The Drowning Read online

  The rain held itself softly in the air, like a filmy curtain.

  Jenna began to jog: through the Digey into Rose Lane, down Bunker’s Hill, along the Wharf to Quay Street, through Sea View Place and Wheal Dream to Porthgwidden Beach. She perched for a moment on a wooden picnic table, her heart thumping. Then she was on the move again, across the path above Porthgwidden, up the damp, grassy hill to the Island and St Nicholas Chapel.

  From the top, she could see the whole of St Ives: its sprawling huddle of rooftops, the harbour and all three curves of beaches, the great wash of cloudy sky which the sun struggled to pierce. Miles of sea spread in front of her, blue-grey, full of secret life, its surface pockmarked by the mizzling rain.

  She dug her hand into the pocket of her jeans.

  She pulled out Benjie’s diary and stood there, willing herself to fling it away, over the edge of the cliff, into the jaws of the sea.

  She froze.

  She remembered standing on the rocks, her shoulders burning, her heel bleeding, shrieking Benjie’s name into the silent blue. How she’d have given anything to have heard him call, “Hi, sis! I’m over here!”

  What if Benjie’s accident and his diary are somehow connected . . .

  Suppose the diary contains a clue to what happened to him that afternoon . . .

  Don’t I have a duty to read it?

  She turned her back on the sea and took refuge from the rain against the low wall of the chapel.

  Cradling her hand over the diary to protect its pages, she began to read:

  Monday

  We walked down the hill together after school, just G and me. I think she’s very special. The others didn’t notice. They went on ahead and left us alone. G always calls me Benjamin. I like that. I hate being called Benjie. It sounds so babyish. Mum calls me My own little Benjie. Yuck. Puke. Yuck.

  Thursday

  This afternoon we did work in pairs and I was a pair with G. The others started to giggle and point but I don’t care. Now they giggle and jump out at us when we walk down the hill together. She says, Benjamin, take no notice. So I don’t. As long as it’s G and me together I don’t care about them.

  Saturday

  We said goodbye on the corner of the street while Mum was in a shop. G is going away for Easter and I won’t see her until next term. I’m very sad. I gave her a special present. She loved it. She put it on. She said, Goodbye, Benjamin. See you very soon. But soon feels like a long time away to me.

  Sunday

  I spent all day playing with Klunk and Splat, but all the time I thought about G. How she looked when she put my present on. How her eyes looked at me, all lovely and dark. I think she’s beautiful.

  Tuesday

  First day back at school. I could hardly wait to see G again. But as soon as she came into the classroom I knew something was wrong. She wouldn’t even look at me. She just pretended I wasn’t there. I walked home on my own and I couldn’t eat any tea or anything. Mum said, Oh, my little Benjie, whatever’s wrong. I said, Go to hell, under my breath, but she didn’t hear.

  Wednesday

  Everything is different. Something happened in the holidays. I don’t know what. G won’t be my pair any more. She says she can’t be my best friend. I said, Why not, why are you being like this? She wouldn’t tell me. And she won’t walk home down the hill with me. So I tried to pretend I didn’t care. When I got home I came up here and broke all my new radio into pieces and trod on them one by one.

  Friday

  G has ganged up against me with the others. I can’t believe it. After school I tried to tell Dad, but the tea room was full of silly people. I came up here and cried. I wanted to tell Jenn, but she was practising in her studio. She said, Go away, can’t you see I’m busy, we can talk later. But when later came I was tired and angry. I didn’t feel like talking any more.

  Monday

  They stopped me on the hill. All of them. I had to run to get away from them but then I fell over. My glasses came off and they laughed. I started to cry in front of everyone. I wish I didn’t do that. It made them point and laugh even more.

  Wednesday

  They’ve got a new song. I hate it. When I hear it I feel scared. I don’t know what they’re going to make me do. They sing, Bye bye baby try, You must do it, Do or die.

  Monday

  P is the worst. Twins can be terrible because they are so close. They are the leaders now, the two of them. Teacher doesn’t let them work in pairs in school but outside they are always together. It never used to be like that. I wish I had a twin. Together with my twin, we would fight back. Show all of them how mean we could be.

  Friday

  I wait for the others to go down the hill before I go home. Mum says, Where were you, why are you so late? But I don’t tell her anything. Dad is always cooking and Jenn is always dancing. There’s nobody I can tell.

  Monday

  They want me to do something really terrible. If I do they say they will leave me alone. I’ve said, no, I won’t do it and I don’t care about them. I don’t care about anybody now.

  Jenna closed the notebook. There was more, but she could not face it.

  She looked across at the sea, suddenly hearing its roar, tasting its salty spray on her lips. A cold, solid anger gripped her heart, followed by remorse.

  None of us were there for him. Who are these twins who made his life such a misery?

  Jenna suddenly realised with a shock that she’d known none of Benjie’s friends. Mum hadn’t exactly run an open-door household. When Benjie was home, he’d almost always been alone, in his room doing his homework or playing, or watching television in the living room. Occasionally, when Benjie had had someone round, Jenna’s own punishing schedules had meant she was somewhere else at the time. Now, there was no one to whom Jenna could turn to ask.

  Sunk in her thoughts, she hardly noticed the walk home.

  In her room, she slid the diary into her desk, dreading the next instalment.

  She climbed the stairs with Aunt Tamsyn and opened the door of Benjie’s room.

  “I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

  Her aunt flung her small suitcase on the bed. “I’m sure I will . . . Everything looks extremely neat and tidy.”

  Jenna swallowed. “I cleaned the room this morning, packed Benjie’s toys away. Dad asked me to. We hadn’t touched it since—” She clutched at her aunt. “Will it get better,Tammy? I can’t stand much more of this.”

  Her aunt stroked Jenna’s hair. “I’ll take your mother off your hands for a bit, give you and Elwyn a chance to get your bearings.”

  “You won’t mind?”

  Tamsyn gave a short laugh. “Look, I’ll be working as usual. I’ll give Lydia a key and she can come and go as she likes. In the evening we’ll have a meal together and she can tell me how she’s spent the day. I’ll take her to a couple of shows in the West End.”

  Jenna said bitterly, “Lucky her!”

  “Yes, well, it’ll serve its purpose. She’ll get over this black depression, I promise you. We’ll have her back to work in no time.”

  Jenna moved to the window. Lights from the town had begun to pierce the rain in tiny showery sparks. “I’m not sure we will.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jenna shrugged. “Just a feeling . . . Benjie was the centre of her life. She’s never liked me much. Dad’s done his best to comfort her, but she uses him like a drudge. I saw them when they got back this afternoon. She looked bored out of her skull. He looked shattered. He made a real effort for her birthday: flowers, breakfast in bed, gave her a necklace he’d spotted in town, lunch at the Porthminster . . .”

  Tamsyn said grimly,“She doesn’t know how lucky she is.”

  Jenna looked across at her. “Too right. Mum despises Dad for loving her so much. Secretly she thinks he’s a mug. She can twist him round her little finger.”

  Tamsyn flushed. “He deserves better than that. He’s always been the most wonderful brother. He sho
uld have someone who loves him back.”

  “Yes.” Jenna ran her tongue over her lips. “Do you know what I wish?”

  “What?”

  “That he’d find somebody else . . . Trouble is, my dad’s not like that. He’d not even look at another woman, not in a hundred years.”

  That night Jenna took the diary from her desk and huddled into bed with it.

  I’ve got to read the rest of this . . .

  It’s like it’s burning into my brain.

  Wednesday

  The twins want me to steal from Dad’s till in the café. They said it would be easy. Do it when he’s not looking. I said, NO WAY. There’s no way I’ll let you turn me into a thief. They just laughed. They said if I didn’t they would tell me to do something even worse. That I had one week to do it and then it would be something worse.

  Friday

  I don’t want to go to school. I told Mum I felt sick. I stayed in bed. I didn’t eat anything all day. I played with Klunk and Splat. I set up the train in a different way. I tried not to think of the song, but it goes round in my head. Bye bye baby try, You must do it, Do or die. Over and over in my head.

  Monday

  They wanted to know why I hadn’t been to school for a week. They said they wanted to welcome me back. They said there was a note stuck on the door of my locker, but I wasn’t to read it until I got home. After school I waited until they had left. Then I read it. It was gross. I tore it up and stuffed it down a drain in the road.

  Wednesday

  The twins caught me on the way home. They said I had one more day to get the money. I said, Go away or I’ll tell Teacher. They just laughed. They said if I told him they would say I was making the whole thing up.

  Thursday

  After school they followed me again. They said they’ve got friends in their street who will come and beat me up. I was really scared. More than before. I went into the café. I hung around the till, but there were too many people. Mum said, Go and have some tea. I went into the hall and found her bag. Her purse had a lot of money in it. I took out one of the notes. I didn’t look at it. I didn’t know how much it was. I just shoved it into my pocket. Then I rushed upstairs to my room. I felt gross. Like dirty and mean. I’m sure Mum will notice. What will I say if she does?

  Friday

  On the way home, I gave the note to the twins. P sneered and said, Only £20! This isn’t enough! This is peanuts and you are a monkey! I started to shout, It’s more than enough. I don’t know why I did it. There won’t be any more. I won’t do it again. No way.

  Saturday

  Only one more week of school and then it will be the end of term. I’ll come home and it will be freedom! I can hardly wait. I hope I don’t see the twins in the holidays, not even on the other side of the street. I never want to see them again.

  Jenna closed the diary.

  There were no further entries, there was nothing more to read.

  Anyway, she had seen quite enough.

  She switched off her bedside lamp and lay staring into the darkness.

  Mum thought I’d taken that money . . . It never even occurred to her it might have been Benjie. I remember now . . . He disappeared from the table pretty fast . . .

  I can’t show anyone the diary. I’ve got to keep it private, for Benjie’s sake.

  But there’s one person I could talk to. Eva Simons, the Head at Benjie’s school. Bet she’d like to know what’s been going on.

  Those twins . . . Bastards . . . Pair of bullying thugs. Expect they were bigger and older than Benjie.

  I’d bloody well like to know who the hell they are.

  Tamsyn put down her cup.

  “That was delicious, Elwyn. You still make the best breakfast in the world.” She glanced across the table. “Doesn’t he, Lydia? Have you ever tasted bacon fried to such perfection?”

  Mum pushed her chair aside and stood up. “I’ll just go and finish packing.”

  The room fell into thick silence as she left.

  Dad started humming. Then he began to clear the plates.

  “You’re a diamond to do this for me, Tammy. Lydia seems really together this morning. Cheerful, spick and span. She hasn’t been downstairs this early since—”

  “I’ll do my best with her, for your sake and for Jenna’s.” Tamsyn stared pointedly at her brother. “While Lydia’s away,you will look after my one and only niece for me, won’t you, Elwyn?”

  Dad beamed at Jenna. “She’s my one and only daughter, don’t forget. The apple of my eye. And we make the most wonderful team now, don’t we, Jenn?”

  Jenna pushed her plate away.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “We make a wonderful team.”

  After they’d closed the tea room and cleared up at the end of the day, Dad slumped at one of the tables.

  “It feels really odd without Mum.”

  Jenna stood behind him, flung an arm across his shoulder.

  “We’ve never been apart in all these years.” He reached up and covered her hand with his. “You know we met here, don’t you? She was on holiday—”

  “Yes, Dad. You’ve told me the—”

  “From London. Came in for a cream tea. We started chatting. Everyone else had gone. We sat over there in the corner, talking our heads off. Hester, old friend of mine – we were at school together – she was helping me, but she had to leave early. Lydia offered to clear the tables. I thought she was fantastic, so confident and polished and organised. We were a team from the start.”

  “Yes, Dad, I know.”

  He clutched her hand more tightly. “She will come back to me, won’t she, Jenn? She won’t suddenly decide she’s had enough of all this . . . enough of me?”

  Jenna slid her hand away. She sat opposite Dad and looked him in the eyes.

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “No, sorry, don’t suppose you can.” He made a brave effort at a smile. “But I’ll always have my Jenn.”

  “Course you will.” Jenna pulled off her apron and smoothed her hair. “Though not for the next hour . . . It’s a bit urgent. There’s someone I need to see.”

  “Oh? And who might that be?”

  “Just a friend,” Jenna said.

  Dead End

  Jenna hauled herself up the steep hill to Benjie’s school.

  I thought if I did this walk – as I used to do when I was younger, as Benjie did right up until his death – I’d feel closer to him somehow, be able to imagine more clearly what he had to go through.

  In her head, the bullying twins were skulking heavy-weight boys with short hair gelled into aggressive spikes and dark threatening eyes. They looked so alike that even their parents found it hard to tell them apart. At school they often used each other’s names to make their classmates snigger behind the teacher’s back. One of them carried a surfboard as if he intended to smash someone’s head with it; the other held a £20 note which he stuffed guiltily into his pocket.

  Jenna shivered.

  It was late August and the school was still closed for the last week of the summer holidays. No cars stood in the driveway. She remembered her own years there. Now there was nobody singing Cornish songs in the hall, fiddling with spreadsheets on their computers, drawing maps, flinging their bodies into indoor aerobics, learning about a balanced diet, whispering in the library, gossiping behind the bikesheds, jostling for lunch-time strawberry cheesecake, pushing out of the gates.

  Or chanting songs in the playground:

  “Bye, bye, baby, try,

  You must do it,

  Do or die.”

  She stood looking down over the cliffs towards the beach that had claimed her brother’s life, trying to decide what to do. Bury her head in the same sand? Pretend she’d never found the diary?

  I can’t do that. I feel as if I was meant to find it, that I’m supposed to be doing something about it.

  If I don’t, who on earth will?

  She held on to her bag more tightly. In it lay the diary
, as if to give her strength.

  I’m going to tackle the Head. She needs to know what’s been going on.

  The Head lived on Ocean View Terrace,in a large,double-fronted house perched high on the cliffs above Porthmeor Beach, five minutes from the school.

  Jenna remembered walking there the day after Benjie’s death, her feet dragging with dread; how the Head had already heard the news; how she had comforted Jenna and offered any help she could.

  It felt strange to be standing on this doorstep again, as if her previous visit had happened years ago, in a different life. She forced herself to ring the bell. The door opened almost immediately: someone must have spotted her from a window.

  “Jenna Pascoe? What a surprise . . .”

  “Mrs Simons—”

  The Head wore a simple long cotton shift. Her arms and face were deeply tanned, her eyes sparkled cornflower blue. Jenna instantly felt dull and pasty, as if she’d spent the entire summer shut in a windowless room.

  “Do call me Eva . . . Won’t you come in? . . . Please . . . Take a seat.”