The Shadow Year

by Hannah Richell

  She waits for him to reappear, and when he does he surprises her by being at least another ten metres or so out from where he went down. He bursts through the water like Rosie, shaking his hair and gasping for breath and the collie dog, not wanting to miss out, leaps in after him. Lila sits on the rotting tree stump and squints into the sunshine, watching them play together in the lake as she picks at flecks of furry moss growing on the fallen tree trunk. Even she has to admit it looks like fun.

  ‘So,’ he says, when he finally emerges, his skin pink and covered in goosebumps, ‘first lesson tomorrow?’

  Lila laughs and shakes her head. ‘We didn’t shake on it.’

  ‘Oh come on.’

  ‘Honestly, I wouldn’t be any good.’ She eyes the darker water further out and can’t help a little shudder.

  ‘What is it you’re worried about?’

  Lila thinks about her dreams. Falling. Drowning. She doesn’t imagine there is much difference between the two. ‘I – I . . .’ But she can’t explain it. ‘It’s too cold for me.’

  ‘Well,’ says William, drying himself off with his vest, ‘if you change your mind, you know where I am.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She smiles with relief. ‘But I don’t think there’s any chance of that.’

  She sees the swimming costumes hanging on a rail in the supermarket just a couple of days later. They swing limply next to shelves of summer sandals and plastic sunglasses and are cheap at only ten pounds each. Lila eyes them, circling the rail once, then moves on to the next aisle before she can do anything so foolish as to put one in her trolley. She’s not going to learn to swim. No way.

  It’s only as she queues at the checkout that she has a sudden change of heart. There is a memory stuck in her mind, of Rosie bursting through the water, grinning like an idiot with that big stick in her mouth.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ she says apologetically to the woman waiting in line behind, and she runs to the swimwear display, grabs the first one she can find in her size, and flings it onto the conveyor belt behind the rest of her groceries. What the hell, she thinks. It’s only a tenner.

  They start the following week. Lila is still reluctant but the weather is surprisingly mild for April and the sight of the sun playing upon the surface of the lake helps to dampen her fear a little. ‘We’ll start slow, here where it’s shallow,’ reassures William. ‘Just a few basics. You can practise putting your face in the water, blowing bubbles, a bit of doggy paddle. I’ll be right here with you, OK?’

  Lila nods and tugs self-consciously at her swimsuit. She feels like a little kid with her goose pimples and her knocking knees.

  William guides her out into the lake. Through the clear water she sees tiny pebbles glistening on the bottom and fronds of green weed undulating in the wash from their feet. She squeals as the cold water rises up around her thighs. ‘You lied. It’s freezing.’

  ‘You’ll be all right once you’re in.’

  She gazes out at the dark centre of the lake and tries to swallow down the fear rising like bile in her throat. ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Don’t think, just do as I say.’ They step out further until the water is up to her chest. It is so cold she’s not sure she can feel her feet any more. ‘Now, we’re going to lean forwards and blow bubbles through our mouths. Put your face right in the water and blow. OK? On three. One. Two. Three.’

  She feels like an idiot, like a little child being instructed by her father, but she does it anyway, copying exactly what William does.

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘When your face is in the water, you blow out, not in. That’s the first lesson mastered. See, it’s easy.’

  She tries to smile through chattering teeth.

  ‘Now let’s move on to basic doggy paddle. You need to scoop the water with your hands, long arms. See.’ He holds out his hands to show her what he means and she copies him again, scooping through the water with long pulling movements. ‘Excellent.’

  The lesson continues until Lila can’t feel her face, let alone her feet. ‘I’m so cold. I have to go in.’

  William nods.

  ‘OK. Let’s see if you can put it all into practice. I want you to swim for the shore.’ She gives him a look. ‘Go on. Just launch yourself off the bottom, kick your legs and pull with your arms. Keep your head out of the water. Think about how Rosie does it.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I c-can’t.’

  ‘You want to get out, don’t you? Well, that’s the quickest way, trust me.’

  She eyes him, then, before she can chicken out, she kicks up off the bottom and flails madly through the water. All she is thinking about is getting out of the godforsaken lake and getting warm and dry. Somewhere in the back of her mind she hears William’s instructions, scoop the water, kick with her legs, knees together, not too much splash, and before she knows it her knees are grazing the bottom of the lake. She has made it back at least three metres towards the shore, unassisted. She staggers out of the water and wraps herself in a towel, watching from the bank as William swims a little longer. By the time he emerges her teeth have stopped chattering.

  ‘You did really well,’ he says. ‘You swam all by yourself.’

  ‘I just wanted to get out.’

  ‘Well it worked.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Tom will never believe it.’

  ‘You must tell him,’ insists William, ‘tonight.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Lila, doubtfully, drying her hair.

  ‘You can’t keep avoiding him like this,’ says William, pulling a sweater on over his head. ‘It’s none of my business,’ he adds, his face appearing again through the neck hole, ‘but my advice would be don’t let whatever it is that’s going on between you two drag on. It’s not good for either of you. You have to talk.’

  ‘We are talking,’ she says.

  He eyes her carefully and she can see he isn’t fooled.

  She sighs. She thinks about her dreams. She thinks about her certainty now that someone was with her when she fell. That Tom was with her. She knows she needs to talk to him. She knows she can’t keep shutting him out. She just doesn’t know how to speak aloud the sheer awfulness of what she is thinking. ‘It’s not that simple,’ she says finally.

  ‘Of course it’s that simple,’ says William, surprising her with his vehemence. ‘Look at you. You were terrified of the water and now you can paddle yourself along unaided.’

  ‘Only a couple of metres.’

  ‘Three metres and it’s three metres more than you could manage an hour ago. How good does that make you feel?’ He swallows. ‘You can’t spend your life hiding in shadows.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Lila, shaking her head.

  William gazes out over the lake. ‘Don’t wait too long, Lila. You might lose the one thing that’s most important to you.’

  She is surprised by the emotion in his voice and wonders if they’re still talking about her and Tom. ‘Are you OK?’

  William shakes himself then stoops to pick up his damp towel. ‘I’m fine.’

  Lila gives him a worried glance but he is already whistling for Rosie and turning away, making for the grassy ridge that will lead him back to the track and his Land Rover.

  ‘I’ll try to swim six metres if you come again tomorrow?’ she calls after him. He turns on the crest of the hill and raises his hand, then disappears from view.

  It takes three weeks and William coming almost every day to teach her, but by the end of those weeks, Lila has not only conquered her phobia but also mastered a passable breaststroke. She can dive down below the surface for pebbles and even float on her back spread-eagled like a star. Gradually, whether William comes or not, it becomes part of her daily routine to end each day with a splash in the lake to wash away the dust and dirt of her work. After a hard day sanding and painting or hammering and polishing, she likes to lie upon the water – not too far out, but just far enough to feel a detachment from the cottage and the land around her, to feel herself weightless upo
n its surface. For just a moment, surrounded by the vast bowl of land, the valley rising up all around her, she feels her insignificance. She is nothing: a dandelion seed floating on the surface, a drifting water bug, the reflection of a cloud.

  She uses her hands to make tiny sculling movements in the water, just as William has shown her, to hold her position. She slows them and brings them to rest on her stomach then inhales deeply and closes her eyes. One more minute and she’ll return to shore. She feels the chill now, feels the goose pimples prickling across her skin. She moves her hands over her belly, her skin cold and her abdomen firm to the touch. Her fingers slow. Then her eyes snap open.

  Her body has felt like this before. Her skin taut, her bones tired, her breasts aching and full. She recognises the sensation and her breath catches in her throat. Pregnant?

  Unable to hold the floating position while a maelstrom swirls in her mind, she flips over and begins to swim back to the shore, making a beeline for the pile of clothes she has left near the fallen tree.

  Valentine’s night with Tom: could it have happened then? She tries to recall whether she’s had a period since. She’s been so distracted with the cottage, with getting everything in order, the swimming lessons . . . could she really be pregnant?

  She hauls herself out of the shallows and reaches for her clothes, carries them back to the cottage, dripping and shivering, doing the calculations rapidly in her head. When she’s finally dressed and sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of tea before her, Lila tentatively explores her emotions; she tests them like someone walking across a creaking lake of ice, taking each step slowly, not quite daring to put her full weight down until she is certain it will hold.

  When Milly died, well-meaning friends and family had told them how sorry they were and a few had added, You’re young – you can always try again. To Lila the sentiment had seemed both thoughtless and cruel, as though they were trying to sweep her grief – her daughter – beneath a carpet. It took away from what they were feeling, what they were going through.

  Ever since then, Lila hasn’t allowed herself to think about getting pregnant again – and not just because of the state of her and Tom’s marriage, the absence of their sex life. Deep down, she’s known there can never be a replacement for her first child. The loss will always be there – a void that will never be filled. She supposes the truth is that she just hasn’t known if she is brave enough to put herself through it all over again – to try again.

  But now there is this. She sips her tea and looks out across the darkening lake. She could be pregnant again. The thought fills her with trepidation and a spiralling fear and the tiny flicker of something else too – is it excitement? She shakes her head. She isn’t sure. The only thing she can know for certain is that her world may have just tilted in a terrifying new direction.

  20

  APRIL

  1981

  The water is still cold, but after months of washing with icy flannels or laboriously heating water on the range, it’s a relief to be able to throw themselves into the lake and swim again. It’s bracing stuff but they can’t resist the lake’s lure.

  Kat’s routine now is to wake early every morning and wade into its depths. She pulls herself across the surface with a strong front crawl, enjoying the sensation of her muscles working, the exhalation of air from her mouth, the twist of her head followed by the quick inhalation, the oxygen recharging her body, flowing through her blood. It’s almost meditative, nothing but her and her breath and her limbs ploughing through the water. She can feel herself getting stronger, fitter, leaner – like an animal, all muscle and sinew and skin.

  In contrast, Freya is softening and ripening. Nearly seven months pregnant and she swells with promise, growing plumper by the day. She still seems ashamed to reveal the changes to her body, but like the rest of them, she can’t resist the water. Often she joins Kat in the lake but unlike her sister’s gruelling laps, Freya prefers to splash around until she has acclimatised to the temperature and then float upon its surface, the pale hump of her body rising up out of the water. ‘I feel weightless,’ she says. ‘I feel like nothing.’ Her voice is wistful. ‘It’s as if I could just float away.’

  Kat doesn’t look at her. She finds her sister’s belly and the plump curve of her breasts grotesque. She pretends she hasn’t heard and dives back beneath the water, pulling herself away from Freya, back towards the shore.

  Kat is careful to leave the water first that morning. It’s been a week or so since Freya has taken one of her long, solitary walks and she can sense her restlessness building. She is certain she’ll be leaving again soon on one of her mysterious outings and this time, when Freya leaves, Kat is determined to follow.

  She shivers her way across the damp grass and dresses quickly in jeans and a jumper then towel dries her hair. Up near the cottage she leans over a clump of spindly nettles and carefully picks a few young shoots, before heading into the kitchen where she makes a cup of bitter nettle tea. As the leaves steep, she stands at the window with her hands wrapped around the warm mug. She can hear Ben and Carla hooting with laughter somewhere upstairs but she pays them no attention. Instead, she watches as Freya wades from the water, drying herself with a towel then leaning awkwardly, trying to wrap her long, wet hair in the fabric. It doesn’t look easy, the bulge of her belly constricting her movements.

  Mac approaches from over near the lean-to. He says something to Freya that Kat can’t hear then holds his hand out for the towel. Freya nods, passes it over and turns her back to him. Kat blows across the hot surface of her tea but her eyes never leave the couple down by the lake. She watches intently as Mac reaches up and takes her sister’s long, damp hair between the folds of the towel. He rubs and rubs and Kat notices how Freya leans into him, just a little, how his hands hover for a moment over Freya’s shoulders, as if wanting to touch her but afraid to. Summoning his courage with a visible breath, he lowers them, finally, then spins her around to face him. Freya smiles up at Mac and their eyes lock for what feels like a very long time. Kat watches it all from the cottage and understands: Mac and Freya. How sweet, she thinks with a twist of resentment. Is there anything – or anyone – Freya won’t try to take?

  An hour later, Freya slips out of the back door just as the yellow sun strikes the tops of the alder trees. Kat gives her a couple of minutes’ head start then follows her out in the direction of the meadow. She breaks through the copse of trees just in time to see Freya heft herself awkwardly over the gate before turning right up the overgrown track. Kat hangs back for a moment then marches on in pursuit.

  The endless spring rain has made the track boggy. Kat slips and splashes her way up the hill, following her sister’s footprints through the claggy mud. Overgrown verges burst with dandelion flowers and white tufts of cotton grass. The hedgerows rustle with life. As she goes an inquisitive blue tit flits in and out of the thicket, urging her on with a cheeky staccato chirrup.

  Higher and higher they climb until the landscape changes, opening out from enclosed hedgerows and fields to scrubby moorland. It is harder for Kat to stay hidden. She drops back even further, keeping an eye out for the distant flash of Freya’s billowing white dress, but she needn’t worry; Freya doesn’t turn round once. Typical, thinks Kat, so trusting, so naive.

  It’s colder the higher up they go, the air clearer and crisper. The sky gapes wide open. Kat feels as though she’s walking right into it. It’s a barren landscape – nothing much but scrubby heather and bilberry bushes yet to flower and here and there a lonely rowan tree pushing up towards the sky.

  Freya strides on, no longer following a visible walking track, but still confident in her direction, as if guided by some inner compass. Kat follows behind doggedly, determined not to lose her.

  A little further on and Freya startles an unsuspecting red grouse from a clump of heather. As it takes flight, she reaches out a hand to the crumbling stone wall beside her, her other hand coming to rest for a moment on the swell of her
belly. Kat hangs back, her heart in her mouth, waiting for her sister to walk on but Freya doesn’t move and Kat wonders if she has been spotted. But it’s not Kat that has brought her to a standstill. Up on the moor, only twenty metres or so from where her sister stands, a red deer comes into view. Kat’s eyes widen. It is startlingly beautiful, yet to shed its elegant antlers, which point to the sky like the twisted branches of the rowan trees. Freya stands stock-still, facing off against the stag until a gust of wind catches the fabric of her dress, sending it billowing out around her legs. The movement spooks the animal and it rears away over the crest of the hill. Kat holds her breath, only releasing it when Freya begins to walk again. She can’t believe she hasn’t been up here before. It’s too easy, at the cottage, to forget about the beauty all around them. She’s become lazy. She’s forgotten to appreciate their wild isolation.

  They walk and walk until gradually the landscape shifts once more, assuming a more cultivated feel with stone walls and stretches of barbed wire fencing, tufts of ratty sheep’s wool locked onto the spikes and flapping in the breeze like tiny white flags. Kat spies a field of gambolling lambs and then further, in the distance, a grey stretch of gravel road leading towards a thin plume of smoke wafting high into the air, below which Kat can just make out the chimney stack it drifts from. She understands, at last, what it is they are heading towards: a farm, nestled high up on the moors.

  She hangs back even further now. Having come so far, the last thing she wants is to be discovered by someone working in the fields, but when Freya draws near to the sprawling stone farmhouse, she realises she is in danger of losing sight of her altogether, and so she speeds up again and is just in time to hear the barking of a dog as it greets Freya in the yard. Kat peers round a crumbling wall and sees a golden Labrador bumping against her sister’s legs.

  Alerted perhaps by the sound of the dog, a dark-haired woman opens the front door and stands there, looking out. She wipes her hands on a checked tea towel and when she sees Freya playing with the dog, gives an exclamation of surprise. Kat watches open-mouthed as Freya steps up to the doorway and into the arms of the woman. They greet each other like old friends before Freya is drawn into the warmth of the farmhouse and the weathered door closes behind her, shutting Kat off from the unfolding scene within.