Page 30 of Someone in the Water
‘We were young,’ I start. ‘And stupid. We thought we were immortal.’ I think about how excited Izzy and I were as we stripped off our dresses. ‘Drunk too,’ I admit quietly. ‘It was really dark out there. We hadn’t noticed when we decided to go for a swim, but the sky was thick with clouds, so there was barely any light from the stars or the moon.’
‘You went for a midnight swim?’ Lola asks. ‘I can’t imagine you being scared in the sea, even at night,’ she adds, but it’s an observation, not an accusation.
‘The water was churning. A storm broke a couple of hours later, and we got the prelude to that. I was out there, by myself at that point, treading water. I was thinking that I wasn’t having fun, that I should swim back in, when I felt something brush past my legs. It freaked me out, so I kicked at it. But then it got worse. Grabbing my leg, pulling me underwater. And that’s when I realised it was a person, and my adrenaline went into overdrive. I just kicked as hard as I could to get away and swam for the shore.’
‘Someone tried to drown you?’ Lola asks, her pitch rising. ‘So is that how Jack’s boyfriend died? Someone pulled him underwater?’
‘What?’ My skin feels clammy suddenly. I shiver, despite the heat.
‘Did they find whoever did it? Are they in prison here? Was it someone you knew?’
‘No, you’ve got it wrong,’ I mumble. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
Lola stops walking, turns to face me. ‘Then tell me,’ she pleads.
‘It wasn’t Archie, Jack’s boyfriend, in the water with me.’
‘Huh?’ Lola’s brow creases with confusion as shame smarts my cheeks. ‘But Jack said …’
‘Archie did die that summer,’ I admit. ‘But that’s not who I’m talking about. He committed suicide two days earlier.’
‘Holy fuck.’ Lola takes a step backwards. It’s like she’s repulsed. The death of one person a shock, but of two people, impossible to process.
‘I was swimming with my friend Izzy.’
‘And someone killed her?’ Lola’s voice is high-pitched, disbelieving. I feel my face crease. I drop it into my hands so that Lola doesn’t see the hot wet tears that spread across my palms. ‘Mum?’ she presses.
‘Nobody killed her. At least, not on purpose.’
‘But I thought you said …’
‘They were Izzy’s hands pulling at me,’ I interrupt, whispering through my fingers, like the latticed divide of a confessional. ‘I didn’t realise at the time but … She must have got into trouble in the water and was reaching out for help. I kicked her away, Lola, and then I left her to drown.’
‘Jesus, Mum, no.’ Lola shakes her head, a frenzied movement, and I know she’s trying to clear the image from her mind.
‘But I had no idea it was her,’ I beg. ‘I really thought I was being attacked. It was pure instinct. Only when the police explained it the next day did I realise what I’d done.’
Lola sinks down onto the sand, and after a moment’s hesitation, I join her. But I can’t make eye contact, not yet, so I look out to sea. ‘That’s why people blame me. And they have every right to. But when I was out there, I was so certain that someone was trying to hurt me. I don’t understand how I got it so wrong.’
‘So how did the police know it was you?’ Lola asks, her voice calmer, but still dejected. It breaks my heart that my daughter needs to process the enormity of my mistake.
‘I guess they listened to my account and reached that conclusion because it was the only one that made sense.’
‘It doesn’t sound like it made sense to you,’ Lola says. ‘You thought someone was trying to drown you.’
‘But I was traumatised. I wasn’t a good witness.’
‘But you were the only witness. Doesn’t that make you the best one? Did you tell them how you felt? That you were scared for your life?’
‘Yes, I did, but …’ I pause, try to find the right words. ‘But when the police officer suggested it was Izzy, I could see how I made the mistake. I was drunk. Scared. And I’d been having these crazy dreams. My imagination was in overdrive.’
‘But there’s also a chance that you didn’t make a mistake,’ Lola presses. ‘Did the police investigate it as a potential murder at all? You know, like find out if anyone else was in the sea, check out if anyone had a motive to kill Izzy, those kinds of things?’
My mind travels back in time until I’m sat opposite that police officer with his thick moustache and air of superiority. Not a formal interview room. Just an office with a desk and a stack of paperwork, the window half open, but the breeze making no difference to the oppressive heat. He asked me lots of questions. And wrote the answers in his notepad, his eyebrows rising and falling with each new piece of information. But he’d been more interested in how many shots of tequila we’d drunk than my paralysing fear as someone dragged me underwater.
‘No, they were convinced it was misadventure,’ I say. ‘A combination of Izzy being irresponsible, and me making a stupid, catastrophic decision.’
Lola leans back until she’s horizontal, staring at the blue sky. ‘A young woman not being listened to by an older man in uniform,’ she murmurs. ‘What a surprise.’
