Into the Water(58)

Jeannie left a couple of days later; she never came back.





Jules


TELL ME HONESTLY. Wasn’t there some part of you that liked it?

I woke with your voice in my head. It was mid afternoon. I can’t sleep at night, this house rocks like a boat and the sound of the water is deafening. In the day, it’s not so bad somehow. At any rate, I must have fallen asleep because I woke with your voice in my head, asking:

Wasn’t there some part of you that liked it? Liked or enjoyed? Or was it wanted? I can’t remember now. I only remember taking my hand from yours and raising it to hit you, and the look on your face, uncomprehending.

I dragged myself across the hall to the bathroom and turned on the shower. I was too exhausted to undress, so I just sat there, while the room got steamier and steamier. Then I turned off the water and went to the sink and splashed my face. When I looked up I saw, appearing in the condensation, two letters traced on the surface of the mirror, an ‘L’ and an ‘S’. I got such a fright that I cried out.

I heard Lena’s door open and then she was pounding on the bathroom door. ‘What? What’s happening? Julia?’

I opened the door to her, furious. ‘What are you doing?’ I demanded. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ I pointed back at the mirror.

‘What?’ She looked annoyed. ‘What?’

‘You know very well, Lena. I don’t know what you think you’re trying to do, but—’

She turned her back on me and started to walk away. ‘Christ, you’re such a freak.’

I stood there staring at the letters for a while. I wasn’t imagining things, they were definitely there: LS. It was the sort of thing you used to do all the time: leave me ghostly messages on the mirror or draw tiny pentagrams in red nail polish on the back of my door. You left things to scare me. You loved to freak me out and you must have told her that. You must have, and now she was doing it, too.

Why LS? Why Libby Seeton? Why fixate on her? Libby was an innocent, a young woman dragged to the water by men who hated women, who heaped blame on them for things that they themselves had done. But Lena thought you went there of your own volition, so why Libby? Why LS?

Wrapped in a towel, I padded across the hallway and into your bedroom. It seemed undisturbed, but there was a smell in the air, something sweet – not your perfume, another. Something cloying, heavy with the scent of overblown roses. The drawer next to your bed was closed and when I pulled it open everything was as it had been, with one exception. The lighter, the one on which you’d had Libby’s initials engraved, was gone. Someone had been in the room. Someone had taken it.

I went back to the bathroom and splashed my face again and rubbed the letters from the mirror, and as I did I saw you standing behind me, that exact same look on your face, uncomprehending. I whirled around and Lena raised her hands as though in self-defence. ‘Jesus, Julia, chill. What is going on with you?’

I shook my head. ‘I just … I just …’

‘You just what?’ She rolled her eyes.

‘I need some air.’

But on the front step I almost cried out again, because there were women – two of them – at the gate, dressed in black and bent over, entangled in some way. One of them looked up at me. It was Louise Whittaker, the mother of the girl who had died. She dragged herself away from the other woman, speaking angrily as she did.

‘Leave me! Leave me alone! Don’t you come near me!’

The other one waved a hand at her – or at me, I couldn’t be sure. Then she turned and slowly hobbled off along the lane.

‘Bloody nutcase,’ Louise spat as she approached the house. ‘She’s a menace, that Sage woman. Don’t engage with her, I’m telling you. Don’t let her through your door. She’s a liar and a con artist, all she wants is money.’ She paused to catch her breath, frowning at me. ‘Well. You look about as awful as I feel.’ I opened my mouth and shut it again. ‘Is your niece at home?’

I showed her into the house. ‘I’ll just get her for you,’ I said, but Louise was already at the foot of the staircase, calling Lena’s name. Then she went into the kitchen and sat down at the table to wait.

After a moment, Lena appeared. Her typical expression, that combination of haughtiness and boredom so reminiscent of you, was gone. She greeted Louise meekly, although I’m not even sure if Louise noticed because her eye was trained elsewhere, on the river outside or some place beyond.

Lena sat down at the table, raising her hands to wind her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. She lifted her chin slightly, as though she were preparing herself for something, an interview. An interrogation. I may as well have been invisible for all the attention they paid me, but I remained in the room. I stood by the counter, not relaxed but on the balls of my feet, in case I needed to intervene.

Louise blinked, slowly, and her gaze finally came to rest on Lena, who held it for a second before looking down at the table.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Whittaker. I’m really sorry.’

Louise said nothing. Tears coursed down the lines of her face, in runnels carved from months of unrelenting grief.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Lena repeated. She was crying too now, letting her hair down again, twisting it through her fingers like a little girl.