Into the Water(44)

Sean took me by the arm and led me from the room before I could say anything.





Lena


JULIA WANTED TO drive me home, but I told her I felt like a walk. It wasn’t true, but a) I didn’t want to be in the car alone with her, and b) I saw Josh, on his bike, across the road, going round and round in circles, and I knew he was waiting for me.

‘’Sup, Josh?’ I said when he came riding over. When he was about nine or ten, he started saying ‘’Sup?’ to people instead of hello, and Katie and I never let him forget it. Usually he laughs, but this time he didn’t. He looked frightened. ‘What’s wrong, Josh? What’s happened?’

‘What were they asking you about?’ he said in this little whis-pery voice.

‘It’s nothing, don’t worry. They found some pills that Katie took and they think that they – the pills, I mean – might have something to do with … what happened. They’re wrong, obviously. Don’t worry.’ I gave him a little hug and he pulled away, which he never does. Usually he’ll use any excuse to have a cuddle or hold my hand.

‘Did they ask you about Mum?’ he said.

‘No. Well, yeah, I suppose. A little. Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, but he wouldn’t look at me.

‘Why, Josh?’

‘I think we should tell,’ he said.

I could feel the first spots of warm rain on my arms and I looked up at the sky. It was deathly dark, a storm coming over. ‘No, Josh,’ I said. ‘No. We’re not going to tell.’

‘Lena, we have to.’

‘No!’ I said again, and I grabbed his arm more tightly than I meant to and he yelped like a puppy when you step on its tail. ‘We made a promise. You made a promise.’ He shook his head and so I dug my nails into his arm.

He started to cry. ‘But what good does it do now?’

I let go of his arm and put my hands on his shoulders. I forced him to look at me. ‘A promise is a promise, Josh. I mean it. You do not tell anyone.’

He was right, in a way, we weren’t doing any good. There was no good to be done. But still, I couldn’t betray her. And if they knew about Katie, they’d ask questions about what happened afterwards, and I didn’t want anyone to know about what we did, Mum and I. What we did, and what we didn’t do.

I didn’t want to leave Josh like that, and I didn’t want to go home anyway, so I put my arm around him and gave him a comforting squeeze, and then I took his hand. ‘Come on,’ I said to him. ‘Come with me. I know something we can do, something that’ll make us feel better.’ He turned bright red and I started laughing. ‘Not that, you dirty boy!’ He laughed too then, and wiped the tears from his face.

We walked in silence towards the southern end of town, Josh pushing his bike along beside me. There was no one about, the rain was coming down harder and harder and I could feel Josh sneaking the occasional glance across at me because my T-shirt was now totally see-through and I wasn’t wearing a bra. I crossed my arms over my chest and he blushed again. I smiled, but I didn’t say anything. In fact, we didn’t talk at all until we got to Mark’s road, and then Josh said, ‘What are we doing here?’ I just grinned at him.

When we were outside Mark’s door he asked again, ‘Lena, what are we doing here?’ He looked frightened again, but excited too, and I could feel all the adrenaline rushing up inside of me, making me feel dizzy and sick.

‘This,’ I said. I picked up a stone from under the hedge and chucked it as hard as I could against the big window at the front of his house, and it went straight through, just making a small hole.

‘Lena!’ Josh yelled, anxiously looking around to see if anyone was watching. They weren’t. I grinned at him and picked up another stone and did it again, and this time it shattered the window and the whole pane came crashing down. ‘Come on,’ I said to him, and I handed him a stone, and together we went round the whole house. It was like we were high on hatred – we were laughing and shouting and calling that piece of shit every name we could think of.





The Drowning Pool


Katie, 2015


ON THE WAY to the river, she stopped from time to time to pick up a stone, or a piece of brick, which she put into her backpack. It was cold, not yet light, though if she’d turned back to look in the direction of the sea, she would have seen a hint of grey on the horizon. She did not turn back, not once.

She walked quickly at first, down the hill towards the centre of town, putting some distance between herself and her home. She didn’t head straight to the river; she wanted, one last time, to walk through the place she grew up in, past the primary school (not daring to look at it in case flashbacks to her childhood stopped her in her tracks), past the village shop, still shuttered to the night, past the green where her father had tried and failed to teach her to play cricket. She walked past the houses of her friends.

There was a particular house to visit on Seward Road, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to walk along it, so instead she chose another, and her pace slowed as her burden became heavier, as the road climbed back towards the old town, the streets narrowing between stone houses clad with climbing roses.

She continued on her way, north past the church until the road took a sharp turn to the right. She crossed the river, stopping for a moment on the humpbacked bridge. She looked down into the water, oily and slick, moving quickly over stones. She could see, or perhaps only imagine, the dark outline of the old mill, its hulking, rotting wheel still, unturned for half a century. She thought about the girl sleeping inside and laid her hands, bluish-white with cold, on the side of the bridge to stop them from trembling.