Into the Water(47)

The heat buzzed through me, it dissipated and the cold returned, not on my skin but in my flesh, in my bones, heavy, like lead. I was tired, it seemed a very long way back to the bank, I wasn’t sure I could make it back. I kicked out, and down, but I couldn’t reach the bottom and so I thought that perhaps I would just float for a while, untroubled, unseen.

I drifted. Water covered my face and something brushed against me, soft, like a woman’s hair. There was a crushing sensation in my chest and I gasped, gulping water. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a woman scream. Libby, you said, you can hear her, sometimes at night you can hear her beg. I struggled, but something squeezed my ribs; I felt her hand in my hair, sudden and sharp, and she pulled me deeper. Only witches float.

It wasn’t Libby, of course, it was you, shouting at me. Your hand on my head, holding me down. I was fighting to get away from you. Holding me down, or dragging me out? You grabbed at my clothes, clawed at my skin, gave me scratches on my neck and arms to match the ones Robbie had left on my legs.

Eventually, we were on the bank, me on my knees, gasping for breath, and you standing above me, shouting at me. ‘You stupid fat bitch, what were you doing? What the fuck are you trying to do?’ You fell to your knees then and put your arms around me, then you smelled the alcohol on me and started yelling again. ‘You’re thirteen, Julia! You can’t drink, you can’t … What were you doing?’ Your bony fingers dug into the flesh of my arms, you shook me hard. ‘Why are you doing this? Why? To spite me, is that it? To make Mum and Dad angry with me? Jesus, Julia, what have I ever done to you?’

You took me home, dragged me upstairs and ran a bath. I didn’t want to get in, but you manhandled me, wrestling me out of my clothes and into the hot water. Despite the heat, I could not stop shivering. I would not lie down. I sat, hunched over, the roll of my belly tight and uncomfortable, while you scooped hot water over my skin with your hands. ‘Jesus, Julia. You’re a little girl. You shouldn’t be … you shouldn’t have …’ You didn’t seem to have the words. You wiped my face with a cloth. You smiled. You were trying to be kind. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK, Julia. It’s OK. I’m sorry I yelled at you. And I’m sorry he hurt you, I am. But what did you expect, Julia? What did you honestly expect?’

I let you bathe me, your hands so much softer than they had been in the pool. I wondered how you could be so calm about it now, I thought you’d have been angrier. Not just with me, but on my behalf. I supposed I must have been overreacting, or that you just didn’t want to think about it.

You made me swear that I wouldn’t tell our parents about what happened. ‘Promise me, Julia. You won’t tell them, you won’t tell anyone about this. OK? Not ever. We can’t talk about it, all right? Because … Because we’ll all get into trouble. OK? Just don’t talk about it. If we don’t talk about it, it’s like it didn’t happen. Nothing happened, OK? Nothing happened. Promise me. Promise me, Julia, you’ll never speak about it again.’

I kept my promise. You didn’t.





2015


Helen


ON HER WAY to the supermarket, Helen passed Josh Whittaker on his bike. He was drenched through and had mud on his clothes; she slowed the car and wound down her window.

‘Are you all right?’ she called out and he waved and bared his teeth at her – an awkward attempt at a smile, she supposed. She drove on slowly, watching him in the rear-view mirror. He was dawdling, turning the handlebars this way and that, and every now and again standing up on his pedals to check over his shoulder.

He’d always been an odd little character, and the recent tragedy had exacerbated things. Patrick had taken him fishing a couple of times after Katie died – as a favour to Louise and Alec, to give them some time to themselves. They’d been at the river for hours and hours and, Patrick said, the boy barely spoke a word.

‘They should get him away from here,’ Patrick said to her. ‘They should leave.’

‘You didn’t,’ she replied softly, and he nodded.

‘That’s different,’ he said. ‘I had to stay. I had work to do.’

After he retired, he stayed for them – for her and for Sean. Not for them, but to be close to them, because they were all he had: them, the house, the river. But time was running out. No one said anything, because that’s just the sort of family they were, but Patrick wasn’t well.

Helen heard him coughing in the night, on and on and on, she saw in the mornings how it pained him to move. The worst thing of all was that she knew it wasn’t solely physical. He had been so sharp all his life and now he had become forgetful, confused sometimes. He would take her car and forget where he’d left it, or sometimes return it to her filled with junk, as he had the other day. Rubbish he’d found? Trinkets he’d taken? Trophies? She didn’t ask, didn’t want to know. She was afraid for him.

She was afraid for herself, too, if she was completely honest. She’d been all over the place lately, distracted, unreasonable. Sometimes she thought she was going mad. Losing her grip.

It wasn’t like her. Helen was practical, rational, decisive. She considered her options carefully, and then she acted. Left-brained, her father-in-law called her. But lately, she had not been herself. The events of the past year had unsettled her, thrown her off course. Now she found herself questioning the things about her life she’d thought were least open to interrogation: her marriage, their family life, even her competence in her job.