Into the Water(42)

‘What sort of things?’ I asked.

‘I … I don’t really remember the details.’ Her composure was starting to slip, her breath shortening, her hands gripping the sides of her armchair, the effort turning the olive skin over her knuckles to yellow. ‘Nel must have heard me. She came outside and told me to leave them alone. She said’ – Louise gave a yelping laugh – ‘she said that she was sorry for my loss. She was sorry for my loss, but it had nothing to do with her, nothing to do with her daughter. Lena was on the ground, I remember that, she was making a noise like … like an animal. A wounded animal.’ She paused to catch her breath before continuing. ‘We argued, Nel and I. It was rather violent.’ She half smiled at Sean. ‘You’re surprised? You’ve not heard this before? I thought Nel would have told you about it – or Lena, at least. Yes, I … well, I didn’t hit her, but I lunged at her, and she held me off. I demanded to see the footage from her camera. I wanted … I didn’t want to see it, but I wanted more than anything for her not to have … I couldn’t bear …’

Louise broke down.

Watching someone in the throes of raw grief is a terrible thing; the act of watching feels violent, intrusive, a violation. Yet we do it, we have to do it, all the time, you just have to learn to cope with it whatever way you can. Sean coped by bowing his head and remaining very still; I coped with distraction: I watched the chickens scratching around on the lawn outside the window. I looked at the bookshelves, my eyes passing over worthy contemporary novels and military-history books; I took in the framed pictures above the fireplace. The wedding photo and the family shot and the photograph of a baby. Just one, a little boy in blue. Where was Katie’s picture? I tried to imagine what it would feel like to take the framed picture of your child down from its place of pride and put it in a drawer. When I looked over at Sean, I saw that his head was no longer bent, he was glowering at me. I realized that there was a tapping sound in the room and that it was coming from me, the sound of my pen knocking against my notepad. I wasn’t doing it deliberately. I was shaking all over.

After what seemed like a very long time, Louise spoke again. ‘I couldn’t bear for Nel to be the last one to see my child. She told me there was no footage, that the camera wasn’t working, that even if it had been, it was up on the cliff, so it wouldn’t have … wouldn’t have captured her.’ She heaved a huge sigh, a shudder working itself through her entire body, from her shoulders to her knees. ‘I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t risk it. What if there was something on camera and she used it? What if she showed my girl to the world, alone and frightened and …’ She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I told her … Lena must have told you all this? I told her that I wouldn’t rest until I saw her pay for what she’d done. Then I left. I went to the cliff and tried to open the camera to get the SD card out of it, but I couldn’t. I tried to break it free from its mount, I ripped my fingernail out doing so.’ She held up her left hand – the nail of her forefinger was stunted and buckled. ‘I kicked it a few times, I smashed at it with a stone. Then I went home.’





Erin


JOSH WAS SITTING on the pavement opposite the house as we left. He watched us walking towards the car, crossing the road quickly once we’d got fifty yards or so down the street and disappearing into the house. The DI, in his own world, didn’t seem to notice.

‘She wouldn’t rest until she saw Nel pay?’ I repeated when we reached the car. ‘Does that not sound like a threat to you?’

Sean regarded me with his familiar, blank expression, his irritating look of not-really-there-ness. He said nothing.

‘I mean, doesn’t it seem odd that Lena wouldn’t even mention that to us? And Josh? That business about them all being asleep? It was such an obvious lie …’

He nodded curtly. ‘Yes. It seemed so. But I wouldn’t set too much store by the tales of grieving children,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s no telling what he’s feeling, or imagining, or what he thinks he should or shouldn’t be saying. He knows that we know that his mother bore a grudge against Nel Abbott, and I imagine he’s afraid that she’s going to be blamed, that she’s going to be taken away from him. You have to think about how much he’s already lost.’ He paused. ‘As for Lena, if she truly was as hysterical as Louise suggests, she may not even remember the incident clearly, she may remember very little other than her own distress.’

For my part, I was finding it difficult to marry Louise’s description of Lena that day – a howling, wounded beast – with the usually self-contained and occasionally venomous girl we had encountered. It seemed bizarre to me that her reaction to her friend’s death would be so extreme, so visceral, when her reaction to her mother’s was so restrained. Was it possible that Lena had been so affected by Louise’s grief, by Louise’s conviction that Nel was to blame for Katie’s death – that she had come to believe it herself? A prickle ran over my skin. It didn’t seem likely, but what if, like Louise, Lena blamed her mother for Katie’s death? And what if she decided to do something about that?





Lena


WHY DO ADULTS always ask the wrong questions? The pills. That’s what they’re all on about now. Those stupid fucking diet pills – I’d forgotten I even bought them, it was so long ago. And now they’ve decided that THE PILLS ARE THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING and so I had to go to the police station – with Julia, who is my appropriate adult. That made me laugh. She’s, like, the least appropriate adult possible for this particular situation.