Tideline

by Penny Hancock

  I feel light, out of my body. I must stay calm, I must not become hysterical. That’s when mistakes are made. I must think logically.

  In the end I sit at the kitchen table and listen to the clock tick. My fingers find Jez’s horn earring that I’ve kept in my trouser pocket. The earring! Everything falls neatly into place. It’s meant, as I knew it was when Jez first came to me.

  I rummage under Helen’s coat, find a pocket in her skirt, place the earring deep inside. I take out her mobile. Thumb in a text. Find Mick’s number, press send. Then I get up and go back outside to check the tide. I let her mobile follow Jez’s into the water. The river is on my side now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Tuesday

  Sonia

  I release the lock on the wheelchair. Helen’s head flops onto her chest. I pull the checked blanket over it. Shove the wheelchair over the threshold, across the courtyard to the door in the wall. Press my ear against it. It’s silent at last. I push the door open. The lights are off in the flats along the alley. We go straight across to the wall, to the exact place I dropped the mobiles into the water.

  You’ve got to be careful, this is becoming a habit! mocks a high-pitched voice in my head.

  The tide’s up and lolls against the wall about three feet below. The tree branches make a tangled black net above my head, and the wall of the flats to my left is covered in a mat of ivy. I’m cocooned on one side at least. The other side is open but deserted as far along the path as I can see, to the power station, to the coaling pier.

  It’s harder than I thought it would be to lift Helen out of the wheelchair. Have my arms become weaker since I put her into it? Or has her body, empty of its soul, taken on extra weight? The bricks! I’ll have to remove them. My fingers are numb with cold or nerves. They won’t work. I can’t untie the plastic bag. I rub my hands together, try to kick-start the circulation. A police siren sounds out on the high street. I fumble with the knot of the bag, straining my ears. Is that a voice? Footsteps? I stop for a minute, trying not to breathe so I can hear.

  I give up on the bricks and use all my strength to heave Helen up in my arms and hitch her onto the wall. I lift her legs over it as if she were a child I was putting onto a swing, and shove hard. She flops forward, face down onto the surface of the water. The checked blanket is left in my hands. Helen’s arms spread out, as if she were doing the star pose Kit was made to do in swimming lessons at primary school. She stays there for a few seconds. Seconds that turn into minutes.

  ‘Go down!’ I mutter. ‘Go down!’

  Her head dips, her bottom rises up, as if she’s peering beneath the surface of the water. Then the bricks start to do their job, and bubbles rise from somewhere, from her pockets? Her hood? Her lungs? Her beautiful blue jacket balloons upwards. Then it too turns dark as the water soaks into it and soon all I can see is the orange bottom of her skirt and the underside of one foot, the crepe sole of her lovely boots the only bit of her clothing, judging by evidence I’ve gathered from my beachcombing over the years, that will survive the river’s appetite. I rue the fact that all her gorgeous clothes are wasted.

  Why won’t she disappear completely? Surely it’s exactly this that keeps the police launches so busy, the tendency of the human body to sink to the riverbed without a trace?

  I go back to the courtyard and find the hoe with the long handle I retrieved from the garage the other day. I have to lean over the wall in order to poke Helen with it, prod her. Still the crepe sole bounces back. I push the hoe harder, and she bobs away from the wall. At last a current takes her up. She swirls about, her boot doing a peculiar solo dance in the moonlight.

  At last, after I don’t know how long, the sole of her boot bobs away, the tide seems to have turned and is carrying her down towards Blackwall. I wait to ensure she doesn’t turn around again. That the river doesn’t decide to do something perverse and bring her back to me. I wait five, ten minutes.

  The moon’s up and casts a silver light over the water. It mingles with the street lights that cast their glow deep into the river along the banks. I’m suffused with a sudden sense of peace.

  I don’t move. A plane passes overhead. Lights crackle on the other side of the river, the bright beacon at the top of Canada Tower flashes on, off, on, off. A gaggle of swans comes past. They gaze into the depths of the water. Then they huddle near the wall together, as if deciding this, Helen’s final resting place, was the very spot they were searching for to roost.

  At last I turn. I barely bother to look up or down the alley before I push the wheelchair back through the door in the wall, across the courtyard and into the house. I fold the blanket up, stash it in the cupboard in the hall. Collapse the wheelchair, store it back under the stairs. It’s done. I feel oddly deflated, as if I deserved a round of applause that didn’t come.

  I won’t be able to sleep yet. For some reason I have a strong urge to go and have a look at Helen’s house, to see if Mick’s lights are still on after his phone call, to see whether he is still waiting for Helen to come home or has given up and gone to sleep.

  I go out again and hurry down the alley to where I park my car. It’s not far to Helen’s house. I drive carefully, through the now deserted streets, my eyes prickling with fatigue. I leave the car across the road on the park side. I cross and walk briskly to the front gate. The lights are all off. Mick has given up and gone to bed. I look up at the dark windows. Which is her bedroom? I think it’s the one on the right. Mick’ll be alone in their double bed thinking Helen will come back at any moment. He’s oblivious that the expanse of sheet left by her absence is eternal now and it’s this that brings a sob to my throat.

  I try to walk away, but my feet won’t budge. Oh God, oh God, what have I done? I lean on the gate post, a concrete thing that is cold to the touch, rest my head on it. I bang my forehead against it several times.

  At last, I manage to get back to the car, and I drive home fast. I’m shaking as I open the door in the wall. I go straight up to the music room, desperate for him.

  Jez sleeps so silently it takes me a while to believe he’s alive. He’s rolled on to the far side of the iron bed now, so I’m able to get in without disturbing him. I sidle up close and lift his hair gently. I slot my lips into the valley in the back of his neck. Draw in the tangy scent of his hair through my nose. Rest my hand on the sharpening mound of his hip bone. I have him. They cannot take him away from me. I’ve killed for him. Now I’ve gone this far, I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep him as he is, with me, forever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Tuesday

  Sonia

  It must be nearly dawn by the time I slip back to my own room. There sleep overwhelms me. I try to fight it but my body won’t respond. In the end I have no choice but to give in.

  When I do finally wake, it’s to the sound of water. It gushes off the roof and down the pipes outside, gurgles along the gutters in the alley. I drag on my kimono and go to the window. The river’s veiled in sweeping curtains of rain. The tide is low. I stare out at the brown water. Seagulls have lined up along one of the barges. They come when there’s a storm out at sea, beyond Sheppey and Canvey Island. They think the river here is safe.

  Something orange startles me, out on the water near the moored barges. It’s Helen’s skirt. She has floated to the surface, come back to accuse me: How could you do this to me? I was your friend. I close my eyes. Breathe deeply. When I open them I see that the orange is a plastic oil drum like the one Seb and I used to make our raft. I feel hot and cold at the same time. I’ve caught Jez’s bug. Must have a fever. That’s why the memory that comes is so shiny and raw. So close up.

  The night I went to fetch Seb, I paddled through the rain, in the fading light, my heart full of anticipation and longing. I’d taken Tamasa, the raft we’d made together, obeying Seb’s intructions. The eclectic range of rubber tyres, plastic oil cans, driftwood and rope. Carrier bags stuffed with polystyrene collected from the shore. Our bu
oyancy aids. I’d repaired Tamasa single-handed, planning the day I’d set out to get him. Now I had his letter and I knew the time had come. I dragged the raft from under the coaling pier. It would have its official relaunch once Seb was back on this side of the river. We’d do it together with a bottle of something. Wine or cider. We were too sophisticated now to use a beer bottle.

  I set off as soon as I saw him signalling with his torch from the Isle of Dogs. We would be together, after months of enforced separation. Adrenalin pumped through me as I pushed off into the water. I rowed myself out of the pier’s shadows, into the brown swirl. Once on the water I sensed an energy I’d never known before. I could conquer the river itself! The tide was high, I could navigate easily, there was no wind, just a calm that I now realize preceded the storm. I used my paddle to take the raft across to the other side. It glided so much more smoothly than the times we’d gone out together, and I was proud of myself, bursting with it. Too proud to notice the change in the weather, the fact the water continued to rise, covering the green tideline on the river walls, lapping over the edge of the footpaths.

  I was beside myself with wanting to see Seb. I yearned to feel his tall, newly filled-out body wedged close to mine between the fish boxes and the buoyancy bags on our way back. The waves lifting us as we lay together. We would barely notice the cold that splashed our faces, soaked our clothes.

  The light was waning. Clouds that had been hidden behind buildings gathered overhead, the last rays of a low sun left an ominous sickly hue in the sky and threw everything else into shadow. Over to my right was the landing stage, the pillars holding it up and the dark crevices between them were almost obliterated by the rising tide. I knew Seb was waiting. He was watching for me, preparing to leap aboard as I expertly brought the raft to shore. I was eager for his praise, for his tacit admiration as I arrived to take him home.

  Later, they asked why Seb hadn’t come the way anyone else would have done. Got a bus over Tower Bridge, or walked through the foot tunnel from the Isle of Dogs. If he had to take the river, why not borrow a boat? Why did he want me to bring him home on a raft? In those days, there were fewer options for crossing this loop of the river. No Docklands Light Railway. No tube to North Greenwich. Seb had no choice. That’s what I told them, though I knew he could have come another way if he’d wanted to. Hitched a lift through the Blackwall Tunnel, or taken a train from central London down to Westcombe Park or Maze Hill. I knew it was in Seb’s nature to do things in an original way. He was always on a quest for new experiences. Knowing Seb, he might have decided we weren’t returning to Greenwich at all. He might have chosen to sail up to the Tower, or drift down to Dartford when the tide turned. The difference between the raft and the ferry is on a raft you can go any way you choose, if you read the river right.

  There was another reason and it was my own. I was desperate to assure Seb I understood the river like no one else. I could navigate it on a raft in the rain as night fell, no problem. He asked me to bring Tamasa and I would not back down. Even when I saw the storm clouds gather. My pride was what undid me, undid Seb. I thought I was equal to the river’s own will.

  I turn from the window. I feel dizzy, light-headed. Have to hold on to the walls as I go down to the kitchen. I need some sweet tea. The phone rings in the living room and doesn’t stop. I don’t want any more intruders. I don’t want human contact with anyone other than Jez. Neither do I want to step inside the room, but I’m afraid the stench of Helen’s vomit may have lingered. I push the door and sniff. There’s only the faint whiff of wood smoke. I check under the chairs, the cushions. Steady myself with my hands on the sofa. Where’s her body now? It will come back. Like the sea, the river returns its dead. Maybe not today. And, if I’ve gauged the tide right, not here. Blackwall Reach perhaps, or further down, at Woolwich or Tilbury. My mind swings, a boat on its mooring, back to last night, her legs twitching as I leant upon the cushion, the curdled vomit as I drew it out of her mouth. Her orange miniskirt bobbing in the dark water.

  I go outside, compelled to look over the wall, convinced the river will have left something. The rain’s stopped and the tide is still quite far out. I scan the shoreline for Helen’s cerise scarf, a garnet earring. A boot. There’s nothing but stones and clay pipes, a white plastic casket. It’s a common sight down here. Caskets dropped into the river after the ashes have been scattered. Ashes of people who’ve died a natural death and been given a proper send-off. I shudder. Helen wasn’t. But she asked for it. She should never have come to me and expected me to help her. I’ve enough to deal with.

  It’s muggy. A stench comes off the riverbed. Burnt rubber maybe. A lifeboat bounds past, and waves flop onto the shore. After I don’t know how long, I turn. It’s done, I can’t go back. Thoughts jump about in my head. The cushion. I must dry it. But the smell. If it’s still there, someone will find out. In the kitchen I pull it from the washing machine, sniff it, peg it to the airer to dry.

  At last I go up to see Jez in the music room. Everything’s worth it for this. He’s awake. A single ray of sunlight from the high windows lights up the hairs on his arm where it lies brown above his head against the white pillows.

  He lets me go to him. I put my arms around him. And as he rests his head against my breast, I imagine that he knows, without me telling him, that Helen is dead.

  I’ve got to visit my mother, and then I want to spend the day with Jez. But as I open the courtyard door an hour later, I see Alicia’s sitting on the wall, in the place Helen sat, right before I pushed her. If I shoved Alicia right now, she would topple over the wall and go exactly the way Helen went, only backwards rather than face first. Except that she probably wouldn’t die. One thing I’ve learnt is that not all people die that easily.

  Alicia’s wearing fingerless gloves, and a scarf. She’s smoking. Her eyelids are heavy with black eye-liner. She gets up and treads the end of her cigarette out under her foot.

  ‘Helen’s disappeared,’ she says.

  I stare at her. After a while, I say, ‘What do you mean, disappeared?’

  ‘She never went home last night. And there was a weird text from her.’

  ‘In what way, weird?’

  ‘They wouldn’t show it to me.’ She looks straight at me and I see the fear in her eyes, the tears waiting to fall.

  ‘The police are linking her disappearance to Jez’s.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I say, impressed at how rational I am able to sound, even now. ‘Helen didn’t come home last night. That hardly constitutes a disappearance.’

  ‘She always comes home, Mick says. Even when she’s drunk. He says she must have freaked out. But I’m frightened there’s someone out there who wants to hurt us in some way, first Jez, then Helen. Who’s going to be next? I’m scared!’ Her voice has risen to a hysterical pitch.

  ‘Hey. Slow down,’ I tell her. ‘Let’s get this straight. What was odd about this text? Where does Mick think Helen’s gone? Why does he think she’s “freaked out”?’

  ‘He’s afraid she’s done herself in.’ She begins to sob. ‘I don’t believe she’d do that. But he says she’s been fraught since Jez disappeared. And the police have been on at her.’

  ‘What about your mother? Shouldn’t you discuss this with her?’

  She gulps. ‘My mum moved out.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘He’s at work.’ She glances quickly up at me and away again. ‘I thought . . . Helen said you were the only person she could talk to. Apart from me. She says you listen properly. You don’t gossip or take sides.’

  ‘Did she?’

  She takes a deep breath. Wipes her eyes on the back of a hand.

  ‘I just don’t think the police are doing a very good job of looking for Jez. I found this butt end . . .’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘But they haven’t been searching for him properly. They haven’t looked in places like that.’ She points at the power station and moves her arm so it swings over to indicate th
e coaling station.

  ‘It’s the perfect hiding place. If I wanted to hold someone hostage, I’d find a place like that. No one goes there. It’s derelict, isn’t it?’

  Alicia thinks the way Seb used to. Without logic. But with a sense that the impossible could become a reality. Her idea is ridiculous, but that doesn’t mean the concept isn’t appealing.

  ‘You must know a way in. It’s almost next door to you.’

  I look up at the dark iron arm that once used to transport coal off the boats. Where it meets the huge white walls of the power station, there’s a high fence, topped with barbed wire, crisscrossed with netting. The windows are boarded up.

  ‘It is used actually. And it’s extremely well patrolled. The police know Jez isn’t in there.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘CCTV cameras. The place is infested with them.’

  She stares at me now in a confrontational way.

  Then it comes to me. This is a sham! Alicia isn’t stupid. She’s that meddling kid I recognized in the pub last night. She’s put the roach, Jez’s plan to get the music from my house, and Helen’s disappearance together in her mind and solved the mystery the police are so slow to unravel! She wants to go into the power station because from the high windows in there you can see straight down into my house. My palms start to sweat.

  ‘OK, OK! If you’re so certain he’s in there, let’s go up there shall we? Let’s go and take a look.’

  This won’t take long and then I’ll be shot of her one way or another.

  Matt’ll bend the rules for me, I know he will. We always have a little chat when I pass. And I know he thinks that since I’m usually alone, I must be available. He’s been after me for years, never lets me go by without trying it on. He’ll let me take Alicia on a ‘guided tour’.

  And I’m right.

  ‘What’ll you do for me if I risk my job and let ’er in?’ Matt asks, his eyes twinkling. ‘I don’t do favours for nothing you know.’