Into the Water(61)
‘I couldn’t understand it either. She swore she hadn’t said anything, but she felt so guilty, I could see it. I knew that it was my fault, but she kept acting like it was hers. She stopped swimming in the river, and she became obsessed with telling the truth, she kept going on and on about it, how it was wrong to be afraid of facing the truth, of letting people know the truth, she just went on and on …’
(I wasn’t sure if that was odd or perfectly consistent: you didn’t tell the truth, you never did – the stories you’d been telling weren’t the truth, they were your truth, your agenda. I should know. I’ve been on the dirty side of your truth most of my life.)
‘But she didn’t, did she? She never told anyone, or wrote about Mark Henderson, in her … story about Katie, there’s no mention of him.’
Lena shook her head. ‘No, because I wouldn’t let her. We fought and fought and I kept telling her I would have loved to see that piece of shit go to prison, but it would have broken Katie’s heart. And it would have meant that she did what she did for nothing.’ She gulped. ‘I mean, I know. I know what Katie did was stupid, fucking pointless, but she died to protect him. And if we went to the police, that would mean her death meant nothing. But Mum just kept going on about the truth, how it was irresponsible to just let things go. She was … I don’t know.’ She looked up at me, her gaze as cool as the one with which she’d fixed Louise, and said, ‘You would know all this, Julia, if you’d only spoken to her.’
‘Lena, I’m sorry, I am sorry about that, but I still don’t see why—’
‘Do you know how I know my mother killed herself? Do you know how I know for sure?’ I shook my head. ‘Because on the day she died, we had a fight. It started over nothing, but it ended up being about Katie, like everything did. I was yelling at her and calling her a bad mother and saying that if she’d been a good parent she could have helped us, helped Katie, and then none of this would have happened. And she told me she had tried to help Katie, that she’d seen her walking home late one day, and had stopped to offer her a ride. She said Katie was all upset and wouldn’t say why, and Mum said, You don’t have to go through this by yourself. She said, I can help you. And, Your mum and dad can help you, too. When I asked her why she’d never told me about that before, she wouldn’t say. I asked her when it happened and she said, Midsummer, June the twenty-first. Katie went to the pool that night. Without meaning to, it was Mum who tipped her over the edge. And so, like that, Katie tipped Mum over the edge, too.’
A wave of sadness hit me, a swell so forceful I thought it might knock me from my chair. Was that it, Nel? After all this, you did jump, and you did it because you felt guilty and you despaired. You despaired because you had no one to turn to – not your angry, grieving daughter and certainly not me, because you knew that if you called I wouldn’t answer. Did you despair, Nel? Did you jump?
I could feel Lena watching me, and I knew that she could see my shame, could see that finally I got it, I understood that I, too, was to blame. But she didn’t look triumphant, or satisfied, she just looked tired.
‘I didn’t tell the police any of this, because I didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want anyone to blame her – more than they already do, in any case. She didn’t do it out of hate. And she suffered enough, didn’t she? She suffered things she shouldn’t have, because it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t hers or mine.’ She gave me a small, sad smile. ‘It wasn’t yours. It wasn’t Louise’s or Josh’s. It wasn’t our fault.’
I tried to embrace her, but she pushed me away. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Please, I just …’ She tailed off. Her chin lifted. ‘I need to be by myself. Just for a bit. I’m going to go for a walk.’
I let her leave.
Nickie
NICKIE DID AS Jeannie told her to, she went to talk to Lena Abbott. The weather had cooled, a hint of autumn coming early, so she wrapped herself up in her black coat, stuffed the pages into the inside pocket and walked across to the Mill House. But when she got there, she found that there were other people around, and she was in no mood for a crowd. Especially not after what the Whittaker woman said, about how all she cared about was money and exploiting people’s grief, which wasn’t fair at all. That was never what she intended – if only people would listen. She stood outside the house a while, watching, but her legs ached and her head was full of noise and so she turned around and walked all the way back home again. Some days, she felt her age, and some days she felt her mother’s.
She had no stomach for the day, for the fight ahead. Back in her room, she dozed in her chair, then woke and thought that maybe she had seen Lena heading for the pool, but it might have been a dream, or a premonition. Later, though, much later, in the dark, she was certain that she saw the girl, moving like a ghost through the square, a ghost with purpose, fairly whipping along. Nickie could feel the split of the air as she passed, the energy buzzing off her, she could feel it all the way up there in her dark little room and it lifted her, stripped the years back. That was a girl on a mission. That girl had fire in her belly, she was a dangerous girl. The sort you don’t mess with.
Seeing Lena like that reminded Nickie of herself way back when; it made her want to get up and dance, made her want to howl at the moon. Well, her dancing days might be over, but, pain or no pain, she decided she would make it to the river that night. She wanted to feel them up close, all those troublesome women, those troublesome girls, dangerous and vital. She wanted to feel their spirit, to bathe in it.