فصل 40

40

August 1993

JULES

Robbie left me on the window seat. I drank the rest of the vodka. I’d never been drunk before, I didn’t realize how quickly the twist comes, the slide from elation to despair, from up to down. Hope seemed suddenly lost, the world bleak. I wasn’t thinking straight, but it felt as though my train of thought made sense. The river is the way out. Follow the river.

I’ve no idea what I wanted when I stumbled off the lane, down the bank, onto the river path. I was walking blindly; the night seemed blacker than ever, moonless, silent. Even the river was quiet, a slick, frictionless, reptilian thing, sliding along beside me. I wasn’t afraid. What did I feel? Humiliated, ashamed. Guilty. I looked at him, I watched him, watched him with you, and he saw me.

It’s a couple of miles from the Mill House to the pool, it must have taken me a while. I wasn’t quick at the best of times, but in the dark, in that state, I’d have been slower still. So you didn’t follow, I suppose. But eventually you came.

I was in the water by then. I remember the cold around my ankles, and then my knees, and then sinking softly into blackness. The cold was gone, my whole body burning, up to my neck now, no way out, and no one could see me. I was hidden, I was disappearing, not taking up too much space, taking up no space at all.

The heat buzzed through me, it dissipated and the cold returned, not on my skin but in my flesh, in my bones, heavy, like lead. I was tired, it seemed a very long way back to the bank, I wasn’t sure I could make it back. I kicked out and down, but I couldn’t reach the bottom and so I thought that perhaps I would just float for a while, untroubled, unseen.

I drifted. Water covered my face and something brushed against me, soft, like a woman’s hair. There was a crushing sensation in my chest and I gasped, gulping water. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a woman scream. Libby, you said, you can hear her, sometimes at night you can hear her beg. I struggled, but something squeezed my ribs; I felt her hand in my hair, sudden and sharp, and she pulled me deeper. Only witches float.

It wasn’t Libby, of course, it was you, shouting at me. Your hand on my head, holding me down. I was fighting to get away from you. Holding me down or dragging me out? You grabbed at my clothes, clawed at my skin, gave me scratches on my neck and arms to match the ones Robbie had left on my legs.

Eventually, we were on the bank, me on my knees, gasping for breath, and you standing above me, shouting at me. “You stupid fat bitch, what were you doing? What the fuck are you trying to do?” You fell to your knees then and put your arms around me, then you smelled the alcohol on me and started yelling again. “You’re thirteen, Julia! You can’t drink, you can’t . . . What were you doing?” Your bony fingers dug into the flesh of my arms, you shook me hard. “Why are you doing this? Why? To spite me, is that it? To make Mum and Dad angry with me? Jesus, Julia, what have I ever done to you?”

You took me home, dragged me upstairs and ran a bath. I didn’t want to get in, but you manhandled me, wrestling me out of my clothes and into the hot water. Despite the heat, I could not stop shivering. I would not lie down. I sat, hunched over, the roll of my belly tight and uncomfortable, while you scooped hot water over my skin with your hands. “Jesus, Julia. You’re a little girl. You shouldn’t be . . . you shouldn’t have . . .” You didn’t seem to have the words. You wiped my face with a cloth. You smiled. You were trying to be kind. “It’s OK. It’s OK, Julia. It’s OK. I’m sorry I yelled at you. And I’m sorry he hurt you, I am. But what did you expect, Julia? What did you honestly expect?”

I let you bathe me, your hands so much softer than they had been in the pool. I wondered how you could be so calm about it now, I thought you’d have been angrier. Not just with me, but on my behalf. I supposed I must have been overreacting, or that you just didn’t want to think about it.

You made me swear that I wouldn’t tell our parents about what happened. “Promise me, Julia. You won’t tell them, you won’t tell anyone about this. OK? Not ever. We can’t talk about it, all right? Because . . . Because we’ll all get into trouble. OK? Just don’t talk about it. If we don’t talk about it, it’s like it didn’t happen. Nothing happened, OK? Nothing happened. Promise me. Promise me, Julia, you’ll never speak about it again.”

I kept my promise. You didn’t.