The Drowning Read online

  Her voice hoarse and rasping, Jenna said, “How could you leave me here, all on my own?”

  “I’m sorry, Jenn.” Dad hung his head. “You know what Mum’s like when—”

  “You’re scared of her.” She pulled her hands away. “You never have the guts to stand up to her, no matter what she does.” Desperately, she forced the words out of her dry mouth. “Now I’ll never see Benjie again.”

  “Why are we fighting?” Dad’s mouth trembled. “We shouldn’t be. Not now. Not over this . . . Please, Jenn . . . I haven’t got the strength.”

  Jenna looked at him. She’d never seen such misery in his eyes. She held out her arms.

  They clung to each other although no tears came.

  Jenna lay sleepless on her bed, on top of it, in her pyjamas.

  It was too hot even for a sheet.

  She stared at a sliver of moon which shone, still and quiet, in its inky sky. Its thin, clear light filtered through her attic window, floating the room in blue-black shadows.

  Round and round in her head, in hideous repetitive swirls, spun the same questions.

  What had happened to Benjie?

  Who had he gone off with?

  Why had he gone so far round the craggy boulders of the Island? Cold, often surprisingly deep, their pools were hard to wade in. Once he’d turned the corner, he must have known he could not be seen by people on the beach, nor could he see them.

  Was he on his own by that time, and if so why?

  If he’d got into trouble, why hadn’t he shouted for help? If he’d been with friends, why hadn’t they fetched someone when they saw there was a problem?

  And then the final question, the one that refused to let Jenna’s eyelids close.

  Why had she broken her promise to Benjie not to let him out of her sight?

  As the moon’s light faded and dawn broke, Jenna sat up. She felt aching and cold, her heart hardening to the tasks she had to do, that had to be done.

  Stiffly, she climbed into jeans and a cotton sweater, scraped her hair into a ponytail. As she crossed the landing, she heard rustling coming from Benjie’s room. Shivers of surprise and dread leapt down her spine. She pushed at the door.

  Klunk had somehow managed to escape. He was on the bed, beavering his way across a pillow, weird, lumpy, like a large black-and-white mouse, looking for food – maybe looking for Benjie himself.

  Jenna flushed. After several vain attempts she managed to catch him in the palms of her hands, felt his tiny feet scrabbling against her skin. She put him back in his cage, watched as Splat emerged from the igloo to greet him.

  I forgot to feed them last night. They must be starving.

  She picked up the cage and carried it downstairs to the inner courtyard.

  It’s cooler down here. Benjie kept their food in a special cupboard in the kitchen. I’ll remember to feed them. I’ll be able to keep an eye on them, say hello to them every now and again . . . Poor little things.

  Dusty sniffed at the bars and mewed against her legs.

  She bent to pick him up.

  “Mouths to feed,” she murmured into his fur. “But not Benjie’s. Not ever again.”

  “Mum’s still in bed,” Dad said an hour later. “The hospital doctor gave her a sedative. It’s knocked her out.”

  He stood in the middle of the tearoom kitchen, looking bewildered.

  “Thought I’d bake some special walnut bread . . . Where did I put the flour?” His voice broke. “Can’t remember . . . Can’t seem to get my act together.”

  “I’ve stuck a piece of paper on the tearoom door,” Jenna said firmly. “It says, ‘Sorry, we’re closed until further notice. ’”

  Dad said wildly, “You can’t do that.”

  “I just have.”

  “We’ll lose all our customers.”

  “No, we won’t. The tourists can find somewhere else to eat for a couple of weeks. St Ives is crawling with cafés. Our regulars will have heard what’s happened. They’ll understand – and they’ll be back. Nobody could expect us to open tomorrow as if nothing—”

  “But the money!”

  “This isn’t about money, Dad. We’ll manage.”

  “So when—”

  “When you’re ready.”Jenna perched on a corner stool. “We’ve got stuff to do.”

  “You mean—” Dad’s face sagged – “Benjie’s funeral.”

  “Yes. There’ll have to be an inquest . . . and a funeral. And last night, I was thinking. Benjie’s school—”

  “What about it?”

  “The Head. She’ll need to know what’s happened. She’ll want to make an announcement about him. She has to be told.”

  Dad peeled off his glasses. He wiped his face with his sleeve. “Does she?”

  “I thought I’d go to see her, at her house, this afternoon. Leah will be able to tell me where she lives. Benjie went off with guys he knew. I want her to ask his class whether anyone was with him yesterday, whether any of them knows what happened.” Jenna’s head started to throb with the persistence of her thoughts. “I expect the police will go to the school, talk to Benjie’s class, maybe to the whole school. I don’t know.”

  “I can’t handle this.” Dad shook on his feet.

  “Yes, you can.” Gently, Jenna took his glasses out of his hand. She polished the lenses with a clean paper serviette. “Here. Go and sit down. I’ll make a pot of coffee. Then we’ll write a list.”

  “What kind of—”

  “Everything we need to do, the people we need to ring, the order in which everything’s got to be done and who’s going to do it.” She dug a piece of paper out of her pocket. “Here . . . All our suppliers. You’ll need to tell them as soon as possible we don’t want deliveries this week. Otherwise we’ll have crates of vegetables and cheese and ham sitting in the courtyard at dawn.”

  Dad slumped at one of the tearoom tables. “We’ve got to get through this, haven’t we?” He put his head in his hands.

  “Yes,” said Jenna firmly. “We have.”

  Dad raised his head. “Jenn.”

  “What?”

  “This list . . . Could we leave Mum off it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She and Benjie . . . you know . . . he was the light of her life.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that!”

  “I don’t know how she’s going to cope without him. Last night in the car, she said some terrible things. If we could take the chores off her back for a bit, do them ourselves, just the two of us, I think she’ll—”

  “Fine,” Jenna said bitterly. “We’ll leave Mum off the list.”

  “We can tell her about all the arrangements, can’t we? You know, for the funeral and everything. Pretend we’re consulting her. Just so she knows what’s happening.”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “Jenn?”

  She paused with her hand on the coffee grinder.

  Dad said, “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Jenna pressed the button. The grinder screamed into life.

  Without me, you’d still have a son.

  That’s what Mum is lying upstairs thinking . . .

  Blaming it all on me.

  There isn’t a chance in hell now that we’ll ever make it up.

  Afterwards, Jenna had no clear memory of how she survived the next two weeks.

  She only knew she had to be strong: for herself, for Dad, for those she loved and who had loved Benjie. Aunt Tamsyn, trapped at an agents’ casting conference in New York, in tears on the phone, could not be at the funeral. Everybody else was there: the Head from Benjie’s school, Leah, some of her older students who knew Jenna, some of Jenna’s schoolfriends, Imogen and Morvah, standing either side of her, Dad and what looked like half of St Ives, regulars at the tea room, friends he had known since childhood.

  They stood in the churchyard in Carbis Bay, under a relentless beating midday sun, watching helplessly as Benjie’s coffin dropped into the baked
earth.

  Mum gave a shout of pain.

  The morning they reopened the tea room, Mum came downstairs in her bathrobe. She passed Jenna on the stairs, gestured with her head to follow. Her face gleamed pearly white, her hair beneath its black tint pushed grey as a badger.

  She stood in the tearoom kitchen, watching her husband as he sliced fresh vegetables for the summer salads.

  “I’m not doing this any more,” she said.

  Dad turned to look at her.

  “Lydia, dear! I’m so pleased you’re up and about.”

  “I said I’m not doing this any more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She can take over.”

  “Who?”

  “Her. This daughter of yours. She knows why.”

  Dad put down his knife. Its stainless steel glinted on the chopping board, lying among the gleaming tomatoes and crisp radishes like a dead fish.

  “But, dear, she’ll only be here for another few weeks. Next month, she’s off to London, to—”

  “Oh, no, she isn’t.”

  Jenna’s heart locked into her body, a frozen lump of ice.

  “If you think she’s going anywhere after this, Elwyn, you’re very much mistaken. She can stay here and work for a living.”

  Jenna took a few steps into the kitchen. “I’ve been working for a living . . . These last few months, I’ve never worked harder in my life. Don’t you understand? That’s why I fell asleep on the beach. I was—”

  Mum rounded on her, her eyes blazing with fury. “Excuses, excuses. Always got them, haven’t you? With your fancy airs and graces, pirouetting through life like a fairy on a Christmas tree.”

  Dad said, “Please, Lydia, leave the girl alone.”

  Mum turned to him. “I’m going upstairs for a long hot bath. Then I’m off to the hairdresser. Then I shall take myself out to lunch and to the cinema. Then I’ll have a cup of tea on the harbour, do a spot of shopping, whatever takes my fancy. OK?”

  Dad looked across at Jenna, his eyes behind his glasses flat and dull.

  He said, “Yes, dear . . . Have a good day.”

  They closed the tea room and cleared up. Dad cooked a light supper that neither of them wanted. Jenna turned on the television, aware that Dad was pacing up and down, clicking his fingers and humming, hovering by the door, staring anxiously out of the windows.

  When the clock struck nine, he said, “Reckon I should . . . you know . . . go for a little walk, meet Mum coming back, just in case she—”

  Jenna flicked off the television. “Want me to come with you?” she asked casually.

  “Sure,” Dad said. “Thanks, Jenn. Nice evening for a stroll.”

  Trying to pretend nothing was wrong, they marched swiftly up the Digey and into Fore Street. Grumbles of thunder threatened in the distance. The first few drops of warm rain plopped on to the cobblestones.

  “I’ll start looking in the shops from the harbour end,” Dad said. “You start at the top and work down.”

  They met in the middle.

  “Nothing,” Jenna puffed. “The bookshop’s closed, of course, so are all the clothes shops. Tried the art gallery, the deli, the fish-and-chip place.”

  “I’ve checked everywhere,” Dad said. “No sign.”

  “You know that little shop at the bottom of St Andrews Street? The one that sells magic stuff,stones and shells and beads? It stays open late. Maybe—”

  Dad shook his head. “Mum calls it mumbo jumbo, you know she does.” His face brightened. “Got it! She’ll be having a cup of tea on the harbour. That’s where she said she’d—”

  “Dad,” Jenna said patiently. “It’s half-past nine.”

  They started to run: down to the harbour, checking every other shop and restaurant between them.

  Jenna burst into the Café Pasta, glanced swiftly at the jumble of startled faces looking up at her, leapt out again on to the street. She almost walked past the table and chairs parked outside the café. Then she stopped.

  On one of the chairs, neatly folded, were a pale blue shirt, a cream jacket and a black pleated skirt.

  Jenna picked them up.

  Dad joined her from the shop next door. He stared transfixed at the bundle in her arms.

  “Those look just like Mum.”

  “Yes, Dad.” The familiar subtle perfume from Mum’s clothes wafted through Jenna’s head.

  Dad pushed his glasses further up his nose. “That’s what she was wearing this morning. I distinctly remember her ironing the shirt before she left.”

  “So do I.”

  “Where did you—”

  “They were lying on this chair.”

  Dad grabbed Jenna’s hand. “Good God! You don’t think she’s—” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

  Jenna made a huge effort to sound calm and collected. “Of course not.” She stared at the drinking, chattering crowds in front of the Sloop Inn, envying their sanity. “She’d never do a thing like that.”

  “So where in God’s name is she? Paddling naked in the sea?”

  Jenna grasped his arm. “Don’t panic, Dad. Let’s think about this sensibly. Maybe she bought a new outfit, kept it on, had a cup of tea at this table and simply left the old clothes behind by mistake.”

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t like any of this,” he muttered. “It’s not like my Lydia at all.”

  “Let’s go down to that bit of the harbour.” Jenna pointed towards Lifeboat House. “Maybe she went for a walk there after her tea.”

  They began to run again. Raindrops drifted into Jenna’s face. The world looked blurred and watery. The harbour tide slapped and heaved against the sides of the wharf, snarling and energetic.

  Mum sat on a bench, her back stiff and stern and upright, staring fixedly ahead, the rain glittering on her freshly permed and darkened hair. She wore new black patent-leather shoes with spitefully high heels, a tight orange skirt that barely covered her thighs, and a startling yellow suede cowboy jacket with droopy fringes. She looked bizarre and utterly unlike her normal self.

  In her shopping bag lay two empty bottles of wine. She held a third, which she no longer had the strength to raise to her lips.

  She looked up at them with bloodshot eyes as they stood, panting with relief, in front of her.

  “And I don’t want you ever to touch Benjie’s room.” She wagged a finger at Dad in admonition, as if she were half-way through a conversation with him. “Ever. I want it to stay just as it is. Just as he left it. Do you understand me, Elwyn? Am I making myself absolutely clear?”

  “Yes, Lydia. Of course you are, dear. Now we’re going to take you home for a lovely long rest.” He gestured to Jenna. “Just stand up and lean on me. There you are. Slowly does it . . . We’ll soon have you home.”

  Mum swayed on her new stiletto heels. “Don’t wanna go home, Elwyn.”

  Jenna smelt wine on her breath, warm and sickly sweet. She turned her head away.

  “I think you do, dear.” Gently, Dad took her shopping bag. The bottles clinked. “Oh,yes. I think you do.”

  Jenna woke at dawn.

  Somehow, somewhere, as she slept, the decision had been made.

  She slid out of bed and sat at her desk.

  She found a piece of paper.

  Then she picked up her felt-tipped pen.

  Her hand shook so much she had to hold it with the other one to keep it steady.

  Dad said, “The doctor came this morning to look at Mum.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said it’s depression. Understandable. She just needs to rest. It could last for a long time. We’re not to expect instant results.”

  “But Dad, you’ve been up and down to her room today a hundred times. How can you possibly do that and everything else?”

  “She’ll get better. Strong as an ox, my Lydia.”

  That’s right! Defend her, why don’t you! In your eyes, she can never do anything wrong . . .

  Dad locked
the tearoom door, flicked the sign to CLOSED. “What she needs is a holiday away from here . . . Away from both of us.”

  Jenna kicked off her shoes. “You mean away from me.”

  A wave of sadness washed over Dad’s face. “She’ll come round.”

  “She might when I tell her what I’ve done.”

  Dad picked up a tray laden with dirty cups and plates. “And what’s that?”

  “I’ve written to the Head of Dance at the Academy.” Jenna gave a bitter laugh. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  Dad dropped the tray. Broken jigsaw-puzzle pieces of bone china leered up at them. Dregs of grey-brown liquid puddled across the floor.

  “That’s right, Dad. Smash! goes my whole career.”

  “You can’t mean—”

  Jenna’s voice came toneless and flat, as if she were repeating a meaningless lump of useless information. “I’ve told the Head of Dance that unfortunately, because of a tragic accident in my family, for which I was entirely to blame, I shall be unable to take up my place in the autumn, and therefore she is free to offer it to someone else.”

  “You haven’t posted the letter, have you?” Dad’s face was ashen.

  “I’ve done better than just post it, Dad. I sent it by Special Delivery. Dashed out to the post office for five minutes after the midday rush.”

  “So that’s where you—”

  “The Head of Dance will get it in the morning . . . By this time tomorrow, some other hopeful will be offered the chance of a lifetime.” She bit her lip. “While all my silly little dreams and ambitions are lying in a heap, just like that awful mess on the floor.”

  In Benjie’s Room

  Jenna climbed on to the bus.

  As it rumbled along the road out of St Ives she sat feeling as solid and heavy as a stone.

  I’ll never do this journey again.

  When she reached Lelant she got off, stood for a moment outside the village hall.

  Go on, girl, get on with it.