the running costs, which made it such a delicate matter. With the four brothers having equal shares, they could each take the boat out once a month, with two or three paying guests at a time and break even. With a fifth wheel, even if he just took the one turn every five weeks instead of every second week, the balance would shift and the brothers would eventually be unable to maintain their share and have to drop out. That would end Drew’s friendly relationship with Alan’s brothers and probably damage his best friendship with Alan. A prickly problem, no easy solution.

Pat’s plan was that Drew quietly pay for half the engine, Drew could afford that. Pat would then offer it at half-price to the brothers on easy repayment terms. Drew was still considering it.

“Your father ordered that replacement engine before he died, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Alan admitted. It wasn’t common knowledge, but it wasn’t that much of a secret either and he’d noticed that Drew had become pretty pally with Old Pat of late so assumed it must have come up in the conversation.

“Da had banked on still drawing his pension to pay for it and him going so quick at the end, and Ma’s onset of dementia, meant every penny of Ma’s pension and more goes into paying the nursing home’s fees.”

Alan felt sorry for Pat and the shame arising from the situation he shared with his brothers. Pat had paid out good money for that engine, still greased up in its packing case three years on. A lot of the other boat owners looked at that wooden case with covetous eyes but everyone moored in that estuary were in the same boat, so to speak, with the mines closed and the local economy depressed.

There was no-one in view within the horizon in any direction of the scruffy little vessel today though and, no matter how many problems the boat may have suffered, there was only brilliant sunshine and sparkling water under the clear blue skies. There was only a slight swell running, east to west, with the boat easily riding up and down the gentle waves. It really was a beautiful day. They both thought this was simply perfect.

“Just ten more minutes, putting the engine together,” Alan promised, “And I’ll fire it up again.”

“OK, just make sure that’s all,” grinned Drew. “You know, if you got Pat to put that engine in, you’d be up here enjoying the sunshine, the fishing, and the company.”

“Yeah, sure,” he grinned, “You know I only bring you with me so I can be sure you’re not chatting up Janice while I’m away?”

“Alan, she’s seven months pregnant.”

“You still think she’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, though,” Alan’s smile was sympathetic, he felt for his friend, knowing himself how devastated he would be if he ever lost Janice.

“Yeah,” Drew agreed, lost in his thoughts for a moment. Then another thought came into his head, one he’d harboured for a few weeks now, waiting for the right moment. Now, thinking about tangled relationships, seemed to be the most appropriate time.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Al,” he said, seriously, watching his pal take another long pull from his can of John Smith’s, “talking about the subject of extra-marital relationships, reminded me of your sister.”

“Oh yes?” Alan still had a smile on his face at his friend’s clear embarrassment.

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing rumours that her Jack is up to his old tricks again.”

Alan sighed. He’d been putting this off too, Janice had been chewing his ear to do something about it for a month now and, as urgent action was required, he had mulled over it for long enough and had intended bringing it up with Jack today.

Only Jack shied off, no doubt so he could meet some woman he was seeing. Sherry deserved better than that slimy toe rag she’d married.

“Yeah,” Alan admitted, “I heard that too. What we gonna do about it?”

Alan wasn’t slow or dumb, but he was hardly a man of the world. Married at 23 to the one and only girl in his life, he led a simple naïve existence, which he was reluctant to complicate. He drove his forklift all day and hardly spoke to anyone at work, at home he was surrounded by loving wife and two adorable little angels. His hobbies were his family, making wooden toys in his workshop, caring for his racing pigeons and the fishing boat. Simple and uncomplicated, his life was, just how he wanted it; relatively without stress.

Drew on the other hand was out in the community all day and many evenings, selling, networking, juggling different complicated insurance plans and gearing them to the requirements of his clients. Alan had taken on what insurances and saving plans he could afford too, and knew that Drew was as straight as they come. Any advice he gave on any subject would be insightful, considered and therefore worth taking into account.

“I was hoping Jack’d be here today,” Drew said, “So we could have it out with him and, if he didn’t change his ways we’d lash him to the anchor and bump him along the bottom for a couple of hours. What’yer think?”

Yeah, thought Alan, that was considered, pretty much what I would do. He laughed and drained his can.

“Sherry once had a crush on you, Drew” he grinned.

“When?” Drew’s eyebrows raised.

“Since she was about 9 and you started coming round to see me again after our little trial separation,” Alan admitted, “And she still says nice things about you whenever you come up in the conversation.”

“When do I come up in the conversation, then?”

“All the bloody time,” Alan grinned, as he clambered down the engine way, before an empty can came his way, “We hardly talk about anything else!”

Then he was gone, leaving Drew alone with only the empty ocean for company.

Just then one of the reels clicked, indicating a nibble.

Drew picked up the rod, felt the bite and struck the hook firmly with a flick of his wrist, then the fish was hooked, off and running. Drew began the process of reeling it in, letting it run and reeling in once more. Sooner than usual the fight was over and he could reel his first catch of the day in. This late in the trip, it would probably be his last catch today. He knew by the feel of it that it was a sizeable specimen and he’d need the gaff to get the monster out of the water, but that was well out of reach in the wheelhouse and Alan was also out of sight and earshot with the engine.

The fish was totally played out and was hauled to the surface with barely a flap of its broad tail. What a strange fish, Drew thought, he had never seen anything like it. It was about three or four feet or so long and looked like a mirror carp but of course he knew that carp were freshwater fish that couldn’t possibly survive long this far out to sea.

He estimated it weighed about 40 pounds. It lay there placidly in the water, as if it was completely played out. It would be a stretch, he knew, but he could reach down and pull it out, although it would be a strain. Drew kept himself pretty fit but this was risky. All the while the fish rested it was naturally garnering its strength for another run, no doubt hoping for success this time.

Damn it, thought Drew, I don’t want to lose this fish.

He stretched down over the gunwale, wrapped his hands around and under the large fish and braced himself to lift the monster onto the boat. He took the strain slowly and careful, drawing the beast forth from the reluctant suction of its native environment. Remarkably, the fish didn’t react adversely to being lifted, almost as if it sensed that Drew meant it no harm. At the moment he lifted that fish, Drew could honestly say that the only thoughts running through his head were of wanting to see this beautiful specimen close up. Not even an inkling of any other event or consequence occurred to him. There was no malice, triumph in winning a battle, sense of achievement or otherwise, only an overwhelming admiration for the indescribable beauty of one of God’s exquisite creations.