Into the Water

Some of them went into the water willingly and some didn’t, and if you asked Nickie—not that anyone would, because no one ever did—Nel Abbott went in fighting. But no one was going to ask her and no one was going to listen to her, so there really wasn’t any point in her saying anything. Especially not to the police. Even if she hadn’t had her troubles with them in the past, she couldn’t speak to them about this. Too risky.

Nickie had a flat above the grocery shop, just one room really, with a galley kitchen and a bathroom so tiny it barely warranted the name. Not much to speak of, not much to show for a whole life, but she had a comfortable armchair by the window that looked out on the town, and that’s where she sat and ate and even slept sometimes, because she hardly slept at all these days, so there didn’t seem much point going to bed.

She sat and watched all the comings and goings, and if she didn’t see, she felt. Even before the lights had started flashing blue over on the bridge, she’d felt something. She didn’t know it was Nel Abbott, not at first. People think the sight’s crystal clear, but it isn’t as simple as all that. All she knew was that someone had gone swimming again. With the light off, she sat and watched: a man with his dogs came running up the stairs, then a car arrived; not a proper cop car, just a normal one, dark blue. Detective Inspector Sean Townsend, she thought, and she was right. He and the man with the dogs went back down the steps and then the whole cavalry came, with flashing lights but no sirens. No point. No hurry.

When the sun had come up yesterday she’d gone down for milk and the paper and everyone was talking, everyone was saying, another one, second this year, but when they said who it was, when they said it was Nel Abbott, Nickie knew the second wasn’t like the first.

She had half a mind to go over to Sean Townsend and tell him then and there. But as nice and polite a young man as he was, he was still a copper, and his father’s son, and he couldn’t be trusted. Nickie wouldn’t have considered it at all if she hadn’t had a bit of a soft spot for Sean. He’d been through tragedy himself and God knows what after that, and he’d been kind to her—he’d been the only one to be kind to her, at the time of her own arrest.

Second arrest, if she was honest. It was a while back, six or seven years ago. She’d all but given up on the business after her first fraud conviction, she kept herself to just a few regulars and the witching lot who came by every now and then to pay their respects to Libby and May and all the women of the water. She did a bit of tarot reading, a couple of séances over the summer; occasionally she was asked to contact a relative or one of the swimmers. But she hadn’t been soliciting any business, not for a good long while.

But then they cut her benefits for the second time, so Nickie came out of semi-retirement. With the help of one of the lads who volunteered at the library, she set up a website offering readings at £15 for half an hour. Comparatively good value, too—that Susie Morgan from the TV, who was about as psychic as Nickie’s arse, charged £29.99 for twenty minutes, and for that you didn’t even get to speak to her, just to one of her “psychic team.”

She’d only had the site up a few weeks when she found herself reported to the police by a trading standards officer for “failing to provide the requisite disclaimers under Consumer Protection Regulations.” Consumer Protection Regulations! Nickie said she hadn’t known that she needed to provide disclaimers; the police told her the law had changed. How, she’d asked, was she supposed to know that? And that caused much hilarity, of course. Thought you’d have seen it coming! Is it only the future you can look into, then? Not the past?

Only Detective Inspector Townsend—a mere constable back then—hadn’t laughed. He’d been kind, had explained that it was all to do with new EU rules. EU rules! Consumer Protection! Time was, the likes of Nickie were prosecuted (persecuted) under the Witchcraft Act and the Fraudulent Mediums Act. Now they fell afoul of European bureaucrats. How are the mighty fallen.

So Nickie shut down the website, swore off technology and went back to the old ways, but hardly anyone came these days.

The fact that it was Nel in the water had given her a bit of a turn, she had to admit. She felt bad. Not guilty as such, because it wasn’t Nickie’s fault. Still, she wondered whether she’d said too much, given too much away. But she couldn’t be blamed for starting all this. Nel Abbott was already playing with fire—she was obsessed with the river and its secrets, and that kind of obsession never ends well. No, Nickie never told Nel to go looking for trouble, she only pointed her in the right direction. And it wasn’t as though she didn’t warn her, was it? The problem was, nobody listened. Nickie said there were men in that town who would damn you as soon as look at you, always had been. People turned a blind eye, though, didn’t they? No one liked to think about the fact that the water in that river was infected with the blood and bile of persecuted women, unhappy women; they drank it every day.

JULES

You never changed. I should have known that. I did know that. You loved the Mill House and the water and you were obsessed with those women, what they did and who they left behind. And now this. Honestly, Nel. Did you really take it that far?

Upstairs, I hesitated outside the master bedroom. My fingers on the door handle, I took a deep breath. I knew what they had told me but I also knew you, and I couldn’t believe them. I felt sure that when I opened the door, there you would be, tall and thin

and not at all pleased to see me.

The room was empty. It had the feeling of a place just vacated, as though you’d just slipped out and run downstairs to make a cup of coffee. As though you’d be back any minute. I could still smell your perfume in the air, something rich and sweet and old-fashioned, like one of the ones Mum used to wear, Opium or Yvresse.

“Nel?” I said your name softly, as if to conjure you up, like a devil. Silence answered me.

Farther down the hall was “my room”—the one I used to sleep in: the smallest in the house, as befits the youngest. It looked even smaller than I remembered, darker, sadder. It was empty save for a single, unmade bed, and it smelled of damp, like the earth. I never slept well in this room, I was never at ease. Not all that surprising, given how you liked to terrify me. Sitting on the other side of the wall, scratching at the plaster with your fingernails, painting symbols on the back of the door in blood-red nail polish, writing the names of dead women in the condensation on the window. And then there were all those stories you told, of witches dragged to the water or desperate women flinging themselves from the cliffs to the rocks below, of a terrified little boy who hid in the wood and watched his mother jump to her death.

I don’t remember that. Of course I don’t. When I examine my memory of watching the little boy, it makes no sense: it is as disjointed as a dream. You whispering in my ear—that didn’t happen on some freezing night at the water. We were never here in winter anyway, there were no freezing nights at the water. I never saw a frightened child on the bridge in the middle of the night—what would I, a tiny child myself, have been doing there? No, it was a story you told, how the boy crouched amongst the trees and looked up and saw her, her face as pale as her nightdress in the moonlight; how he looked up and saw her flinging herself, arms spread like wings, into the silent air; how the cry on her lips died as she hit the black water.

I don’t even know whether there really was a boy who saw his mother die, or whether you made the whole thing up.

I left my old room and turned to yours, the place that used to be yours, the place that, by the look of it, is now your daughter’s. A chaotic mess of clothes and books, a damp towel lying on the floor, dirty mugs on the bedside table, a fug of stale smoke in the air and the cloying smell of rotting lilies, wilting in a vase next to the window.

Without thinking, I began to tidy up. I straightened the bedding and hung the towel on the rail in the en suite. I was on my knees, retrieving a dirty plate from under the bed, when I heard your voice, a dagger in my chest.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

JULES

I scrabbled to my feet, a triumphant smile on my lips, because I knew it—I knew they were wrong, I knew you weren’t really gone. And there you stood in the doorway, telling me to get the FUCK out of your room. Sixteen, seventeen years old, hand around my wrist, painted nails digging into my flesh. I said get OUT, Julia. Fat cow.

The smile died, because of course it wasn’t you at all, it was your daughter, who looks almost exactly like you did when you were a teenager. She stood in the doorway, hand on hip. “What are you doing?” she asked again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m Jules. We haven’t met, but I’m your aunt.”

“I didn’t ask who you were,” she said, looking at me as though I were stupid, “I asked what you were doing. What are you looking for?” Her eyes slid away from my face and she glanced over towards the bathroom door. Before I could answer, she said, “The police are downstairs,” and she stalked off down the corridor, long legs, lazy gait, flip-flops slapping on the tiled floor.

I hurried after her.

“Lena,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. She yanked it away as though scalded, spinning round to glare at me. “I’m sorry.”