by Rachael Blok
81
Jenny hears her name.
She doesn’t feel cold. Finally some warm settles within her. And she feels light-headed, as though she’s thick with wine. She tries to open her eyes, but the lids are too heavy. Her lips are sealed shut. She doesn’t recognise the voice, and then she hears it again, and this time it’s Will: Will. He’s come.
The weight is heavy on her. The water is rising, and she can’t see Becky. Her tongue, despite all the wetness, is dry and sticking, and she musters strength to open her mouth to croak out her name, but it’s only partially complete. She only hears the last falling syllable: ‘ky’.
Pushing hard, she manages to roll the weight a little, but it falls back. And then the darkness closes in.
The sound of her name becomes faint.
Then nothing.
82
Maarten lands with a splash; the water flies up and he sees Will leaning down, arms outstretched.
Klaber lies on top of Jenny. There is only her head and shoulder visible, and the water in the drain is constantly rushing, slowly rising. Scanning for Becky, he can see her on the other side of the two bodies.
‘Is she alive?’ Will’s shout is frantic.
But Maarten reaches Becky first – she’s the child, and he bends down, flinching at the chill on her flesh.
‘Here!’ he shouts, and cursing because he knows that moving her could be entirely the wrong thing to do, if she’s fallen badly, if she’s had a blow to the head. But he can’t leave her in this water; if she is to live, then it’s her only option. He lifts her high, gently. She is the prize. Children: life’s finest prize. And Will scoops her up.
In the distance, Maarten can hear the siren of the ambulance, the backup arriving, and he turns his attention to Jenny.
Looking down at Klaber, anger grips. But he pushes him off Jenny, forcing himself to focus on her, on what he can save rather than rage.
The water has begun flowing higher than her hairline, and runs across her brow. Kneeling, he lowers his cheek to her mouth, and tilts her head up and back. There is the faintest of breath, but her pulse is slow.
‘She’s alive, Will,’ he says, and lifting her too, raising her above him, she is passed up and out.
And all he can do now, is pray.
83
Jenny can hear the sirens. They’re getting closer. She can feel the sleepiness taking over. The cold, so cold, but she’s stopped feeling it. Stopped feeling. But Will is here, and his hand is warm. His voice, babbling: ‘Sorry, I love you, sorry, stay alive, hold on, stay with me.’ His wishes land softly, a caress, a warmth.
Jenny looks at his face and reaches out, trying to stroke his cheek. Her hand is heavy, her strength fading. ‘Please, Jen, don’t leave me. Stay with me.’
His cheek feels how it did when they had first got together, after a night out at the very beginning: unwashed, rough, close.
84
The ambulance doors bang a distance away. Maarten holds Becky’s hand like it’s made of glass. She’s still breathing, and it won’t be long before they’re here, to look after her, to make her whole. He lays his jacket over her, but doesn’t want to press too tight. To break her.
He had lifted Klaber out. He lies sprawled in the snow.
Already the sounds of running feet are behind him. And yet there’s a second before anyone will catch up with him, and he wonders whether Klaber will see the streets outside of jail again. Will he ever reach the full justice of the law? But the man lies broken before him. The fall into the drain, the angle of his body… He stares at him, Seb Klaber, Seb: bleeding at the side of his head, and the sight takes his breath away. He’s nothing now.
Seb Klaber, broken, twisted. His good looks, his grace. He looks so innocent. Blood darkening his pale skin. Insubstantial.
What lurks beneath, blood so easily spilled. He had always thought they were a perfect couple: both a story of such success, coming from instability, broken homes; so contained, so driven. But so different. Imogen, vigilant with the law, tenacious. Yet, hidden in plain sight, here lay the gritty truth of human frailty, its violence and its fear: the demons and the knives.
‘Thank you,’ he says, lifting his eyes upwards, to the air, across the ripples, thinking of the girl who has almost been lost, and of the daughter mourned by the city. And whatever forces beyond his fingertips had saved her.
He looks to Jenny, Will bent over her, crying, stroking her brow. ‘Thank you,’ he says, almost silently. And his voice disappears into the wind.
85
The Dorringtons have arrived, and sit in the ambulance, listening to the paramedics reassure them about Becky: cold incapacitation and the beginnings of hypothermia, but her body temperature hasn’t dropped dangerously low, and she’s responding well, even now. Her eyes had opened, for the briefest of moments. And she had seen her mother.
Maarten listens, heart still beating at breakneck speed.
The phone lights and it’s Adrika. She speaks quickly, in the hushed tones of the hospital, ‘They’re all here, sir. All at the hospital. The extended family of the Dorringtons waiting, almost celebrating. But the Hoardes are here too, just standing at the side. I spoke to them, told them how sorry we are. The father said he wanted to come, to see that it was over. But it’s not over for them. I don’t think it will ever be. Pickles is still unconscious, do I need to…?’
‘It’s Christmas Day. He’s not going anywhere, Adrika. The others are still in custody, aren’t they? Get someone to charge them. They should feel it. But not John, not today.’ If those men hadn’t spurred him into this. If those girls hadn’t bullied her in the first place, then maybe she’d never have crossed his path. Hopefully Tim Pickles will pull through, and then John need only deal with his grief, to try to survive it.
But the lights on the ambulance begin to flash, and they’re almost ready to leave. He rings off.
He moves to his car. Becky deserves an escort.
86
The ambulance doors are open, framing the lake, waiting to leave. She’s cold, shivering, but conscious. Immersion hypothermia they had said. Concern, but she’s in good hands. Antibiotics, staying still until her body regulates. Cuts seem mainly superficial. They will need to X-ray her cheek. But the cold had saved her, slowed her body functions down, stopped them collapsing; she had listened as they had explained to Will, who fussed around her, guarded her.
She lies still now, thinking of Finn, of holding him. Her arms crave him. It is the lack of him that will lead her to collapse. It’s him she needs.
The liquid midnight blue of the lake is empty. Well, almost. She blinks, and before her eyes appears the young woman. She smiles. And her features blur slightly, adjusting to those of a face she recognises from her dreams, the photographs: her own face.
‘Mum,’ she whispers. The black hair in the lake; the green eyes. It had never been Leigh, or Becky. Always her mother, the memory of her lying in wait, locked away. Opened with Finn, when she needed her mother the most. And in following the lake, Jenny had been able to save someone; the lake hadn’t claimed them all.
Jenny mistrusts death, ever present, the imprint of a life surely never leaves the ground, the lake, it is soaked up, waiting to find a release. It has always been her mum, waiting for her. This new memory, the nearness, the water: she flows through Jenny.
If she had to decide where it all started, she still couldn’t stick a pin in a timeline. Time has changed. Its softness, its malleability has pulled apart her ability to make sense of a day. In its fluency, it mocks the dead. It seems they can peek around the corners of the future, and fade back into the past. Her mother stands before her now, years after her death. The sense of her, the sound of her urgent voice: ‘Jenny! Jenny!’
And without any shock, or sense of surprise, she can remember. She can remember seeing her mother, struggling; feeling her clothes cling to her body as she hid in the willow tree, crying and watching her mother flailing, fighting. Water had made her s
ocks soggy, and in her shoes she had balled her toes as she had screamed: ‘Mummy!’ And her mother must have heard her, as the arms, waving, had swung high in the air, calling her name, grasping: ‘Jenny! Jenny!’
As quickly as the form appears, it melts from where it came. The urgency has lifted. And into the water, to find a final peace without dreams.
Black hair, bloated garments aslant, floating on the lake. If Jenny were to reach out her hand, in the night, when the world sleeps and time bends itself through half-consciousness, through dreams, what would she touch?
Epilogue
New Year’s Eve
Jenny wakes suddenly, uneasy, in a skim of sweat. Has he stirred? She leans to look for Finn, and his breath, warm and milk-scented, blows against her cheek. But it is nothing, a fragment of a dream that slipped in and out as she woke; the heat is heavy in hospital, and there is little to do other than nap. Finn’s buggy is wheeled up against her bed, and Will sits beside them, dozing in the chair. He hasn’t moved for the week.
The light from the huge window glows violet as the bright sunlight dims and night dips over the tiny city. Jenny relaxes back into her pillow, watching the colours shift, the smooth shades of evening deepening, ready to let in the new year. The breeze from the vent is fresh, cold. The snow has slowed, and has begun melting, seeping away; a carpet of early snowdrops lies around the verge of the hospital.
They have said she can go home tonight, before New Year’s Eve takes hold. The matron, often so busy, so brisk, had put her hand on Jenny’s after check-up that morning: ‘No place to be at new year, not after what you’ve been through. You deserve the night back at home. Plucky, that’s what you’ve been. And that lovely husband of yours. I’ve never seen anyone so committed. He’ll take proper care of you, no doubt.’
Home. The sound of the word had rushed at her, like an embrace. And Matron was right – Will had not left her side. He had brought Finn in every day, from the first chime of visiting hours. He had quietly shooed away his parents and had managed her father well, who had been shaken to the core, addled with the weight of his revelations, with his hesitancy.
Her dad leaked a tear that morning, when she had hugged him, he had felt older, more fragile. ‘Jenny, pet,’ he had said, as he had kissed the top of her head. But it isn’t his fault. And the city isn’t spooked for her. If anything, her mother feels more real than she has ever been.
Jenny is feeling better. She is feeling real, present: herself. For the first time in quite some time.
The door opens, and Will stirs but doesn’t wake, as Maarten Jansen steps in quietly.
‘Jenny.’ He smiles. ‘I hear you’re out tonight?’
‘Yes, and Becky?’
‘Not tonight, but in the next few days. I wanted to come to say good luck. Becky is doing well. She was terrified in that stable, but he kept her fed and watered, and until the night he brought her to the lake he never touched her. We think he abducted her to keep her quiet about Leigh. According to his records, Becky was the next child he saw after Leigh. I have no doubt he would have repeated this pattern if he hadn’t been stopped. He said these were children who needed him, but I think once he started, any child would be a potential victim. He might reason to himself he was helping him… Deep down he must have known he’d have to kill Becky eventually, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it until things got desperate. Nic and Sanne are visiting in there now.’
Jenny thinks of Becky. Jess Dorrington had been to visit, and had held Jenny in a wordless embrace. She had felt her tears slide down her neck, and they had both cried. ‘Thank you,’ had been all she’d managed.
‘And then that’s it? It’s over?’ Jenny says.
‘For you, and Becky,’ Maarten says. ‘For both of you.’
There’s a pause. And Jenny thinks of Leigh, of her family. And there had been the teacher who was recovering, but he would be OK. He is only young. Collateral damage from an assault, an act of hubris. An evil.
‘How’s DI Deacon?’ she asks.
‘She’s got a lot to deal with. She didn’t know… I haven’t really seen her. There were police interviews, procedures…’ His face is impassive, and Jenny knows him now, knows that this precise tone – the clarity in delivery – belies his empathy rather than denoting a lack.
‘His death…’ Maarten begins. ‘It finishes things, doesn’t it; it’s cleaner.’
‘It’s more than he deserves,’ she says. But she doesn’t know – how long would jail have held him for? To have him back on the streets at any point would have been too soon. Imogen Deacon will have her own peace to find.
Jenny can’t think of anything to say. Do you ever really know someone?
‘Happy New Year, Jenny,’ Jansen says, voice just above a whisper, and he smiles.
He is right. For them, it is over. And for that, she can be eternally thankful.
‘Happy New Year to you too,’ she says, and it is. The ghosts of the night, the limberings in her brain, the figures in her mind – there is peace.
For Jenny at least, it is a happy new year.
It really is.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
Rachael Blok’s next book is coming in autumn 2019
Acknowledgements
About Rachael Blok
An Invitation from the Publisher
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my brilliant agent Eve White and her assistant Ludo. I’d be nowhere without them. And huge thanks to all at Head of Zeus, in particular my editor Laura Palmer. She understood the novel exactly as I hoped it might be understood.
I’d be lost without my CBC writing group and my book club. Ella deserves a thank you in lights for reading every version of this novel in its entirety.
Thank you to my friends who have lived this one with me. There are lots of you, but for the reads and advice big thanks to Rachael, Imogen, Vic, Marielle, Cathy and Emma.
Not least, thanks to St Albans, both the real one, and the slightly blurred one I’ve created here.
And finally, a huge thanks to my parents and sister, who are endlessly supportive, and my amazing husband and two children.
About Rachael Blok
RACHAEL BLOK grew up in Durham and studied Literature at Warwick University. She taught English at a London Comprehensive and is now a full-time writer living in Hertfordshire with her husband and children. This is her first novel.
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First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Rachael Blok, 2018
The moral right of Rachael Blok to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781788547994
ISBN (XTPB): 97817885
48007
ISBN (E): 9781788547987
Jacket photograph: Katya Evdokimova © Arcangel
Jacket design: Anna Green
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