Into the Water 3 страница

I decided, while in the process of trying to understand myself and my family and the stories we tell each other, that I would try to make sense of all the Beckford stories, that I would write down all the last moments, as I imagined them, in the lives of the women who went to the Beckford Drowning Pool.

Its name carries weight; and yet, what is it? A bend in the river, that’s all. A meander. You’ll find it if you follow the river in all its twists and turns, swelling and flooding, giving life and taking it, too. The river is by turns cold and clean, stagnant and polluted; it snakes through forest and cuts like steel through the soft Cheviot Hills, and then, just north of Beckford, it slows. It rests, just for a while, at the Drowning Pool.

This is an idyllic spot: oaks shade the path, beech and plane trees dot the hillsides, and there’s a sloping sandy bank on the south side. A place to paddle, to take the kids; the perfect picnic spot for a sunny day.

But appearances are deceptive, for this is a deathly place. The water, dark and glassy, hides what lies beneath: weeds to entangle you, to drag you down, jagged rocks to slice through flesh. Above looms the grey slate cliff: a dare, a provocation.

This is the place that, over centuries, has claimed the lives of Libby Seeton, Mary Marsh, Anne Ward, Ginny Thomas, Lauren Slater, Katie Whittaker, and more – countless others, nameless and faceless. I wanted to ask why, and how, and what their lives and deaths tell us about ourselves. There are those who would rather not ask those questions, who would rather hush, suppress, silence. But I have never been one for quiet.

In this work, this memoir of my life and the Beckford pool, I wanted to start not with drowning, but with swimming. Because that is where it begins: with the swimming of witches – the ordeal by water. There, at my pool, that peaceful beauty spot not a mile from where I sit right now, was where they brought them and bound them and threw them into the river, to sink or to swim.

Some say the women left something of themselves in the water, some say it retains some of their power, for ever since then it has drawn to its shores the unlucky, the desperate, the unhappy, the lost. They come here to swim with their sisters.

Erin

IT’S A FUCKING weird place, Beckford. It’s beautiful, quite breathtaking in parts, but it’s strange. It feels like a place apart, disconnected from everything that surrounds it. Of course, it is miles from anywhere – you have to drive for hours to get anywhere civilized. That’s if you consider Newcastle civilized, which I’m not sure I do. Beckford is a strange place, full of odd people, with a downright bizarre history. And all through the middle of it there’s this river, and that’s the weirdest thing of all – it seems like whichever way you turn, in whatever direction you go, somehow you always end up back at the river.

There’s something a bit off about the DI, too. He’s a local boy, so I suppose it’s to be expected. I thought it the first time I laid eyes on him, yesterday morning when they pulled Nel Abbott’s body out of the water. He was standing on the river bank, hands on hips, head bent. He was speaking to someone – the medical examiner, it turned out – but from a distance it looked as though he was praying. That’s what I thought of – a priest. A tall, thin man in dark clothes, the black water as a backdrop, the slate cliff behind him, and at his feet a woman, pale and serene.

Not serene, of course, dead. But her face wasn’t contorted, it wasn’t ruined. If you didn’t look at the rest of her, the broken limbs or the twist of her spine, you’d think she’d drowned.

I introduced myself and thought straight away there was something strange about him – his watery eyes, a slight tremor in his hands, which he tried to suppress by rubbing them together, palm against wrist – it made me think of my dad on those mornings-after-the-night-before when you needed to keep your voice and your head down.

Keeping my head down seemed like a good idea in any case. I’d been up north less than three weeks, after a hasty transfer from London thanks to an ill-advised relationship with a colleague. Honestly, all I wanted to do was work my cases and forget the whole mess. I was fully anticipating being thrown the boring stuff at first, so I was surprised when they wanted me on a suspicious death. A woman, her body spotted in a river by a man out walking his dogs. She was fully clothed, so she hadn’t been swimming. The chief inspector set me straight. ‘It’ll almost certainly be a jumper, ’ he told me. ‘She’s in the Beckford Drowning Pool. ’

It was one of the first things I asked DI Townsend. ‘Did she jump, do you think? ’

He looked at me for a moment, he considered me. Then he pointed to the clifftop. ‘Let’s go up there, ’ he said, ‘find the scientific officer and see if they’ve discovered anything – evidence of a struggle, blood, a weapon. Her phone would be a good start, because she’s not got it on her. ’

‘Right you are. ’ As I walked away, I glanced at the woman and thought how sad she looked, how plain and unadorned.

‘Her name is Danielle Abbott, ’ Townsend said, his voice slightly raised. ‘She lives locally. She’s a writer and photographer, quite successful. She has a daughter, fifteen years old. So no, in answer to your question, I don’t think it’s likely that she jumped. ’

We went up to the cliff together. You follow the path from the little beach along the side of the pool until it veers right, through a clump of trees, then it’s a steep climb up the hill to the top of the ridge. The path was muddy in places – I could see where boots had slipped and skidded, erasing the traces of footprints laid before. At the top, the path turns sharply left and, emerging from the trees, leads right to the edge of a cliff. My stomach lurched.

‘Jesus. ’

Townsend glanced back over his shoulder. He looked almost amused. ‘Scared of heights? ’

‘Perfectly reasonable fear of putting a foot wrong and falling to my death, ’ I said. ‘You’d think they’d put a barrier up or something, wouldn’t you? Not exactly safe, is it? ’

The DI didn’t answer, just continued on, walking purposefully towards the cliff edge. I followed, pressing myself against the gorse bushes to avoid looking over the sheer face to the water below.

The science officer – pale-faced and hairy, as they always seem to be – had little in the way of good news.

‘No blood, no weapon, no obvious sign of a struggle, ’ he said with a shrug. ‘Not even much in the way of fresh litter. Her camera’s damaged though. And there’s no SD card. ’

‘Her camera? ’

Hairy turned to me. ‘Would you believe it? She set up a motion-activated camera as part of this project she was working on. ’

‘Why? ’

He shrugged. ‘To film people up here … to see what they get up to? You get some weirdos hanging around sometimes, you know, because of the whole history of the place. Or maybe she wanted to catch a jumper in the act …’ He grimaced.

‘Christ. And someone’s damaged her camera? Well, that’s … inconvenient. ’

He nodded.

Townsend sighed, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Indeed. Although it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Her equipment’s been vandalized before. Her project had its detractors locally. In fact, ’ he took a couple of steps closer to the edge of the cliff and I felt my head swim, ‘I’m not even sure she replaced the camera after the last time. ’ He peered over the edge. ‘There is another one, isn’t there? Fixed somewhere below. Anything on that? ’

‘Yeah, it looks intact. We’re going to bring it in, but …’

‘It won’t show anything. ’

Hairy shrugged again. ‘Might show her going in, but it won’t tell us what happened up here. ’

More than twenty-four hours had passed since then, and we seemed no closer to finding out what really had happened up there. Nel Abbott’s phone hadn’t shown up, which was odd, although perhaps not quite odd enough. If she’d jumped, there was a chance she might have disposed of it first. If she’d fallen, it might still be in the water somewhere, it might have sunk down into the mud or been washed away. If she was pushed, of course, whoever pushed her might have taken it off her first, but given the lack of any sign of a struggle up on the cliff, it didn’t seem likely that someone had wrested it away from her.

I got lost on the way back from taking Jules (NOT Julia, apparently) to do the ID at the hospital. I dropped her back at the Mill House and I thought I was heading back towards the station when I found that I wasn’t: after I crossed the bridge I’d somehow swung round and found myself back at the river again. Like I said, whichever way you turn. In any case, I had my phone out, trying to figure out where I was supposed to be going, when I spotted a group of girls walking over the bridge. Lena, a head taller than the others, broke away from them.

I abandoned the car and went after her. There was something I wanted to ask her, something her aunt had mentioned, but before I could reach her she’d started arguing with someone – a woman, perhaps in her forties. I saw Lena grab her arm, the woman pulling away and raising her hands to her face, as though afraid of being struck. Then they separated abruptly, Lena going left and the woman straight on up the hill. I followed Lena. She refused to tell me what it was all about. She insisted there was nothing wrong, that it hadn’t been an argument at all, that it was none of my business anyway. A bravado performance, but her face was streaked with tears. I offered to see her home, but she told me to fuck off.

So I did. I drove back to the station and gave Townsend the low-down on Jules Abbott’s formal identification of the body.

In keeping with the general theme, the ID was weird. ‘She didn’t cry, ’ I told the boss, and he made a kind of dipping motion with his head as though to say, Well, that’s normal. ‘It wasn’t normal, ’ I insisted. ‘This wasn’t normal shock. It was really odd. ’

He shifted in his seat. He was sitting behind a desk in a tiny office at the back of the station, and he seemed altogether too big for the room, as though if he stood up he might hit his head on the ceiling. ‘Odd how? ’

‘It’s hard to explain, but she seemed to be talking without making any sound. And I don’t mean that kind of noiseless sobbing either. It was strange. Her lips were moving as though she was saying something … and not just saying something, but talking to someone. Having a conversation. ’

‘But you couldn’t actually hear anything? ’

‘Nothing. ’

He glanced at the laptop screen in front of him and then back at me. ‘And that was it? Did she say anything to you? Anything else, anything useful? ’

‘She asked about a bracelet. Apparently Nel had a bracelet that belonged to their mother, which she wore all the time. Or at least, she wore it all the time when Jules last saw Nel, which was years ago. ’

Townsend nodded, scratching at his wrist.

‘There’s no sign of one in her belongings, I checked. She was wearing a ring – no other jewellery. ’

He fell silent for so long that I thought maybe the conversation was over. I was just about to leave the room when suddenly he said, ‘You should ask Lena about that. ’

‘I was planning to, ’ I told him, ‘only she wasn’t all that interested in talking to me. ’ I filled him in on the encounter at the bridge.

‘This woman, ’ he said. ‘Describe her. ’

So I did: early forties, slightly on the heavy side, dark hair, wearing a long red cardigan despite the heat.

Townsend studied me for a long time.

‘Doesn’t ring any bells then? ’ I asked.

‘Oh yes, ’ he said, looking at me as though I was a particularly simple child. ‘It’s Louise Whittaker. ’

‘And she is? ’

He frowned. ‘Have you not seen any background on this? ’

‘I haven’t, actually, ’ I said. I felt like pointing out that filling me in on any relevant background might be considered to be his job, since he was the local.

He sighed and began tapping at the keys of his computer. ‘You should be up to speed with all this. You should have been given the files. ’ He smacked a particularly vicious return, as though he was banging keys on a typewriter rather than an expensive-looking iBook. ‘And you should also read through Nel Abbott’s manuscript. ’ He looked up at me and frowned. ‘The project she was working on? It was going to be a sort of coffee-table book, I think. Pictures and stories about Beckford. ’

‘A local history? ’

He exhaled sharply. ‘Of sorts. Nel Abbott’s interpretation of events. Of selected events. Her … spin on things. As I mentioned, not something that many of the locals were keen on. We have copies, in any case, of what she’d written so far. One of the DCs will get you one. Ask Callie Buchan – you’ll find her out front. The point is that one of the cases she wrote about was that of Katie Whittaker, who took her own life in June. Katie was a close friend of Lena Abbott’s and Louise, her mother, was once friendly with Nel. They fell out, apparently over the focus of Nel’s work, and then when Katie died …’

‘Louise blamed her, ’ I said. ‘She holds her responsible. ’

He nodded. ‘Yes, she does. ’

‘So I should go and talk to her then, this Louise? ’

‘No, ’ he replied. His eyes remained on the screen. ‘I’ll do it. I know her. I was the DI on the investigation into her daughter’s death. ’

He fell into another long silence. He hadn’t dismissed me, so eventually I spoke. ‘Was there ever any suspicion that there was anyone else involved in Katie’s death? ’

He shook his head. ‘None. There didn’t appear to be a clear reason, but as you well know there often isn’t. Not one that makes sense to those left behind, in any case. But she did leave a note saying goodbye. ’ He passed his hand over his eyes. ‘It was just a tragedy. ’

‘So two women have died in that river this year? ’ I said. ‘Two women who knew each other, who were connected …’ The DI said nothing, he didn’t look at me, I wasn’t even sure he was listening. ‘How many have died there? I mean, in total? ’

‘Since when? ’ he asked, shaking his head again. ‘How far back would you like to go? ’

Like I said, fucking weird.

Jules

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN a little bit afraid of you. You knew that, you enjoyed my fear, enjoyed the power it gave you over me. So I think, despite the circumstances, you would have enjoyed this afternoon.

They asked me to do the identification – Lena volunteered, but they told her no, so I had to say yes. There was no one else. And although I didn’t want to see you, I knew that I had to, because seeing you would be better than imagining you; the horrors conjured up by the mind are always so much worse than what is. And I needed to see you, because we both know that I wouldn’t believe it, wouldn’t be able to believe that you were gone, until I did.

You lay on a gurney in the middle of a cold room, a pale-green sheet covering your body. There was a young man there, dressed in scrubs, who nodded at me and at the detective, and she nodded back. As he reached out his hand to pull back the sheet I held my breath. I can’t remember feeling that afraid since I was a child.

I was waiting for you to jump out at me.

You didn’t. You were still and beautiful. There was always so much in your face – so much expression, joy or venom – and it was all still there, the traces of it; you were still you, still perfect, and then it struck me: you jumped.

You jumped?

That word, which felt wrong in my mouth. You wouldn’t jump. You never would, that’s not the way to do it. You told me that. The cliff’s not high enough, you said. It’s only fifty-five metres from the clifftop to the surface of the water – people can survive the fall. So, you said, if you mean it, if you really mean it, you need to make sure. Go in head first. If you mean it, you don’t jump, you dive.

And unless you mean it, you said, why do it? Don’t be a tourist. No one likes a tourist.

People can survive the fall, but that doesn’t mean they will. Here you are, after all, and you didn’t dive. You went in feet first and here you are: your legs are broken, your back is broken, you are broken. What does that mean, Nel? Does it mean that you lost your nerve? (Not like you at all. ) Could you not bear it, the idea of going in head first, ruining your beautiful face? (You always were very vain. ) It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not like you to do what you said you wouldn’t, to go against yourself.

(Lena said there’s no mystery here, but what does she know? )

I took your hand and it felt alien in mine, not just because it was so cold, but because I didn’t recognize the shape of it, the feel. When did I last hold your hand? Perhaps you reached for mine at Mum’s funeral? I remember turning away from you, turning to Dad. I remember the look on your face. (What did you expect? ) My heart turned wooden in my chest, its beat slowed to a mournful drum.

Someone spoke. ‘Sorry, but you’re not supposed to touch her. ’

The light buzzed above my head, illuminating your skin, pale and grey against the steel beneath you. I placed my thumb upon your forehead, ran my finger along the side of your face.

‘Please, don’t touch her. ’ DS Morgan was standing just behind me. I could hear her breathing, slowly and evenly, above the sound of the buzzing lights.

‘Where are her things? ’ I asked. ‘The clothes she was wearing, her jewellery? ’

‘They’ll be returned to you, ’ DS Morgan said, ‘after Forensics have checked them over. ’

‘Was there a bracelet? ’ I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, but whatever she was wearing, it’ll be returned to you. ’

‘There should be a bracelet, ’ I said quietly, looking down at Nel. ‘A silver bracelet with a clasp made of onyx. It belonged to Mum, it was engraved with her initials. SJA. Sarah Jane. She wore it all the time. Mum did. And then you did. ’ The detective was staring at me. ‘I mean, she did. I mean Nel did. ’

I returned my gaze to you, to your slender wrist, to the place where the onyx clasp would have rested on blue veins. I wanted to touch you again, to feel your skin. I felt sure I could wake you up. I whispered your name and waited for you to quiver, for your eyes to flick open and follow me around the room. I thought perhaps that I should kiss you, if like Sleeping Beauty that might do the trick, and that made me smile because you’d hate that idea. You were never the princess, you were never the passive beauty waiting for a prince, you were something else. You sided with darkness, with the wicked stepmother, the bad fairy, the witch.

I felt the detective’s eyes on me and I pursed my lips to suppress the smile. My eyes were dry and my throat empty, and when I whispered to you there seemed to be no sound at all.

‘What did you want to tell me? ’

Lena

IT SHOULD HAVE been me. I am her next of kin, her family. The person who loved her. It should have been me, but they wouldn’t allow me to go. I was left alone, with nothing to do but sit in an empty house and smoke until I ran out of cigarettes. I went to the village shop to get some – the fat woman in there sometimes asks for ID but I knew she wouldn’t today. I was just leaving when I saw those bitches from school – Tanya and Ellie and all that lot – coming down the road towards me.

I felt like I was going to be sick, I just put my head down and turned away and started walking as fast as I could, but they saw me, they called out and they all started running to catch up with me. I didn’t know what they were going to do. Actually when they caught up they all started hugging me and saying how sorry they were and Ellie actually had the gall to cry some fucking fake tears. I let them hang all over me, let them put their arms around me and smooth back my hair. It actually felt good to be touched.

We walked over the bridge – they were talking about going up to the Wards’ cottage to take some pills and go swimming – ‘It would be like a wake, kind of a celebration, ’ Tanya said. Fucking idiot. Did she honestly think I felt like getting monged and swimming in that water today? I was trying to think of what to say but then I saw Louise and it was like serendipity and I could just walk away from them without saying anything and there was nothing they could do.

At first I thought she hadn’t heard me but when I caught up with her I could see she was crying and she didn’t want to be near me. I grabbed hold of her. I don’t know why, but I just wanted her to not walk away, to not leave me there with those vulture bitches watching and pretending to be sad and all the while enjoying the fucking drama. She was trying to pull away, prising my fingers away one at a time, and she was saying, ‘I’m sorry, Lena, I can’t talk to you now. I can’t talk to you. ’

I wanted to say something to her, like: You lost your daughter and I lost my mother. Doesn’t that make us even? Can’t you just forgive me now?

I didn’t, though, and then that clueless policewoman came along and tried to make out we were arguing, so I told her where to go, and I walked home alone.

I thought Julia would be back by the time I came home. How long would it take, really, to go to the morgue and watch them pull the sheet back and say, yes, that’s her? It’s not as though Julia would have wanted to sit with her, to hold her hand, to comfort her, like I would have done.

It should have been me, but they wouldn’t let me go.

I lay on my bed in silence. I can’t even listen to music because I feel everything has this other meaning that I didn’t see before and it hurts too fucking much to face it now. I don’t want to cry all the time, it makes my chest hurt and my throat hurt, and the worst thing is that no one comes to help me. There’s no one left to help me. So I lay on the bed and chain-smoked until I heard the front door go.

She didn’t call out to me or anything like that, but I heard her in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, rattling pots and pans. I waited for her to come to me, but eventually I just got bored and I was feeling sick from smoking so much and was really, really hungry, so I went downstairs.

She was standing at the stove stirring something and when she turned round and saw me there she jumped. But it wasn’t like how usually someone gives you a fright and then you laugh; the fear stayed in her face.

‘Lena, ’ she said. ‘Are you all right? ’

‘Did you see her? ’ I asked.

She nodded and looked at the floor. ‘She looked … like herself. ’

‘That’s good, ’ I said. ‘I’m glad. I don’t like to think of her …’

‘No. No. And she wasn’t. Broken. ’ She turned back to the hob. ‘Do you like spaghetti Bolognese? ’ she asked. ‘I’m making … that’s what I’m making. ’

I do like it, but I didn’t want to tell her that, so I didn’t reply. Instead I asked her, ‘Why did you lie to the police? ’

She turned round sharply, the wooden spoon in her hand spraying red sauce on the floor.

‘What do you mean, Lena? I didn’t lie—’

‘Yes, you did. You told them that you never speak to my mother, that you haven’t had any contact in years—’

‘We haven’t. ’ Her face and neck were bright red, her mouth turned down like a clown’s, and I saw it, the ugliness that Mum talked about. ‘I haven’t had any meaningful contact with Nel since—’

‘She phoned you all the time. ’

‘Not all the time. Occasionally. And in any case, we didn’t talk. ’

‘Yes, she told me that you refused to speak to her, no matter how hard she tried. ’

‘It’s a bit more complicated than that, Lena. ’

‘How is it complicated? ’ I snapped. ‘How? ’ She looked away from me. ‘This is your fault, you know. ’

She put the spoon down and took a couple of steps towards me, her hands on her hips, her expression all concerned, like a teacher who’s about to tell you how disappointed they are with your attitude in class.

‘What do you mean? ’ she asked. ‘What’s my fault? ’

‘She tried to contact you, she wanted to talk to you, she needed—’

‘She didn’t need me. Nel never needed me. ’

‘She was unhappy! ’ I said. ‘Don’t you even fucking care? ’

She took a step back. She wiped her face as though I’d spat at her. ‘Why was she unhappy? I don’t … She never said she was unhappy. She never told me she was unhappy. ’

‘And what would you have done if she had? Nothing! You’d have done nothing, just like you always have done. Just like when your mother died and you were horrible to her, or when she invited you to come here when we moved, or when she asked you to come that time for my birthday and you didn’t even reply! You just ignored her, like she didn’t exist. Even though you knew she didn’t have anyone else, even though—’

‘She had you, ’ Julia said. ‘And I never suspected she was unhappy, I—’

‘Well, she was. She didn’t even swim any more. ’

Julia stood very still, turning her head towards the window as though she were listening for something. ‘What? ’ she asked, but she wasn’t looking at me. It was like she was looking at someone else, or at her reflection. ‘What did you say? ’

‘She stopped swimming. All my life I can remember her going to a pool or to the river, every single day, it was her thing, she was a swimmer. Every single day, even in winter here when it’s fucking freezing and you have to break the ice on the surface. And then she stopped. Just like that. That’s how unhappy she was. ’

She didn’t say anything for a bit, she just stood there, staring out of the window, as if she were looking for someone. ‘Do you know … Lena, do you think she had upset someone? Or that someone was bothering her, or …? ’

I shook my head. ‘No. She would’ve told me. ’ She would have warned me.

‘Would she? ’ Julia asked. ‘Because, you know, Nel … your mum … she had a way about her, didn’t she? I mean, she knew how to get under people’s skin, how to piss them off—’

‘No, she didn’t! ’ I snapped, although it was true that sometimes she did, but only stupid people, only people who didn’t understand her. ‘You didn’t know her at all, you didn’t understand her. You’re just a jealous bitch – you were back when you were young and you are now. Jesus. There’s no point even talking to you. ’

I left the house even though I was starving. Better to starve than to sit and eat with her, it would feel like a betrayal. I kept thinking about Mum sitting there, talking into the phone, and the silence on the other end. Cold bitch. I got annoyed with her about it once, said, Why don’t you just give it a rest? Forget about her? She obviously wants nothing to do with us. Mum said, She’s my sister, she’s my only family. I said, What about me, I’m family. She laughed then and said, You’re not family. You’re more than family. You’re part of me.

Part of me is gone, and I wasn’t even allowed to see her. I wasn’t allowed to squeeze her hand or kiss her goodbye or tell her how sorry I am.

Jules

I DIDN’T FOLLOW. I didn’t actually want to catch up with Lena. I didn’t know what I wanted. So I just stood there, on the front steps, my hands rubbing against my upper arms, my eyes gradually growing accustomed to the gathering dusk.

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