Into the Water(6)

‘You think she fell?’ I asked. I looked from the police detectives to Lena, who had followed me downstairs and was on the other side of the kitchen, leaning against the counter. Barefoot in black leggings, a grey vest stretched over sharp clavicles and tiny buds of breasts, she was ignoring us, as if this were normal, banal. As though it were an everyday occurrence. She clutched her phone in her right hand, scrolling down with her thumb, her left arm wrapped around her narrow body, her upper arm roughly the width of my wrist. A wide, sullen mouth, dark brows, dirty blonde hair falling into her face.

She must have felt me watching, because she raised her eyes to me and widened them for just a moment, so that I looked away. She spoke. ‘You don’t think she fell, do you?’ she said, her lip curling. ‘You know better than that.’





Lena


THEY WERE ALL just staring at me and I wanted to yell at them, to tell them to get out of our house. My house. It is my house, it’s ours, it’ll never be hers. Aunt Julia. I found her in my room, going through my things before she’s even met me. Then she tried to be nice and told me she was sorry, like I’m supposed to believe she even gives a shit.

I haven’t slept for two days and I don’t want to talk to her or to anyone else. And I don’t want her help or her fucking condolences, and I don’t want to listen to lame theories about what happened to my mum from people who didn’t even know her.

I was trying to keep my mouth shut, but when they said how she probably fell I just got angry, because of course she didn’t. She didn’t. They don’t understand. This wasn’t some random accident, she did this. I mean, it’s not like it matters now, I suppose, but I feel like everyone should at least admit the truth.

I told them: ‘She didn’t fall. She jumped.’

The woman detective started asking stupid questions about why would I say that and was she depressed and had she ever tried it before, and all the time Aunt Julia was just staring at me with her sad brown eyes like I was some sort of freak.

I told them: ‘You know she was obsessed with the pool, with everything that happened there, with everyone who died there. You know that. Even she knows that,’ I said, looking at Julia.

She opened her mouth and closed it again, like a fish. Part of me wanted to tell them everything, part of me wanted to spell it out for them, but what would even be the point? I don’t think they’re capable of understanding.

Sean – Detective Townsend, as I’m supposed to call him when it’s official business – started asking Julia questions: when did she speak to my mother last? What was her state of mind then? Was there anything bothering her? And Aunt Julia sat there and lied.

‘I’ve not spoken to her in years,’ she said, her face going bright red as she said it. ‘We were estranged.’

She could see me looking and she knew I knew she was full of shit and she just went redder and redder, then she tried to turn the attention away from herself by speaking to me. ‘Why, Lena, why would you say that she jumped?’

I looked at her for a long time before I answered. I wanted her to know that I saw through her. ‘I’m surprised you ask me that,’ I said. ‘Wasn’t it you who told her she had a death wish?’

She started shaking her head and saying, ‘No, no, I didn’t, not like that …’ Liar.

The other detective – the woman – started talking about how they had ‘no evidence at this time to indicate that this was a deliberate act’, and about how they hadn’t found a note.

I had to laugh then. ‘You think she’d leave a note? My mother wouldn’t leave a fucking note. That would be, like, so prosaic.’

Julia nodded. ‘That is … it’s true. I can see Nel wanting everyone to wonder … She loved a mystery. And she would have loved to be the centre of one.’

I wanted to slap her then. Stupid bitch, I wanted to say, this is your fault, too.

The woman detective started fussing around, pouring glasses of water for everyone and trying to press one into my hand, and I just couldn’t take it any longer. I knew I was going to start crying and I wasn’t going to do it in front of them.

I went to my room and locked the door and cried there instead. I wrapped myself in a scarf and cried as quietly as I could. I’ve been trying not to give in to it, the urge to let myself go and fall apart, because I feel like once it starts it’s never going to stop.

I’ve been trying not to let the words come, but they go round and round in my head: I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, it was my fault. I kept staring at my bedroom door and going over and over that moment on Sunday night when Mum came in to say goodnight. She said, ‘No matter what, you know how much I love you, Lena, don’t you?’ I rolled over and put my headphones in, but I knew she was standing there, I could feel her standing and watching me, it’s like I could feel her sadness and I was glad because I felt she deserved it. I would do anything, anything, to be able to get up and hug her and tell her I love her, too, and it wasn’t her fault at all, I should never have said it was all her fault. If she was guilty of something, then so was I.





Mark


IT WAS THE hottest day of the year so far and since the Drowning Pool was off limits, for obvious reasons, Mark went upriver to swim. There was a stretch in front of the Wards’ cottage where the river widened, the water running quick and cool across rust-coloured pebbles at the edge, but in the centre it was deep, cold enough to snatch your breath from your lungs and make your skin burn, the kind of cold that made you laugh out loud with the shock of it.