Into the Water(45)

She descended a steep flight of stone steps from the road to the riverbank path. On this track she could walk all the way to Scotland if she wanted to. She’d done it before, a year ago, last summer. Six of them, carrying tents and sleeping bags, they did it in three days. They camped next to the river at night, drank illicit wine in the moonlight, telling the stories of the river, of Libby and Anne and all the rest. She couldn’t possibly have imagined back then that one day she would walk where they had walked, that her fate and theirs were intertwined.

On the half-mile from the bridge to the Drowning Pool, she walked slower still, the pack heavy on her back, hard shapes digging into her spine. She cried a little. Try as she might, she could not stop herself from thinking about her mother, and that was the worst, the very worst thing.

As she passed under the canopy of beech trees at the riverside, it was so dark she could barely see a foot in front of her, and there was comfort in that. She thought that perhaps she would sit down for a while, take off her pack and rest, but she knew that she couldn’t, because if she did, the sun would come up, and it would be too late, and nothing would have changed, and there would be another day on which she would have to get up before dawn and leave the house sleeping. So, one foot in front of the other.

One foot in front of the other, until she reached the treeline, one foot in front of the other, off the path, a little stumble down the bank, and then, one foot in front of the other, into the water.





Jules


YOU WERE MAKING up stories. Rewriting history, retelling it with your own slant, your own version of the truth.

(The hubris, Nel. The fucking hubris.)

You don’t know what happened to Libby Seeton and you certainly don’t know what was going through Katie’s head when she died. Your notes make that clear:

On the night of Midsummer’s Day, Katie Whittaker went into the Drowning Pool. Her footsteps were found on the beach at its southern edge. She wore a green cotton dress and a simple chain around her neck, a bluebird charm engraved ‘with love’. On her back, she carried a pack filled with bricks and stones. Tests carried out after her death revealed she was sober and clean.

Katie had no history of mental illness or self-harm. She was a good student, pretty and popular. The police found no evidence of bullying, either IRL or on social media.

Katie came from a good home, a good family. Katie was loved.



I was sitting cross-legged on the floor in your study, leafing through your papers in the late-afternoon gloom, looking for answers. Looking for something. In amongst the notes – which were disorganized and in disarray, barely legible scribbles in the margins, words underlined in red or crossed out in black – there were pictures, too. In a cheap Manila folder I found printouts on low-grade photography paper: Katie with Lena, two little girls grinning at the camera, not pouting, not posing, throwbacks to some distant, innocent, pre-Snapchat era. Flowers and tributes left at the edge of the pool, teddy bears, trinkets. Footprints in the sand at the edge of the pool. Not hers, I presume. Not Katie’s actual prints, surely? No, they must have been your version, a reconstruction. You followed in her footsteps, didn’t you? You walked where she walked, you couldn’t resist feeling what it felt like.

That was always a thing with you. When you were younger, you were fascinated by the physical act, the bones of it, the viscera. You asked questions: would it hurt? For how long? What did it feel like, to hit water from a height? Would you feel yourself break? You thought less, I think, about the rest of it: about what it took to get someone to the top of the cliff, or to the edge of the beach, and to propel them to keep moving.

At the back of the folder was an envelope with your name scrawled on the front. Inside was a note on lined paper, written in a shaky hand:

I meant what I said when I saw you yesterday. I do not want my daughter’s tragedy to become part of your macabre ‘project’. It’s not just that I find it repulsive that you would gain financially from it. I have told you time and time again that I believe what you are doing to be DEEPLY IRRESPONSIBLE and Katie’s death is PROOF OF THAT. If you had an ounce of compassion you would stop what you are doing now, accept that what you write and print and say and do has consequences. I don’t expect you to listen to me – you’ve shown no sign of doing so in the past. But if you continue down this path, I’ve no doubt that someday someone will make you listen.



It wasn’t signed, but it was obvious it came from Katie’s mother. She warned you – and not just this once either. In the police station, I’d listened to the detective ask Lena about an incident just after Katie died, about how she threatened you and told you she would make you pay. Is that what you wanted to tell me? Were you afraid of her? Did you think she was coming for you?

The idea of her, a wild-eyed woman, mad with grief, hunting you down – it was horrifying, it frightened me. I no longer wanted to be here, amongst your things. I raised myself to my feet, and as I did, the house seemed to shift, to tilt like a boat. I could feel the river pushing against the wheel, urging it to turn, water seeping into cracks widened by accomplice weed.

I rested one hand on the filing cabinet and walked up the stairs into the living room, silence buzzing in my ears. I stood for a moment, my eyes adjusting to the brighter light, and for a second I felt sure that I saw someone, there on the window seat, in the spot where I used to sit. Just for a moment, and then she was gone, but my heart bludgeoned my ribs and my scalp prickled. Someone was here, or someone had been here. Or someone was coming.