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.
And he did, he laughed out loud – it was the first time he’d felt like laughing in months. It was the first time he’d been in the water in months, too. The river for him had gone from a source of pleasure to a place of horror, but today it switched back again. Today it felt right. He had known from the moment he woke up, lighter, clearer of head, looser of limb, that today was a good day for a swim. Yesterday, they found Nel Abbott dead in the water. Today was a good day. He felt not so much that a burden had lifted but as though a vice – one which had been pressing against his temples, threatening his sanity, threatening his life – had at last been loosened.
A policewoman had come to the house, a very young detective constable with a sweet, slightly girlish quality to her that made him want to tell her things he really shouldn’t. Callie Something, her name was. He invited her in and he told the truth. He said that he’d seen Nel Abbott leaving the pub on Sunday evening. He didn’t mention that he’d gone there with the express intention of bumping into her, that wasn’t important. He said that they’d spoken, but only briefly, because Nel had been in a hurry.
‘What did you talk about?’ the DC asked him.
‘Her daughter, Lena, she’s one of my pupils. I had a bit of trouble with her last term – discipline issues, that sort of thing. She’s going to be in my English class again in September – it’s an important year, her GCSE year – so I wanted to make sure that we weren’t going to have any further problems.’
True enough.
‘She said she didn’t have time, that she had other things to do.’
True, too, though not the whole truth. Not nothing but.
‘She didn’t have time to discuss her daughter’s problems at school?’ the detective asked.
Mark shrugged and gave her a rueful smile. ‘Some parents get more involved than others,’ he said.
‘When she left the pub, where did she go? Was she in her car?’
Mark shook his head. ‘No, I think she was heading home. She was walking in that direction.’
The DC nodded. ‘You didn’t see her again after that?’ she asked, and Mark shook his head.
So, some of it was true, some of it was a lie, but in any case the detective seemed satisfied; she left him a card with a number to call and said he should get in touch if he had anything to add.
‘I’ll do that,’ he said, and he smiled his winning smile and she flinched. He wondered if he’d overdone it.
He ducked under the water now, diving down towards the riverbed, driving his fingers into the soft, silty mud. He curled his body into a tight ball and then with one explosive burst of power pushed himself back to the surface, gulping air into his lungs.
He’d miss the river, but he was ready to go now. He’d have to start looking for a new job, perhaps up in Scotland, or perhaps even further afield: France, or Italy, somewhere nobody knew where he had come from, or what had happened on the way. He dreamed of a clean slate, a blank sheet, an unblemished history.
As he struck out for the bank he felt the vice tighten a little once more. He wasn’t out of the woods yet. Not yet. There was still the matter of the girl, she could still cause problems, although since she’d been quiet this long, it didn’t seem likely that she’d break her silence now. You could say what you liked about Lena Abbott, but she was loyal; she kept her word. And perhaps now, freed from the toxic influence of her mother, she might even turn into a decent person.