Into the Water

The unfairness of it rankled, it seared his flesh like acid, and the vise just kept squeezing, tighter and tighter, and he wished to God it would just crush him, split his head open, and like her, like Katie, he’d be done with it.

LENA

I was frightened when I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. I couldn’t see a thing. It was totally dark. But I realized from the noise, the movement and the smell of petrol that I was in a car. My head was really sore and my mouth, too. It was hot and stuffy and there was something digging into my back, something hard, like a metal bolt. I wiggled my hand round behind my back to try to grab it, but it was attached.

That was a shame, because what I really needed was a weapon.

I was frightened, but I knew I couldn’t let my fear get the better of me. I needed to think clearly. Clearly and fast, because sooner or later the car was going to stop and then it was going to be him or me, and there was no way that he was going to do for Katie and Mum and me. No fucking way. I had to believe it, had to keep telling myself over and over: this was going to end with me alive and him dead.

Over the weeks since Katie died, I’d thought about a lot of ways to make Mark Henderson pay for what he’d done, but I never considered murder. I’d thought about other things: painting things on his walls, smashing his windows (been there, done that), calling his girlfriend to tell her everything Katie had told me: how many times, when, where. How he liked to call her “teacher’s pet.” I thought about getting some of the guys in the year above to kick the shit out of him. I thought about cutting off his dick and feeding it to him. But I didn’t think about killing him. Not until today.

How did I end up here? I can’t believe how stupid I was to let him get the upper hand. I should never have gone to his house, not without a clear plan, not without knowing exactly what I was going to do.

I didn’t even think, I was just making it up as I went along. I knew that he was coming back from holiday—I’d heard Sean and Erin talking about it. And then, after everything Louise said, and after the conversation I had with Julia about how it wasn’t my fault or Mum’s, I just thought, you know what? It’s time. I just wanted to stand in front of him and make him share a little in the blame. I wanted him to admit it, to admit what he’d done and that it was wrong. So I just went there, and I’d already smashed the window of the back door, so it was easy enough getting in.

The house smelled dirty, like he’d gone away without emptying the rubbish or something. For a while, I just stood in the kitchen and used the torch on my phone to look around, but then I decided I’d turn on the light, because you wouldn’t be able to see it from the road, and even if his neighbours saw it, they’d just think he’d come home.

It smelled dirty because it was dirty. Disgusting, actually—washing-up in the sink and ready-meal cartons with bits of food still stuck in them, and all the surfaces coated in grease. And shitloads of empty red-wine bottles in the recycling bin. It’s not how I expected it would be at all. From the way he was at school—always really neatly dressed and his fingernails clean, clipped close—I thought he’d be kind of anal.

I went through to the living room and scanned around using my phone again—I didn’t turn the light on in there in case you could see it from the road. It was so ordinary. Cheap furniture, lots of books and CDs, no pictures on the walls. It was ordinary and dirty and sad.

Upstairs was even worse. The bedroom was rank. The bed was unmade, the wardrobes open, and it smelled bad—different from downstairs, it smelled sour and sweaty, like a sick animal. I closed the curtains and turned on the bedside light. It was even worse than downstairs, it looked like somewhere someone old would live—ugly yellow walls and brown curtains and clothes and papers on the floor. I opened a drawer and there were earplugs and nail clippers inside. In the bottom drawer, there were condoms and lube and fluffy cuffs.

I felt sick. I sat down on the bed, and then I noticed that the sheet had pulled away from the mattress a bit in the opposite corner and I could see a brown stain underneath. I actually thought I was going to vomit. It was painful, physically painful, to think about Katie being here with him in this horrible room in this disgusting house. I was ready to leave. It was a stupid idea anyway, going there without a plan. I turned off the light and went back downstairs, and I was almost at the back door when I heard a noise from outside, footsteps coming up the path. And then the door swung open and there he was. He looked ugly, his face and eyes red, his mouth open. I just went for him. I wanted to scratch his eyes out of his ugly face, I wanted to hear him scream.

I don’t know what happened then. He fell, I think, and I was on my knees, and something skittered across the floor towards me. A piece of metal, like a key. I reached for it, and found that it wasn’t jagged, but smooth. A circle. A silver circle with a black onyx clasp. I turned it over in my hand. I could hear the kitchen clock ticking loudly, and the sound of Mark’s breath. “Lena,” he said, and I looked up and met his eye and I could see that he was afraid. I got to my feet. “Lena,” he said again, and he stepped towards me. I could feel myself smiling, because out of the corner of my eye I’d spotted another silver thing, a sharp thing, and I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to take a breath and steady myself, and I was going to wait until he said my name one more time, and then I was going to take the scissors that were lying on the kitchen table and I was going to jam them into his fucking neck.

“Lena,” he said, and he reached for me, and everything happened really fast after that. I grabbed the scissors and I went for him, but he’s taller than me and his arms were raised and I must have missed, mustn’t I? Because he isn’t dead, he’s driving, and I’m stuck back here with a bump on my head.

I started yelling, stupidly, because, seriously, who was going to hear me? I could tell the car was moving fast, but I yelled anyway, Let me out, let me out, you stupid bastard! I banged my fists on the metal hood above me, screaming as loud as I could, and then suddenly, bang! The car stopped moving and I slammed into the edge of the car boot, and then I let myself cry.

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 deserve

s 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.”