Water Like a Stone

by Deborah Crombie

  Kit glanced back at the pub. If he went in to say he was taking Lally for a walk, she might disappear. They would just have to trust that he was looking after her. “Come on,” he said, and started back up the bank towards the play yard and the road. “Let’s have a look at the boats on the other side.” He didn’t look back, didn’t give her a chance to refuse, and after a moment he heard the squelch of her footsteps on the mist-soaked grass. When he reached the road, he slowed a bit and let her draw level, but he still didn’t look at her or speak.

  At the apex of the bridge, they stopped in silent accord and gazed downstream. On the left-hand side of the canal, a dozen boats were moored end to end along the towpath, like brightly painted railway cars shuffled into a watery siding.

  On the right, a cluster of houses backed onto private mooring spaces, and beyond them, a grove of evergreens stood, ghostly sentinel, in the mist. Their trunks were bare and evenly spaced, their tops round and full, so that they looked like Toby’s drawings of trees.

  “I used to like it when we came here.” Lally’s voice was soft, disembodied. “Sam and I played on the swings, and in the summer you could see inside the boats at night. I’d watch the families and imagine that their lives were perfect.”

  Kit knew that game. When he was small, he’d peered in neighbors’ windows, wondering what it was like to have brothers and sisters. Then, after Ian had left them, he’d watched families with fathers and wondered why some dads stayed and others didn’t. Now, if he glanced into an uncurtained window at dusk, he’d fancy he saw his mother, just for an instant.

  He shoved his cold hands a little farther into his jacket pockets. “No one’s life is perfect.”

  Lally turned on him with sudden, blazing fury. “Well, mine sucks. How could my parents be so stupid? And my dad—you don’t know what he’s like. He’ll—”

  “Sneaking away to bare your soul, Lal?” The voice was smooth and mocking, and Kit recognized it even as his body jerked from the surprise.

  “Leo! You bastard!” Lally whirled round, striking at the boy’s chest with her fists, but Leo caught both her wrists in one hand and spun her back like a marionette.

  “Shhh,” he said. “You don’t want to call attention to yourself. I should think there’s been quite enough of that in your family for one day.” That made Lally struggle harder, but when she saw Kit step forward to intervene, she went limp and Leo let her go.

  “Where are you going?” Leo asked, as casually as if he’d run across them in the street rather than creeping up behind them and trying to frighten them half to death.

  “For a walk. To see the boats,” Kit answered, trying to make it clear they didn’t need company. He started down the far side of the bridge, and Lally followed.

  “I’ll come with you, then.” Leo fell in beside Lally. “My dad’s taken Lally’s dad to get royally pissed at a more ‘accommodating’ pub, so I’m all yours for the duration.”

  “Your dad just left you?” Kit asked, curiosity overcoming his dislike.

  “I’m not a baby, like some,” Leo snapped, then smiled. “I said I’d walk home. It’s not far. You can come with me, and we’ll have a look at where Juliet found this famous mummy.” He took a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his peacoat and tapped out two, handing one to Lally without asking if she wanted it. She stopped, touching his hand as she held the end of the fag to the flame, and the casual intimacy of the gesture made Kit feel suddenly queasy.

  “You can’t go in a crime scene,” he said as they merged into single file, now following Leo down the towpath. “Everyone knows that.”

  “And who’s going to see?” Leo shot back. “The police have finished picking up things, and there’s only a stupid tape. How is a tape supposed to keep anyone out?”

  “You could destroy evidence.”

  “Ooh, listen to you, Mister Policeman. Taking after your daddy, are you? Anyway, what difference does it make? The thing’s probably been there for ages. Just think, Lally—”

  “Shut up, Leo.” Lally stopped so suddenly that Kit bumped into her. “That’s horrid. I’m not going any farther if you don’t shut up.” The mist had beaded on her dark hair, and now a drop formed on the end of her nose. She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve without taking her eyes off Leo.

  “Okay, okay.” Leo held up his hands, then took a drag off the cigarette. “Forget it. I’ve found a new place, anyway.”

  He and Lally looked at each other for a moment in silent communication, then Lally pushed past Leo and trudged on, her head ducked in misery. Kit was about to reach for her, to insist that they go back, when a boat materialized out of the fog a few yards down the path. He knew it instantly.

  Even with her sapphire paintwork dulled by moisture, the sleek lines of the Lost Horizon were unmistakable. Light glowed from within, and smoke hung heavily above the chimney, barely distinguishable from the surrounding fog. Annie Lebow was at home.

  Kit’s first instinct was to call out. He could show Lally the boat; they could get warm; maybe Annie would even offer them something hot to drink. Then he realized two things simultaneously.

  The first was that he didn’t want to share anything that was special to him with Leo, and he didn’t see how he could make Leo leave them alone. The second was that he’d expected to find the Horizon above Barbridge, on the Middlewich Branch, where he had seen her yesterday. Had Annie changed her mind about her invitation? Or perhaps she had never meant it at all.

  So humiliated was he by the idea that she hadn’t intended to keep their appointment that he stopped dead, wishing himself a planet away. The others halted as well, turning startled faces towards him. Perhaps if no one spoke—if they turned back now—

  It was too late. The boat’s stern door swung open and Annie Lebow stepped out, a cloth firewood carrier in her hand, and reached for the firewood stacked neatly on the roof of the boat. She paused when she saw the three of them just standing there on the path, then smiled a little hesitantly. Her eyes were a clear green against the gray sky and the gray fleece she wore, and her short blond hair stood on end, as if she’d absently run her fingers through it. “Hullo,” she said. “It’s Kit, isn’t it?” she added as she transferred a few pieces of wood into the carrier.

  “You’ve moved your boat,” Kit blurted out, then inwardly cursed himself for a complete idiot. Now she’d think he’d been searching for her, like some kind of stalker.

  “Oh…yes.” She sounded bemused, as if it hadn’t occurred to her. “It was a twenty-four-hour mooring, and all the spots at Barbridge were taken. I should have thought to say so yesterday. I’m sorry if you looked and couldn’t find me.”

  “No.” Kit saw the possibility of redemption. “No, we had…family things.” Belatedly, he added, “This is my cousin Lally. And Leo. We were just walking, and saw the boat.”

  Annie studied them. “You’re wet. And it’s freezing. Do you want to come inside?” she added, but Kit could hear the reluctance in her voice.

  He imagined the three of them in their sodden, steaming clothes, crammed awkwardly into the Horizon’s cabin as he tried to make conversation, and shook his head. “No, thanks. We have to get back. But—”

  “You could come tomorrow. The weather is supposed to clear. I’ll be here, or up at Barbridge. I’ve some things to…to take care of.” She sounded as if that surprised her.

  “Okay, right.” Kit raised his hand in an awkward wave. “See you then.” Grabbing Lally’s sleeve, he pulled her hurriedly back down the path the way they had come, figuring that Leo could bloody well take care of himself.

  But after a moment, he heard the unmistakable rustle of movement behind them, and felt an arm draped across his shoulder.

  “Did you have a date, then?” Leo whispered, his breath warm in Kit’s ear. “A little old for you, isn’t she? Or does that make it more fun?” When Kit tried to shrug loose, he gripped harder. “I think you’d better tell us all about it.”

  The phone ran
g, sounding tinny and distant in the mobile held to Annie’s ear. She imagined the house at the other end of the electronic connection, pictured Roger swearing as he got up from his laptop and searched for the handset he’d misplaced. But perhaps he’d changed, become more organized, less obsessed with his work, without her there as a foil.

  After a moment, however, the answering machine kicked in and she hung up. She didn’t want to leave a message—Roger would see her number on the caller ID, and saying “Call me” seemed stupidly redundant. He would ring her back, he always did, although she was no longer quite sure why.

  The dark day had faded imperceptibly to night, and Annie had found herself unable to settle to anything constructive. She’d had an unexpected urge to talk to her husband, as if that might help her sort through her jumbled emotions, but now she realized she hadn’t any idea what she’d meant to say. She’d never been very good at sharing—that was one of the reasons they’d separated. Why did she think this would be any different?

  Wandering from the salon into the galley, she pulled an open bottle of Aussie Chardonnay from the fridge. But as she reached for a glass, she felt the slightest movement of the boat and stopped, puzzled. She knew every creak and quirk of the boat, as if it were an extension of her body, and only registered movement when it was something out of the ordinary. This hadn’t been backwash—she’d have heard another boat going by—and she’d checked the mooring lines carefully for slack. Perhaps one of the mooring pins had pulled a bit loose in the wet soil. She would check it, she decided, next time she went out for wood.

  The brief interruption, however, added to the uneasiness that had been nagging her all afternoon, and she decided against the wine. She didn’t want to feel fuzzy, or to sound muddled if Roger rang her back. Instead, she put on the kettle, sliced half a lemon and a bit of fresh ginger into a mug, then filled the cup with boiling water. The smell of this homemade concoction was always better than the taste, and she held the steaming mug under her nose as she went back into the salon.

  The fire burned brightly in the stove and the Tom Rolt volume that Roger had given her lay open on the end table, but even as she curled up on the sofa and lifted the book, her mind wandered.

  Although she’d never had children of her own, she’d worked with kids for years and had a well-developed radar for trouble. She’d been drawn to Kit the previous day, although even through his friendliness she’d sensed a reserve that seemed more adult than his years. But today she’d sensed something off, an unhealthy dynamic between the three of them. Was it just an overabundance of adolescent testosterone? The girl—Kit’s cousin, he’d said—was far too pretty, and she’d had the haunted look of children who lived with emotional trauma. Perhaps the boys were vying to protect her, and that, she was sure, was a recipe for disaster.

  But whatever it was, she told herself, it was not her problem—she’d got herself embroiled in enough of a mess as it was. She’d done as much as she could for the Wains—she had to let it go.

  “Are you sure she’s dying?” she’d asked Althea Elsworthy when they’d reached the car park at Barbridge.

  “As sure as I can be without running diagnostics,” the doctor had snapped. “You asked my opinion and now you don’t want to take it?”

  “No, I—”

  Elsworthy shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t like it any better than you do. There is a remote possibility that she could survive a heart transplant. That’s assuming that she could get on the transplant list, with the MSBP strike on her medical records, and that she’d last until a heart became available. And all that would depend, of course, on her being willing to subject herself, and her family, to the system. We can’t force someone to seek medical care, Ms. Lebow.”

  No, but should she at least try once more, Annie wondered now, to convince Rowan and Gabriel Wain to seek medical help? She’d tried to tell herself that she could disengage, that isolation would insulate her from pain, but she had not found the peace she sought. Maybe she’d needed to discover that no such thing existed. And if she stopped striving for perfection, could she ease a toe back into the water, so to speak?

  The thought made her smile. Roger, journalist to the core, would tell her that metaphors weren’t for amateurs. She sipped her cooling drink, puckering a little at the lemon’s bite, and when her phone rang, she answered it with unexpected anticipation.

  “Two calls in two days?” Roger sounded amused. “What did I do to deserve such largesse?”

  “I just…wanted to talk.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked, the amusement shifting instantly to concern.

  “Yes, I think so,” Annie said, then laughed at the sound of surprise in her own voice. “Yes. Truly.”

  “How about dinner, then? I could drive over, pick you up.”

  She glanced at the clock, then peered out through the half-closed blind covering the cabin window. The fog pressed against the glass, swirling like a sinuous white beast. “The mist has come down. I don’t think I dare move the boat, and I’m halfway between Barbridge and the Hurleston Junction. There’s no way for you to get to me easily, and besides, the roads may ice.” Even as she set out the practical objections, she felt a stab of disappointment. She hadn’t expected such an instant response, hadn’t realized, until that moment, how much she looked forward to the prospect of sharing her concerns.

  “Tomorrow, then?” he asked, and she heard the hope beneath the caution.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, with certainty.

  Kit gasped awake, sucking great gulps of air into his lungs, the hammering of his heart still sounding in his ears. Sitting up, he saw that he’d thrown the covers off and pushed poor Tess to the foot of the bed again. The room was quiet, except for the sound of the younger boys’ breathing, and the light coming through the curtain gap was the pearly gray of early morning.

  Reassured, Kit reached down to pull up the duvet and scooped Tess to him. The little dog licked his chin with enthusiasm, and he hugged her, rubbing his cheek against the rough, springy hair on the top of her head. He settled back into the pillows, the dog now nestled in the crook of his arm, and made himself examine the nightmare. This one had been different.

  He had been walking along the river, behind the cottage in Cambridge where he had spent the first eleven years of his life with his mother, and all except for the last year with the man he had known as his father, Ian McClellan. It was dusk, and he could smell the cold, damp air rising from the river…except that in the dream he had suddenly realized that it wasn’t the river at all, but a canal.

  Then light had spilled out from the cottage window and he had moved toward it, gliding across the familiar lawn as if he were a ghost. All the while the window seemed to recede, but when he reached it at last and looked in, it was not his mother he saw, but Lally. She turned towards him, but her face was pale and featureless, and blood ran from her hands and splashed onto the white floor—

  No, it wasn’t a floor, but snow, the blood blossoming in the white powder like crimson flowers appearing before his eyes, and he was running, running, trying to catch her, but the snow clung to his feet and his legs grew heavier and heavier. Then the dark figure ahead ducked into an opening, and as Kit followed he recognized his surroundings—it was the yew tunnel that ran alongside his friend Nathan’s garden.

  Hope had surged in him; this was his place, he could stop her here, keep her safe. But the snow still mired his feet, and even as he wondered how there could be snow inside the tunnel, he realized it wasn’t the yew hedge at all, but a canal tunnel, and it wasn’t snow closing over his head, but water…

  Then reflex had jolted him awake, but even the memory of the dream made him shudder. Tess whimpered, and he realized he’d gripped her hard enough to pinch. “Sorry, sorry, girl,” he whispered, stroking her, trying to will the fear away. It was just a dream, and it didn’t take much to see where his subconscious had picked up the material. His worry over Lally had merely crept across the barrier
between waking and sleeping.

  She’d been quiet all the way back to the pub yesterday, ignoring him, ignoring Leo’s taunts about Annie, and when Leo had finally left them at Barbridge, she hadn’t even said good-bye.

  They had all been waiting, Duncan and Gemma, his grandparents, Juliet and Sam, but no one had questioned or criticized either him or Lally. On the way back to the farmhouse, and later, as Rosemary had prepared ham sandwiches for tea, the adults had made small talk as if nothing had happened. Kit understood that this was meant to reassure the children, but it hadn’t helped him, and he didn’t think it had helped Lally, either.

  After tea, a friend of Hugh’s came to the house and took Juliet into the kitchen for a chat, and although no one said, Kit guessed the man was a lawyer.

  Rosemary herded the others into the sitting room for a Scrabble tournament before the fire, but after a bit Lally began to drift away from the board between turns, and at last she disappeared altogether. Kit couldn’t concentrate on the board, and when Hugh had trounced him and Gemma beyond redemption, he excused himself and slipped out of the room as well.

  The murmur of voices still came from the kitchen, the man’s low and steady, his aunt Juliet’s rising like a breaking wave. Silently, he’d climbed the stairs, and had seen that the door to Hugh’s study, where Lally had slept with her mum the night before, was slightly ajar.

  He hadn’t known what he’d meant to say, had pushed the door open without thinking, really. Lally sat on the floor, her back to the sofa bed, the left sleeve of her sweatshirt pushed up to the elbow. She was peeling back a strip of bandage from the inside of her forearm, and a trickle of bright blood seeped from beneath the white gauze.

  Then, above the bandage, he saw a barely scabbed-over cut, a horizontal slash in the pale flesh, and above that, another, and another—purple scars, straight as rulers.

  “Lally, what are you doing?” he cried out, his voice high with shock.

  She jerked down the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Nothing. Don’t you knock?”