Tideline

by Penny Hancock

  ‘How about a pint next time I see you at the Anchor?’

  ‘Cor, is that it? You’re a tough cookie, Sonia.’

  ‘Come on, Matt. She’s only a kid, doing some project on unusual buildings. Does she look like a terrorist?’

  ‘Never judge by appearances, is what they teach us in security,’ he says, but he hasn’t so much as glanced at Alicia. His eyes lock into mine. ‘I expect a smile from you at least. Go to the main entrance and I’ll bring you both a hard hat. But you’d better keep schtum about this. I’ll be in deep shit if it gets out.’

  I enter the power station followed by the girl whose lip-glossed mouth has sucked at Jez’s neck. I’m totally unprepared for the effect the place will have on me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Tuesday

  Sonia

  The towering walls of the power station and its four massive brick chimneys have formed the dilapidated backdrop to my life for as long as I can remember. But I haven’t been inside it for years. I follow Matt and Alicia across the reception area and into the dark belly of the power station, gazing up at the lofty ceilings. That a human mind could conceive of, and then construct a covered space of these proportions is bewildering. Tiled in white bricks from floor to ceiling, this vaulted part of the building forms a vast ceramic dome. The Tate Modern seems diminutive in comparison. We go up steep, quaking stairways, along metal platforms that sway as we walk. Past towering black tanks that Matt tells us house gigantic turbines. Cranes dangle claws high above our heads.

  ‘OK. I’d better get back down,’ Matt says. ‘You can have fifteen minutes and then I’m coming to get you. If anyone questions why you’re here, call me and I’ll do the talking. OK?’

  The power station is like an unexplored chamber of my mind. Lately I’ve become frightened by the realms I’m discovering within parts of myself I never knew were there. The level of passion aroused by Jez is one of them. At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve found new peaks of fury. And within the walls of the power station, these extremes of feeling open into even larger, wider chambers. For the first time I let the fact I’ve killed for Jez carry me up on a high. I stand for a minute in a haze of euphoria. I let my determination to hold on to him fill me with dark and intense loathing for Alicia. I have to hold on to a railing and wait. Let this vertiginous feeling subside.

  After our tour, Alicia sits in despair at the top of a flight of stairs. She hugs her knees. Frowns.

  ‘Can’t we go out? Onto that bit you can see from the river path?’ she asks.

  ‘Why would you want to go out there? You can see it from the path anyway.’

  She shrugs.

  ‘It gives a good view.’

  It gives a good view alright. Of the river, yes, but also of my house. She knows more than she’s letting on. She wants to look into the music room.

  Alicia stares down at the concrete floor, a dizzying distance below us. Matt and the other technicians who keep the engines working are nowhere to be seen. A girl could easily die if she fell. I’d raise the alarm and the security guards would come running, and I’d be distraught. She’d fall in front of my eyes, perhaps banging her head on the iron stairway as she somersaulted to the floor, and be virtually dead by the time she hit the ground.

  Then another picture appears.

  I spotted them from below. A sultry day in September. The tide was up, tossing a scum of rubbish against the walls, lolly sticks, condoms, crisp packets, a baby’s dummy. I was on my way home from school. A bag weighted down with books banged painfully against my thigh, its strap cutting into my shoulder. Someone had been taunting me again, calling me a weirdo, a freak. And I didn’t want to go home either, because I knew my father was there.

  The shadows of the railings lay in stripes across the paved path. I stepped carefully between them because I’d lose Seb for ever if I stood on one. It was only as I came close to the power station and into the bigger, denser shadow of the coaling pier, that I glanced up, and the world shaded over entirely. It happened every time I saw Seb and Jasmine together. An eclipse inside my mind. That day, that moment, I was as lonely as I thought I’d ever be.

  I stood still and stared up at them. Seb saw me before she did. Our eyes met. Something in my expression must have convinced him. He walked to where Jasmine dangled her feet over the edge and pushed her from behind. Her dress spread out, a yellow parachute as she went down screaming, and landed with a belly flop in the dank high tide. Seb dived straight down after her as if he was going to rescue her. Instead he left her floundering amongst the scum and swam to where the pale-brown froth lapped at the top of the steps. He hauled himself up.

  ‘Sonia,’ he called and I went to him. He reached for my hand and dragged me to him. The water seeped into the bottom of my jeans but I didn’t care. Seb bit my neck, and my arms went around him. His mouth moved from my neck to my lips and glued itself so fiercely to mine it hurt. He pushed me so the back of my head was wedged on the stone step above, the water lifting my hair, and then he moved so he was on top of me. I shut my eyes and I didn’t care about the cold or the hard steps that dug into my back as he manoeuvred himself so that our bodies were sealed tightly between the stone and the water. At some point we heard Jasmine, her voice whiny with indignation from the path above us.

  ‘How dare you? How dare you?’

  She could say what she liked. Seb would never leave me now.

  We must have stayed there for hours because by dusk the tide had gone out. I lay in the mud, and Seb scooped handfuls of the sticky brown mush and spread them over me. He started at my feet, and the mud was warm like a blanket, only turning cold as the tide moved further out and the night air began to dry it. He spread it up my legs and across my thighs, on over my body and up to my neck. I tried to do the same to him, to give him the same peculiar sensation, of cold slime turning warm as it dried on the skin, but I couldn’t get the angle right and eventually I just lay and let him do what he liked. When he was finished he stood up and laughed.

  ‘The Tollund man,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?”

  ‘A man they found preserved in peat for thousands of years. He never rotted. He never grew old. That’s you.’

  I look at Alicia on the iron staircase. She starts to speak.

  ‘The police’s theory is that Helen got rid of Jez somehow that morning, then said she’d seen him in the afternoon. It’s horrible. It’s so scary! Helen would never have hurt Jez! But Maria says the police think she had a motive. To do with their history. Maria and Helen’s, I mean. I’m thinking, like, if I find Jez, it’ll prove them wrong. I don’t know what else to do. Helen would never have harmed Jez. She wouldn’t, would she? I know she drinks a lot. And she lied about being at work. But she’s a softy. Isn’t she?’

  I stare at her for a few seconds.

  ‘Go home, Alicia. You’re too young to deal with all of this. Leave it to the police.’

  She looks at me, her large green eyes glittering, and I’m afraid she’s going to cry again.

  ‘Here’s Matt. Our time’s up.’

  Back down on the river path I say, ‘Now go, get back to college or whatever it is you do. Try to forget, let the adults sort this out.’

  I watch her disappear forlornly down the alley, past my house and on towards the university. And as I watch her, I feel something turn over in my heart that hurts.

  I don’t like to betray a friend. But Helen’s already dead. And they’ve already almost reached their conclusions. I go straight to my car and drive round to her house. I haven’t been inside it for years, not since Kit was fifteen or sixteen. I venture up the front path that retains its familiar vulgar smell of privet, and bang on the door. One of Helen’s sons opens it. He slouches against the door frame as if he’s not used to holding up his own weight, which is considerable. His straw-coloured hair hangs over a face pockmarked with acne. How is it some boys go straight from child to adult? I can understand Helen’s inferiority complex. Her son and
Jez, there’s no comparison.

  ‘Hi Barney. Or is it Theo?’

  ‘Barney.’

  ‘I came to talk to your father. If he’s here.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He turns, leaving me in the doorway and yells, ‘Dad!’

  Mick appears from the kitchen, hair on end, eyes ringed.

  ‘Sonia. Come in.’

  ‘I got your message. Last night. Any news?’

  He walks ahead of me into their big, light kitchen that overlooks the garden at the back. There’s the lingering scent of Helen’s vanilla perfume in the air, a tube of the Mac lipstick she uses on the counter next to the fruit bowl. An enormous vase of gerberas. I’d forgotten Helen’s passion for cut flowers.

  ‘Can I get you a coffee? Tea?’

  ‘No, nothing. I just wanted to check how things were. I can’t be long. Has Helen been in touch?’

  He goes to the counter, picks up his mobile.

  ‘Read this.’

  I look at the text I wrote, keeping my head down as I make a show of examining it.

  ‘What do you make of it? I haven’t told the boys yet.’

  ‘It sounds a bit . . . final.’

  ‘It reads like a suicide note.’

  ‘I didn’t want to say.’

  ‘Tom thinks so.’

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘The family liaison man. He’s contacted the station. They’re starting a search this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh God, Mick, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I feel guilty.’

  ‘No. You mustn’t.’

  ‘You don’t know what’s been going on, Sonia. You’ve no idea what a tosser I’ve been. Unless . . . perhaps Helen’s talked to you?’

  I purse my lips, look at him and he nods.

  ‘It’s been fucking mad since Jez disappeared. I’m bollocksed. Can’t think straight. It’s no excuse, I know, to act like a complete twat. But it’s thrown everything.’

  He wears jeans that should have a belt holding them up. His T-shirt’s ridden up and a roll of white belly, stippled with smooth red hairs, protrudes beneath it. I see him clench his muscles, pull it in.

  ‘What’s happening, with the search for—’

  ‘For Jez? Not much. They’ve drawn a blank.’

  I nod. My mouth’s dry. Mick examines my face as if deliberating whether to tell me something. He sits down opposite me at the table.

  ‘Alicia – Jez’s girlfriend, found a roach she thinks was Jez’s on the river path. But it was too disintegrated to prove one way or another. Anyway they’ve already done a house-to-house enquiry down there. They came to you, didn’t they?’

  ‘They did.’

  He gets up, goes to the kettle and fills it at the sink. ‘Helen’s convinced they suspect her of something. They kept questioning her. Don’t know if she said anything to you?’

  ‘She mentioned something about it, last time I saw her.’

  ‘It’s true she was the last person to see Jez. And there’s something else. It meant nothing. It’s typical of Helen to be over-dramatic. You know what she’s like. Far too open with her feelings.’

  I wait.

  ‘You mustn’t let this go any further. The police picked up on the fact she was resentful of Jez for applying to a course Barney was going for. It’s hardly a motive, I know, but there is an unsolved mystery. She wasn’t at work that morning he disappeared. Yet she didn’t tell the police. She now says she was at the baths, but they’ve been making enquiries and even that doesn’t seem to be the case.’

  He gets a tin out of the cupboard and stands with a tea bag poised over a mug. I notice he’s wearing odd socks. No shoes.

  ‘She had this thing about Jez. An obsession almost. Thought Maria, Jez’s mother, had done a superior job to her. It sounds bonkers put like that. But I’m afraid Sonia . . . look, d’you mind me telling you all this?’

  ‘No, go on.’

  ‘Since Jez disappeared, I’ve been trying to console Maria. I think Helen might have imagined it was more than that. It would of course have fed into all her insecurity. Then last night she walked in on us. We weren’t doing anything. But it must’ve looked as if we were. She went ballistic. All our feelings were flying high. I said things I shouldn’t have said and I’m afraid. Truly afraid she took it to heart. I couldn’t bear it if I’d wrecked everything. I couldn’t bear it if Helen thought I’d given up on her and done something stupid and it was all my fault . . .’

  I keep looking at Mick, trying not to move my face.

  ‘They’re treating Helen going off as a possible suicide, possible hoax. Let’s pray she’s hoaxing. And who am I to blame her?’

  I need to speak, but I can’t. His eyes are full of fear. It’s clear that whatever Helen imagined he feels for her sister, deep down it’s still Helen Mick cares for.

  I begin to panic. What have I done to him? To Helen? To their whole family? I can’t do what I came to do. Frame Helen after all this. It’s too cruel. My heart’s racing. I need to get out of here.

  ‘If there’s anything . . . please ring. I’d be only too happy . . .’ I stand up and move towards the door. ‘Helen’s been such a good friend to me lately, it was lovely bumping into her again at the opera and spending an afternoon with her, she looked very well. She’s always beautifully dressed. More than anyone I know she can put colours together. Sorry Mick. But I have to go now.’

  As I reach the kitchen door, Helen opens it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday

  Sonia

  ‘Maria, this is Helen’s friend, Sonia,’ says Mick. This woman is dark, not mousy, and slim, not rounded. The eyes are Jez’s. Unmistakably Jez’s. The long eyebrows, the dark-brown irises with their half-closed lids. But in every other way she resembles Helen.

  Maria nods but doesn’t smile. Her face is pale, with lines etched all over it. She’s small like Helen, not more than five-four, it’s hard to imagine her giving birth to Jez. And of course she’s white, with that pasty skin that doesn’t tan. He’s inherited most of his looks from his father, that’s obvious. I feel instant animosity towards Maria, the way she’s walked into Helen’s life, messed up her marriage. If it wasn’t for her, Helen wouldn’t have come to my house last night. She wouldn’t be lying on the riverbed amongst the car parts and oil drums and shoe soles.

  ‘I’ve been chatting to Tom,’ Maria says, moving towards the kettle. She has none of Helen’s flamboyant style. She’s classically dressed, in a grey wool skirt and an expensive-looking blouse. Agnes B, I hear Helen say. The pushy mother whose husband is tired of her and whose son would rather not have to live with her. I don’t like her and I don’t expect her to like me. So I’m taken aback when she offers me coffee.

  ‘No, thanks. I was just leaving,’ I say, reaching for the door again.

  ‘We’re going through hell here,’ she says before I can get out. ‘You know about Jez, don’t you?’

  I nod.

  ‘Of course you do, everyone does. We don’t know how much more we can take.’

  She abandons the kettle, sits down and looks up at me. Her face is even more crumpled than I first thought.

  ‘Sonia lives in the River House,’ Mick says. ‘She’s the envy of middle-class Greenwich.’

  ‘Oh! That’s the house Jez went on about!’ she says, brightening a little. ‘He visited you there with Helen once. He used to say it’s where he wants to live when he grows up.’ She gives a tight-lipped smile as if to say, how absurd the young can be.

  ‘It’s in the most amazing position,’ says Mick. ‘Views across to the Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf.’

  ‘Yes, I remember him saying. And you have some kind of vinyl collection in a music room?’

  ‘Ah, that’s all Greg’s,’ I say.

  ‘Greg! Yes. I met him. At your birthday party, Mick.’

  ‘It was his album, the Tim Buckley, Jez was going to pick up the day he went missing,’ says Mick.

  ‘I introduced him to Buckley of course,’ says Ma
ria. ‘Though he likes to think it was his discovery. The arrogance of youth.’

  She looks at me, her thin smile seeking some kind of connection. ‘It’s funny how teenagers think our music’s cool. He even plays my old LPs at home! I never liked my parents’ music at that age. I guess we were the generation, we had it all. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. They’re envious. So they mimic us. But they don’t really understand it the way we do.’

  Tim Buckley. What was it Jez said about his music? The day he came to the River House? The day he played guitar to me as the afternoon grew dark, as he drained the red wine I should have saved for Kit. How for him playing music was ‘just like talking’.

  ‘It’s like that for me too,’ Jez had said. ‘You teach people to express themselves with their voices. I play the guitar for the same reason.’ It was Jez’s way of connecting with me, of acknowledging the uncanny way we understood each other. Maria’s got him wrong. Mothers never know their own children. Only I know the true Jez.

  ‘Maybe I should bring Maria round one day,’ Mick’s saying. ‘You’d like to see Sonia and Greg’s house, wouldn’t you, Maria?’

  ‘Of course. That’d be lovely,’ she says addressing me as if this were my idea. ‘Helen loves it too. She’s seen a bit of you lately, hasn’t she? You didn’t see her last night, did you?’

  ‘I’ve already asked her,’ says Mick.

  ‘I’d say she was bloody thoughtless, going off like this on top of Jez,’ says Maria, ‘if we weren’t all so ragged with worry. You know Sonia, it’s a living hell not knowing a thing. There’s a name for this . . . this grief. “Ambiguous loss”. There’s no closure. You don’t know when it will end. You keep on hoping, every morning you awake thinking perhaps it’s over. Perhaps it was a dream. He’ll be there, in his bed. Then the slow realization, the fear, the dread in the pit of your stomach, it all begins again.’

  I can only nod.

  ‘Helen didn’t talk to you about him, did she? Because we’re seriously beginning to worry that perhaps . . .’