The Girl in the Water

Differently.

I arrived at work at 8.50 a.m. It should have been 8.30 a.m., and I should have been in better cheer, but there’s only so much control one can exercise over the ebbs and flows of life. I was late, grumpy, and had been praying solely for a lack of conversation and an empty path between the front door and my desk.

That I made it through Classical Fiction and New Releases en route to my periodicals corner, past the coffee kiosk, arriving at my desk without interruption, felt like the first bit of unmitigated good news of the day. My unusual tardiness meant the bookshop was already bustling with customers, and someone else had already gone through the day’s delivery packs, at least enough to get a few copies of the morning papers on the racks in time for the day’s first push. I’d probably end up being scolded for thrusting that role onto someone else by my absence, but I would simply have to face that.

Mitch had left a cup of tea on my desk, though his office at this moment was empty. I sighed, marginally disappointed with myself for being relieved, but I simply wasn’t in the right frame of mind to have interacted well if he’d been there in his usual cheer. When you’re in a pissy mood the cheerfulness of others is doubly revolting.

I popped the plastic lid off the Peet’s tea and drew in a long sip, taking advantage of the distraction to avoid the disorder of the boxes around me. The tea was tepid, but it still satisfied. It washed the latent coffee taste from my tongue, and with it a bit of the tension of the morning.

Then it was onto automatic pilot. Sorting. Shelving. Cutting boxes and recycling. Bringing order to the most changeable corner of the shop. Then, when it was all done, settling into the quiet that invariably followed. Reading the papers. Scanning the glossy magazines. Gold computer, open – the surest sign I was fully caught up despite my late arrival and could settle into the calm of the day. Eventually, a little chime announced that all was well with the technological innards of my laptop and the screen shifted to display the desktop. I called up my usual starting pages: AP, Reuters, The Times. All auto-refreshing to the day’s latest.

The rhythm of ordinary life in a low-intensity job is a decent tonic for anxiety, and it’s cheaper than Xanax. A comforting montage. This is my morning, I reflected, my every morning. It’s today’s, and it will be tomorrow’s.

It was yesterday’s.

I’d stiffened a little at that. The word didn’t feel right in my head. Yesterday. As if it weren’t an actual day.

Next to my computer, opposite the memos, was a little notepad. I’ve been repeatedly reminded I can take notes on the computer itself, but I suppose I feel the same way about paper and pen as I do about novels with covers and words on actual pages. On the cover of the notepad is a garishly pink Hello Kitty logo, augmented with purples and reds that only a colour-blind teenage girl could admire. I’d grabbed it out of a stationery shop’s discount bin a few weeks back without closely examining what I was buying, and every time I look at it now, it makes me feel ten years old and ridiculous.

I flipped open the cover.

Yesterday.

I tried to cast the word out of mind as I scanned over the few notes I’d written. They were all various jottings about that headline. Yesterday’s headline. The story that had so enrapt me.

Woman.

The shiver, again.

Thirty-nine.

White.

Suspicious circumstances.

The words, penned in my own hand, made me increasingly uneasy.

Cause of death unknown.

No match to any known missing persons.

Yesterday.

I shoved the notebook aside and stared at the newsfeed on the computer. Those jottings had been what yesterday was all about, and they’d started from a banner on this screen. The new day’s headlines were scrolling by now, though, at their usual rate, and I wasn’t spotting anything more about the body. I’d have thought there would be more stories by now. More information. I used the trackpad to move backwards through the listing by time, but it seemed to have disappeared from the day’s radar.

Then, disrupting the intensity that had been building up to this moment, comes Chloe – right now, as I’m focused on all this and the beginnings of the workday blend into the present.

Chloe: my closest friend at the bookshop. She’s one of the few under-thirties here, as eccentric in her own right as the rest of us combined. I halfway suspect she chose to work here because she is simply too weird to be hired anywhere else.

Her head pops into my personal space with her typical intensity. She, who is always brimming with exuberance and wit, and whom I absolutely do not want to see at the moment.

‘Hey girl!’ she announces, taking no notice of my condition. Her head is not quite bobbing, but almost. The pitch of her voice is entirely too high, and she stretches out the two words to a span of time that could easily have accommodated an entire sentence.

‘I thought I heard you sneakin’ on in here!’ Her affected accent is as shocking as always. Chloe’s most conspicuous failure of self-awareness is her apparent belief that she can simply will herself to become a busty black woman with a drawl that makes ordinary phrases sound charming and profound. The phenomenon emerged precisely at the time she went on an Idris Elba fan binge on Netflix, re-emerging from that two-week stint more Southern and succulent than any character he’s ever played. I’ve tried, on numerous occasions, to remind her that she’s more than a decade younger than me, from Oakland, B-cup at the most optimistic, and on her very best day a pasty white that most bleach brands would set as a target for the ‘after’ of their comparison washing ads. But that’s just how she is. Chloe’s quirkiness is inflexible, and her friendship comes at you like an out-of-control freight train, or it doesn’t come at all.

At the moment, I’d give anything for the latter option. The tension in my neck is fierce, and with an as-yet unexplained urgency, I desperately want to get back to reading about … whatever this story of the woman in the water is.

‘What’s wrong, hon?’ Chloe flaps her lashes with the question, broadcasting the mildest irritation that I’ve not yet acknowledged her presence.

‘It’s nothing, Clo.’ A horrible abbreviation for her name, but I’ve never thought up anything better. ‘Just distracted with my own stuff. Can we talk later?’

Her look is unreadable. For a moment there are hints of disappointment, then pouty annoyance and the threat of an even poutier resentment. It eventually morphs into a tight smile, though she speaks through barely moving teeth. ‘Sure, if that’s what you need. If, you know, your stuff is so important.’

She stresses the words with mock disdain, but disappears behind a bookshelf and pretends to be busy with re-organising the stock there before I face the delicate task of replying.

The headlines on my screen have kept scrolling. There’s still nothing about the girl in the river.

In the river.

Last night bursts back into my head. And this morning. The way things weren’t supposed to be.

This morning, from the moment I awoke, David was different. His movements were different. He lingered longer than usual before he left for work, petering about upstairs, in his third-storey ‘home office’, with whatever it is he works on in there. Usually it’s only a few minutes – ‘Just grabbing my things, then out the door …’ – but not today. Today he changed his routine. And David is not a man who changes his routine.

I would swear he was trying to avoid me, hiding himself away in a spot he knew I didn’t go. Trying to move through our apartment unseen so he didn’t have to lay eyes on …

But I stop myself, because that’s such a very silly thing to think. Even if the thought has been with me since the day first began and the face in the mirror did its usual thing.

Every morning, as I stand in the bathroom and gaze into the mirror, my eyes look back and taunt me. The fact that their colour doesn’t match my name has always disappointed me, and it’s a bit like they know this and are so prominent on my face purely as a way to rub it in.

They teased from the mirror in their customary way, today, but I merely shrugged. I’m used to this, and I went about my ritual as usual. Mornings are a well-honed routine. The actions of each minute are tuned to fit into their allotted space just as they ought, and so I went through the steps in their customary order. My face was done, my hair was brushed, and my teeth were as clean as is ever the case for a heavy tea drinker. I was suitably polished up for the day. My feet, seemingly registering all this even ahead of my brain, were already moving me out of our teal-tiled bathroom towards the kitchen.

Like they’d lives of their own.

They pointed me down the stairs, the same as they might on any average day. Toe into the not-so-plush carpeting of each step, then heel, bend of a stiff knee above – not creaking yet, I’m not so old as that – and repeat. I let my body guide me. Like normal, like any other norma—

But I didn’t feel quite myself, it has to be said. And it’s an odd thing, to start the day feeling not quite one’s self.

The quarter-inch synthetic rag of the staircase drove its way between my toes in exactly the way it always does, and yet it … well, it didn’t. I’m not sure I can say it any better than that. And it wasn’t just the floor. Moments earlier, when my face stared back at me from the mirror, it was there, too. Something in my features I couldn’t pinpoint, something that in another context I might describe as pain. And a buzz in my ears. And a stronger edge to my eyes.

I felt, deeply, that I ought to know what brought me into this day in this state; that it’s strange, and somehow incomprehensible, not to know why one feels the way one does. But I woke without that knowledge, and like so many other things in life, I simply had to accept it.

One foot in front of the other, toes in the carpet, head on fire.

At the bottom of the staircase I’d rounded the corner into the kitchen, brushed my straw-coloured hair from my exposed neck and tried to rub away a bit of the firmness there, but I was pressing fingers into rocks. I’d gone to bed a woman. I’d woken up made of stone.

The lights had flickered when I switched them on – then a sudden burst of white. White. The memories came on strong, in the confused flurry that generally shapes morning thoughts.

The murder along Russian River. Not a dream. Work. Engaging, yet peaceful work. Long hours in front of my computer. Real.

The drive home. White lights in my vision, a face … The dreams pressed for their own.

But then – home. Passion. David. Tight embraces.

And then coldness and rejection. That wasn’t a dream, either. That was real, and horrible, and I was quite certain I wasn’t imagining it.

The evening had begun with passion. I may be hazy-eyed but I remember that clearly enough. All the signs of the red-blooded night every couple dreams of, and we were bringing that desire to life. But then it stopped, so abruptly. A single word, and everything ground to a halt.

There may have been more involved than that, but I just don’t remember. I didn’t remember this morning in the kitchen, and I don’t remember now at my desk.

I only remember … oh, God. In the kitchen my shoulders clenched further as the memories returned. The flash of a face on the motorway. A name somehow appearing in my mind.

Emma.

And then my whispering that name into David’s ear. The truly inexplicable. Even now, my skin tingles to think of it.

Who the hell is Emma?

And why for the love of God would I whisper another woman’s name into my husband’s ear while our bodies were entwined together and heat filled our room?

But I did. I said it, and the night was over. David froze as the final, whispered syllable crawled its way out of my lips, then rolled out from beneath me with a motion that wasn’t meant to be graceful. When I’d adjusted myself to face him his shoulders were to me, his head pressed into his pillow.

‘What is it?’ My question was innocent enough. ‘What did I do?’

‘It’s nothing,’ he answered, in a way that made it clear that it was certainly not nothing. I could tell he was controlling his breathing. The melting bumps of gooseflesh wilted on the sides of his back.

I briefly felt badly, wondering whether I’d stirred up some old pain. David isn’t a fragile man, but he’s not exactly the most open with his feelings, either, which makes it hard to know when I might accidentally knock the scab off some emotional wound he’s never fully shared. That’s the rub in holding things back from people you love: you open yourself to being tortured by them, since they can never know what territory of your heart is whole and what is tender.

‘David, if I said something to upset you, I’m—’

‘I said it’s nothing!’ No concealing the clap to his voice, like thunder when you haven’t seen the lightning; but then a long, controlling sigh. A softer tone emerged from the thunder a few seconds later, though the words were still stiff and forced. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m just tired.’ Hesitation. ‘We’re both tired.’

I wasn’t tired. My body was still on fire, tingling and energized. I reached out to his shoulder and tugged on it provocatively. It was still hot, his body disagreeing with his words.

‘I’m sure we can get a little energy back if we try.’

David pulled the shoulder away in a strong, singular motion.

‘Enough, Amber. Enough.’ Then a sustained lacuna, as if he were pondering what to say next.

‘Let’s just go to sleep. I have a busy day ahead of me in the morning. We probably shouldn’t have started this anyway. Drink some water, you need to hydrate. Get some rest.’

He pulled the sheet up over his shoulders and curled himself yet further away from me. And there I was, naked and uncovered on my half of the bed, utterly confused as to what had just happened.

I don’t know when I fell asleep. I had my long draw of water as David had recommended. He always encourages me to keep a bottle by the bedside; saves having to traipse downstairs if I get a midnight thirst – and it’s just like him to think of my welfare, even at a moment he’s obviously upset. It soothed a little, but neither my body nor my mind were in the mood for rest. I remember staring at our bedroom ceiling for what felt like fifteen or twenty years. I got to know every feature of its poorly textured surface, probably once billed as ‘eggshell white’ but now suspiciously more the colour of dilute urine. We really, desperately need to repaint.

When I turned to David again he was soundly asleep. Somehow I got a handful of the sheets back and covered myself up. I don’t remember much after that, except for frustrated jostling and annoyance at the fact that counting sheep just never works. They’re revolting, shaggy creatures anyway, fluffy-white only in comic strips. In reality they’re dirty and matted and pooping on absolutely everything, and they always just bleat and jump and carry on coming, and …

Morning eventually came, with David’s adjusted routine and the noises from the den. Finally, he left for work. I got a peck on the cheek before I rose from my pillow. That much, at least. All wasn’t lost.

The memories overlap in my mind. The sounds, the kiss, the usual routine in the bathroom. The stairs. The kitchen.

Beneath my feet the linoleum was cold, and the lights had finally flickered wholly to life. The revolting colours of the inbuilt décor glowed under them and the vision assaulted one of my senses, while the scent of coffee, gradually overpowering the lingering remnants of David’s cologne, assaulted another.

Coffee. There was half of a pot still in the carafe, dutifully prepared before David had left, and an empty cup beside it. An invitation, a gesture of reconciliation.

And a smoothie, some repellant shade of green, in a tall glass near the fruit basket, sitting atop an appointment reminder from the dentist’s office in lieu of a coaster.

But there was no note. And I can’t remember the last time David didn’t leave me a note.

13

David

There is no other choice. Not now. With what Amber said as we went to sleep, the way forward has become painfully, but perfectly, clear.

It might be politically correct to wish there were another way, but there isn’t, and I’ve learned not to waste my time with those kinds of emotions. We’re perilously close to falling off the only path that keeps us alive. Course correction is required, and a man shouldn’t lament what is simply necessary.

The solution – the only solution – doesn’t lie in anything new. The path we’re on is the right one. What needs to be adjusted isn’t the act, it’s the art of the dosage. I’d thought it had been high enough. Obviously I was wrong.

The particular concoction I’ve settled on acts deeply, almost at the core of the psyche, but that doesn’t mean more won’t sometimes be required.

One of its perks is that its interior impact lasts, even while its more physical effects – the grogginess, the confusion, the loss of control – wear off swiftly. An ideal pairing.

So this morning I did what I always do, adding it to what I know she’ll drink, this time with a few additional drops. It’s always been the easiest way to get it into her system. Some here, some there. Prep everything just right, make it a kind of invitation. She never resists.

I mixed the smoothie, trusting that the sound of the blender was so familiar now that it wouldn’t rouse her. There are other ways to get the job done – when we’re on a trip, or camping, or otherwise out and about. But when we’re home, when it’s the routine, this has become the standard.

The drink’s contents just filled a glass, and I left it on the counter.

Then the coffee. Always, always the coffee. An essential part of it.

A drop here, a drop there.

It will all have its effect. It will just take a day, maybe two – and everything will be made right.

14

Amber

My thoughts have been wandering too long. The bookshop is moving around me now, quietly but with gentle activity. I think I’ve tended to a few customers who’ve ventured to my corner and didn’t already know what they were after, but I can’t say I’m entirely sure. My memories, permitted freely between activities, have nevertheless seemed to invade the whole.

But it’s impossible to be oblivious to Chloe as she re-emerges from behind a bookshelf covered in paperback detective fiction and thrillers. A favourite genre of hers. As she appears, I impulsively fold down my laptop’s screen, which I’d been once again perusing from behind the stacks of magazines on my desk. I’m not sure I want her to know what I’m looking at.

I recognize that the motion might appear rude, so I glance up at Chloe with a try for a smile. Immediately I realize my error, and try desperately to halt the change in my expression. I’m still not in the mood to talk, and smiling generally encourages Chloe to speak. Even here, in my quiet corner where I’m so often left in peace.

‘Noticed I didn’t hear none of your usual flirting with Mitch today,’ she says, proving my point. There is egging in her voice, together with that stupid drawl. She fancies herself a detective, with all the time she spends nose-deep in the books, but with Chloe it’s mostly guesses and innuendos. She wags her head towards our boss’s office door in an appropriation of subtle suggestion. Little stints of investigative splendour like this would be flaunted in my direction more often if Chloe’s normal post wasn’t on the till near the front door, too far away to pass sly comments with any degree of subterfuge.

‘Haven’t seen him since I got in,’ I answer. ‘I assume he’s down in the warehouse.’ Curt. Short. ‘And I never flirt.’

‘Come on now, we all flirt! You don’t have to hide nothin’ from—’

I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand another syllable of it. I’m upset with David, with myself. I’m confused about the odd emotions I seem to harbour about the story of the woman in the river, frustrated that I can’t find more details on it, and I’m not prepared for such an exchange. Not today, and not with this throbbing in my ears.

‘Noth-ing,’ I answer, cutting her off and staring straight up at her. ‘I don’t have to hide noth-ing.’ I catch myself. Shit. ‘Any-thing. Christ sakes, quit pretending you’re Agatha Christie meets queen of the bayou. You work in a bookshop!’

That’s a good snap, for me. I usually don’t react like this.

Chloe is silent for longer than I’ve ever known her to manage the feat. The miracle spans a solid ten seconds.

‘Bitch,’ she finally says, flatly. Her accent is now wholly Californian. ‘Just trying to be friendly. And I can talk however I want. It’s my life.’ Then a pause, and then for what I assume to be the good measure of ensuring it sunk in: ‘Bitch’.

I feel bad. Chloe may not yet be thirty, but she’s already a single, twice-divorced mother of a seven-year-old boy whose stated goal in life is to grow up to be ‘a more bad-ass fucker than dem shits from Oakie’ and whose usual terms of endearment for his own mother alternate between ‘wench’ and ‘yo, lady’ She deserves a break, and certainly more than my attitude.

‘I’m sorry,’ I offer. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘No, to hell with you,’ she cuts me off. ‘I don’t want to hear about your long morning or your tired body or your worn-out temper, or your great throbbing bastard of a headache.’ Chloe is almost prescient in her huff. ‘You just sit there and tend to your pile of newspapers and dross, I’ll mind my till, and we’ll both pretend you’re not the pompous self-centred cow we both know you are.’

She’s disappeared among the rows of shelves again. Despite the impressive array of insults having just been flung my way, I’m not willing to become too apocalyptic about the exchange. I re-open my computer. Chloe and I have tragic, earth-ending disintegrations of our friendship on more or less a weekly cycle, so I know this will pass.

Though not, perhaps, quite as quickly as it actually does.

‘You’d think you’d be grateful for a little help with your snooping, since the art of the search clearly isn’t your forte.’ I hear her voice, soft and back-in-black, from somewhere behind a row of rarely visited classics. A strange comment. My ears are suddenly a degree more alert. My face comes up from my monitor and Sadie’s fuzzy underbelly is facing me from the photo on the wall.

I’m entirely uncertain what sort of ‘help’ Chloe could be in a position to offer me – there’s a solid 50/50 shot it’s advice on hairstyles or improving my sex life, or just an all-out ploy to get me to do some menial activity she doesn’t want to do herself – but her reference to snooping jostles my attention. She hasn’t said it with the tones that normally go with jokes, and the word itself sounds foreign in my ears.

‘My snooping?’ I finally ask. I don’t get up.

And I can’t explain it, but there’s that tingling in my spine again.

‘Yeah, help, woman,’ Chloe answers. Power is coming back into her voice, and after a strong intake of breath, she launches into a long collection of words she’s clearly been storing up since she first said hello.

But I only hear the first three.

‘It’s about Emma.’

And she keeps talking, but I suddenly can’t breathe.

15