Page 31 of Someone in the Water
Lola
27th July
Lola dives into the cool, fresh water. She doesn’t spend much time in swimming pools – she prefers the beach – but there’s something about its chlorine smell that she needs right now. As though it might cleanse her brain, make her see things more clearly after the revelations her mum dropped on her earlier. Five days from now, she will officially be an adult. Eighteen years old. In her whole childhood, she has only spent three birthdays with her mum, and none that she can remember. And now she knows the reason.
Lola sinks under, and with her eyes protected by goggles, she stares into the illusion of blue water. Then she tilts forward, and cuts through it, her arms and legs powering her forward. As she nears the opposite wall, her lungs start tightening, sending early warning signals to her brain. But she ignores them. Her eyes focus on the horizontal red line ahead of her. One more strong stroke and she touches it. Her fingers land, and she holds still for an extra second, testing her willpower. Then she drops her feet to the floor and bursts above the waterline. She takes a long breath.
The pool area was rammed when she walked past earlier with her mum, on their way to get some lunch in the restaurant, but she’s the only one in the water now. She flips onto her back and stares at the late afternoon sky. It has a light-wash look to it – faded, with wisps of white clouds. She reaches over her head with one arm, then the other, creating enough momentum to work her way down the pool.
Lunch was uncomfortable. She and her mum found a kind of truce on the beach, enough for Lola to suggest they get something to eat together. But as soon as they sat down, their plates filled with salads, chestnut bread, and different local cheeses from the buffet, her mum had reintroduced the idea of them moving to a different hotel. Lola doesn’t get it. What’s the point in trying to find someplace new? How will that change what happened twenty-one years ago?
Eventually her mum gave up trying to convince her, but then she started talking about Lola’s new travel documents, and how they needed to get a crime reference number from the local police station to apply for them. She wanted to go there straight after lunch. Lola knows it’s a task she needs to get done, but she wasn’t in the mood, not after hearing about Izzy, and Archie, and her mum’s possible involvement in both their deaths. Yes, she came to Corsica to find out about her mum’s summer there, but now that she knows, a big part of her wishes she’d just gone to Ayia Napa instead.
Because it’s made her see her mum differently. And created more questions than answers.
Like why did Archie take his own life? And why did Jack imply that her mum was involved?
And was it really Izzy in the water pulling at her mum as the police suggested, or were her mum’s instincts right that she was being attacked? Was someone trying to kill both of them, and succeeded with Izzy where they failed with her mum?
Lola imagines being in the sea that night. Alone in the darkness. A storm’s energy building in the waves. Something grabbing at her legs. With all that going on, Lola can see how her mum might have got confused. But then again, her mum had lived by the sea her whole life. She qualified as a lifeguard when she was sixteen, just as Lola did years later, and she would have been first-aid trained. Would she really not know the difference between someone struggling and reaching out for help, and someone intent on dragging her under?
Maybe they didn’t mean for Izzy to die. If they were all drunk, it could have been a practical joke gone wrong, a way of scaring both her mum and Izzy, making them look silly. And it had worked with her mum. But maybe Izzy had panicked. And the water was rougher than the joker had expected. Frankie lived, and Izzy drowned, and the person who really caused her death kept their mouth shut.
And all this time later, her mum is still beating herself up about it. Lola wonders if she can ask who else her mum worked with that summer without freaking her out.
‘Hey, is it Lola?’
Lola tilts onto her feet at the sound of her name. A man is standing by the edge of the pool, a pile of tablecloths in his arms. Short dark hair, tanned skin, deep brown eyes. ‘Um, yes,’ she says, pushing her goggles onto her head.
‘I’m Patrick, Anna and Raphael’s son.’
Lola’s eyes widen. ‘Oh, you collected my stuff from the Airbnb! Thank you so much, and for dropping my backpack outside my room, I really appreciate it.’ Now that she has stopped swimming, she realises that the air temperature has dropped. She wades towards the steps, climbs out, and grabs a towel. She can feel Patrick’s eyes on her as she wraps it around herself.
‘It was nothing,’ he says, shrugging. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get it to you earlier in the evening. I got distracted by an old friend.’ He rubs the heel of his hand across his forehead. ‘Been paying for it today.’
‘Well, I hope it was worth it,’ Lola says, grinning. She was late to the drinking phase compared to her schoolmates. When they were in the park sharing bottles of cider, she’d be catching the last waves, or getting an early night ahead of a race. But in her final year of school, she was invited to a run of eighteenth birthday parties in the first term. It was winter, so there was less to keep her head clear for, and she finally learned how much fun getting hammered could be.
Patrick gives her a sheepish grin, but then his smile fades. ‘It was the first time I’d been out since my grandfather died. I got a bit carried away. And then when I got back here, I suddenly decided I needed to take his old fishing boat out.’ He shakes his head, like he can’t believe his own stupidity. ‘It’s barely been in the water for twenty years, but when my grandfather lived here, he loved to fish.’ Patrick shrugs, then looks away, embarrassed. ‘I thought it might be a way to get closer to him.’
‘Oh, jeez, I’m sorry,’ Lola says, wishing she could think of something better to say. She doesn’t know what it feels like to lose someone – she’s only got a tiny family for a start, a father who she FaceTimes barely twice a year, and no siblings. And the way Grams takes on a twenty-knot cross-shore wind shows that she’s not going anywhere soon.
‘Don’t worry, you weren’t to know.’ Then he smiles, and the air temperature seems to recover a bit. ‘I understand that your mum arrived today too,’ he continues. ‘How long do you think you’ll be here?’
‘A few days, I guess. Mum’s keen to get away – I mean get home – as quickly as possible but we need to sort my travel documents out first.’
Lola eventually managed to convince her mum that she could visit the police station alone this afternoon, that all she needed was some euros for the cab ride. Her mum’s eyelids were seriously drooping by that stage too, so Lola pointed out that she should get some rest. Her mum had reluctantly handed over fifty euros and gone in search of her room. Although in the end, Lola hadn’t needed to go anywhere, and the euros are still in the back pocket of her shorts.
‘I guess it’s hard for her,’ Patrick says. ‘After what happened when she worked here. Seeing the people who remember it.’
Lola tries to work out how old Patrick is. Older than her definitely – he’s broader than a lot of the boys at school and she guesses that he shaves more than once a week – but still young. Mid-twenties maybe. Which means he will have been a small boy when Izzy and Archie died. She wonders what he remembers.
‘You know about what happened to Izzy and Archie then?’ she asks.
‘Kind of. I was only five, so I don’t really remember it happening. But the story of Izzy’s death particularly feels like it has seeped into the walls of this hotel over the years.’
‘So you know my mum was in the water with her when she drowned?’ Lola asks quietly.
He looks at her apologetically. ‘I know it all.’
