Into the Water(70)

It wasn’t just the pain. For some reason I kept thinking about all those windows we broke, Josh and I, and about how much it would have upset Katie. She would hate this, all of it: she’d hate her brother having to tell the truth after months of lying, she’d hate me being hurt like this, but most of all she’d hate those broken windows, because they were the thing she dreaded. Broken windows and paedo scrawled on the walls and shit through the letter box and journalists on the pavement and people spitting, throwing punches.

I cried for the pain and I cried because I felt bad for Katie, for how this would have broken her heart. But you know what, K? I found myself whispering to Katie, like a madwoman, like Julia muttering to herself in the dark. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, because that isn’t what he deserves. I can say this now, because you’re gone and I’m lying in the boot of his car with my mouth bleeding and my head split open, I can say this categorically: Mark Henderson doesn’t deserve to be hounded or beaten. He deserves worse. I know you loved him, but he didn’t just ruin your life, he’s ruined mine too. He killed my mother.





Erin


I WAS IN the back office with Sean when the call came in. A pale young woman with a stricken expression stuck her head around the door. ‘There’s another one, Sir. Someone spotted her from up on the ridge. Someone in the water, a young woman.’ From the look on Sean’s face, I thought he was going to heave.

‘There can’t be,’ I said. ‘There’s uniforms all over the place, how can there be another one?’

By the time we got there, there was a crowd on the bridge, uniforms doing their best to keep them up there. Sean ran and I followed, we hammered along under the trees. I wanted to slow down, I wanted to stop. The last thing on earth I wanted to see was them pulling that girl out of the water.

It wasn’t her, though, it was Jules. She was already on the bank when we got there. There was a weird sound in the air, like a magpie scolding. It took me a while to realize that it was coming from her, from Jules. The chattering of her teeth. Her entire body shook, her sodden clothes clung to her pitifully thin frame which folded in on itself like a collapsing deck chair. I called her name and she stared up at me, her bloodshot eyes looking straight through me, as though she couldn’t focus, as though she didn’t register who I was. Sean took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders.

She muttered, trance-like. She wouldn’t say a word to us, she hardly seemed to notice we were there. She just sat, trembling, glowering at the black water, her lips working the way they did when she saw her sister on the slab, soundless but purposeful, as though she were having an argument with some unseen adversary.

The relief, such as it was, lasted barely a few minutes before the next crisis hit. The uniforms who’d gone to welcome Mark Henderson home from his holiday had found his house empty. And not just empty, bloody: there were signs of a struggle in the kitchen, blood smeared all over the floor and the door handles, and Henderson’s car was nowhere to be found.

‘Oh Christ,’ Sean said. ‘Lena.’

‘No,’ I cried, trying to convince myself as well as Sean. I was thinking about the conversation I’d had with Henderson, the morning before he left for his holiday. There was something about him, something weak. Something wounded. There is nothing more dangerous than a man like that. ‘No. There were uniforms at the house, they were waiting for him, he couldn’t have—’

But Sean was shaking his head. ‘No, they weren’t. They weren’t there. There was a bad smash on the A68 last night and it was all hands on deck. A decision was taken to redeploy resources. There was no one at Henderson’s house, not until this morning.’

‘Fuck. Fuck.’

‘Quite. He’ll have come back and seen the windows all smashed up and jumped to the right conclusion. That Lena Abbott told us something.’

‘And then what – he went to her house, and took her, and brought her back to his place?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ Sean snapped. ‘This is our fault. We should have been watching the house, we should have been watching her … It’s our fault she’s gone.’





Jules


THE POLICEMAN – NOT one I’d met before – wanted to come into the house with me. He was young, twenty-five perhaps, although his hairless, cherubic face made him look even younger. As kind as he appeared, I insisted he leave. I didn’t want to be alone with a man in the house, no matter how harmless he looked.

I went upstairs and ran myself a bath. Water, water, everywhere. I had no great desire to be immersed in water again, but I could think of no better way to drive the chill from my bones. I sat on the edge of the tub, biting my lip to stop my teeth from chattering, my phone in my hand. I kept ringing Lena’s number, over and over, I kept hearing her cheery message, her voice full of a light I’ve never heard when she speaks to me.

When the bath was half full, I lowered myself in, my teeth gritted against panic, my heartbeat rising as my body sank. It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK. You said that. That night, when we were in here together, when you poured hot water over my skin, when you soothed me. It’s OK, you said. It’s OK, Julia. It’s OK. It wasn’t, of course, but you didn’t know that. All you thought had happened was that I’d had an awful day, been made fun of, humiliated, rejected by a boy I liked. And finally, in an act of extreme melodrama, I’d gone to the Drowning Pool and flung myself in.