Into the Water(85)

‘He’s gone,’ Lena said, suddenly at my side. Her fingers brushed against mine; they felt as cold as her mother’s had the last time I touched them.

‘Gone where?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean, gone?’

She wouldn’t look at me. ‘Just gone.’

Townsend raised an eyebrow. ‘We’ve got uniforms out looking. His car is still there, so he can’t have got far.’

‘Where do you think he’s gone, Lena?’ I asked, trying to meet her eye, but she kept turning away.

Sean shook his head, his expression rueful. ‘I’ve tried,’ he said softly. ‘She doesn’t want to talk. I think she’s just exhausted.’

Lena’s fingers closed around mine, her breath escaping in a deep sigh. ‘I am. I just want to sleep. Can we do this tomorrow, Sean? I’m desperate to sleep.’

The detectives left us with reassurances they would be back; Lena would need to give a formal statement. I watched them walk out to Sean’s car. When Erin got into the passenger seat, she slammed the door so hard I was surprised the window didn’t shatter.

Lena called to me from the kitchen.

‘I’m starving,’ she said. ‘Could you make spaghetti Bolognese again, like you did before?’ The tone of her voice, the softness in it, was new; it was as surprising as the touch of her hand.

‘Of course I can,’ I said. ‘I’ll do that now.’

‘Thank you. I’m just going to go upstairs for a bit, I need to have a shower.’

I put my hand on her arm. ‘Lena, no. You can’t. You need to go to the hospital first.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I really don’t, I’m not hurt.’

‘Lena.’ I couldn’t meet her eye as I said it. ‘You need to be examined before you can shower.’

She looked momentarily confused, then she dropped her shoulders, shook her head and stepped towards me. Despite myself, I started to cry. She wrapped her arms around me. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’ Just like you had, that night after the water. ‘He didn’t do anything like that. It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand, he wasn’t some, like, evil sexual predator. He was just a sad old man.’

‘Oh, thank God!’ I said. ‘Thank God, Lena!’ We stood like that, hugging each other, for a little while until I stopped crying and she started. She sobbed like a child, her skinny body crumpling, slipping through my arms to the floor. I crouched down next to her and tried to take her hand, but it was curled tightly into a fist.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ I told her. ‘Somehow it will be. I’ll take care of you.’

She looked at me, wordless; she didn’t seem to be able to speak. Instead she held out her hand, her fingers unfurling to reveal the treasure inside – a little silver bracelet with an onyx clasp – and then she found her voice.

‘She didn’t jump,’ she said, her eyes glittering. I felt the temperature in the room plummet. ‘Mum didn’t leave me. She didn’t jump.’





Lena


I STOOD IN the shower for a long time with the water as hot as I could stand it. I wanted to scour my skin, I wanted the whole of the past day and night and week and month washed off me. I wanted him washed off me, his filthy house and his fists and the stink of him, his breath, his blood.

Julia was kind to me when I got home. She wasn’t faking, she was obviously glad that I was back, she was worried about me. She seemed to think that Mark had assaulted me, like she maybe thought he was some sort of pervert who couldn’t keep his hands off teenage girls. I’ll give him this: he was right about one thing – people don’t understand about him and K, they never will.

(There’s a tiny, twisted part of me that sort of wishes I believed in an afterlife, and that the two of them could pick up again there, and maybe things might be all right for them, and she’d be happy. As much as I hate him, I’d like to think that somehow Katie could be happy.)

When I felt clean, or at least as close to clean as I thought it was possible to get, I went to my room and sat on the window sill, because that’s where I do all my best thinking. I lit a cigarette and tried to figure out what I should do. I wanted to ask Mum, I wanted to ask her so badly, but I couldn’t think about that because I’d just start crying again, and what good would that be to her? I didn’t know whether to tell Julia what Mark had told me. Whether I could trust her to do the right thing.

Maybe. When I told Julia that Mum didn’t jump, I expected her to tell me that I was wrong or crazy or whatever, but she just accepted it. Without question. Like she knew already. Like she’d always known.

I don’t even know if the shit Mark told me is true, though it would be a pretty weird thing to make up. Why point the finger at Mrs Townsend, when there are more obvious people to blame? Like Louise, for example. But maybe he feels bad enough about the Whittakers, after what he’s done to them.

I don’t know whether he was lying or telling the truth, but either way he deserved what I said to him, what I did. He deserved everything he got.





Jules


WHEN LENA CAME back downstairs, her face and hands scrubbed clean, she sat at the kitchen table and ate, ravenously. Afterwards, when she smiled and said thank you, I shivered, because now that I have seen it, I can’t un-see it. She has her father’s smile.