Water Born (4 page)

We pile into the car. The engine's still running, and we're off and out of range in a few seconds.

We're quiet until we get back to ours. Dad turns the engine off and we both just sit, in our soggy clothes on the soggy car seats, staring straight ahead.

‘It was in my eyes,' he says. ‘The water was in my eyes.' He scrubs at his face with the hem of his T-shirt.

‘It's okay, Dad. It's only water. It's gone now.'

‘The mess in here,' he says, eventually.

‘It'll dry.'

He pulls the keys out of the ignition and holds them awkwardly in his hand, the edge of the key cutting into his palm.

‘Dad,' I say, ‘what just happened then? What's going on?'

‘They shouldn't be messing with water like that. Don't they know there's a hosepipe ban?'

‘I know. But they're just kids. They were just having fun.'

‘Fun,' he says.

‘Messing about with water. Didn't you ever do that when you were a kid?'

He turns to look at me. I think he's going to say something, but the words don't come. For the longest time, he just looks, and I feel like he's struggling with something, but I've no idea what it is and in the end it's too painful to watch.

‘Let's go inside,' I say.

FOUR

T
he screen flares into life when I open the laptop. It's not shut down or locked or anything. There's nothing stopping me.

I know I'm alone in the house. This morning Dad got his ratty old jacket out and ironed a shirt. They're taking on people at a call centre in town – the interviews are this afternoon. He's worked on building sites and in care homes in the past, but he's applying for anything and everything now: call centres, cleaning jobs, whatever comes up. Mum's on day shifts this week. I won't see her until half-five at the earliest.

Even so, I check behind me. No one's there, of course. I turn back to the computer, and realise that my hands are shaking. I hesitate. Do I really want to do this?

I search his files. Right at the top of the list:
Death by
Drowning
. So I didn't misread it. I take a breath and open it up.

It's a table. Columns and rows. The column headings are straightforward – Name, Date, Place, Notes – it's the contents that are creepy. I scan down the page, trying to take it all in.

The ages and locations vary. A two-year-old toddler, found dead in a back garden pond. A nineteen-year-old lad who jumped off a weir. But they've all got one thing in common. They all drowned.

I study the table for a little longer, then I look at the next most recently used file. It's a map with a couple of dozen pins in it, highlighting locations. I fire up the internet, open my email, quickly attach the
Death by Drowning
document and the map to a message to myself, and send it. I'll look at them properly later.

I log out of my email, close the site and move the cursor to the end of the search bar. I let it hover over the downward-pointing arrow. If I click here I'll see Dad's most recent searches. I feel uncomfortable doing this, a bit scared of what I might find out. It's like looking at someone's diary – you just don't do it, do you?

I screw up my eyes so I'm seeing the screen through the protective blur of my eyelashes . . . and I click.

A dozen items come up in a list. Each one has an icon at the left-hand side, a title in black and a web address in green underneath. I scan down, ready to click again, to banish the list as quickly as it came if I spot anything disturbing. It's
all
disturbing, but there's nothing X-rated. It's just news sites – a long list of news sites.

My breath catches in my throat as I look closer. My stomach twists and for a minute I think I'm going to be sick. They are all the stories from Dad's table. News reports about people dying in water.

I click through them. I move the cursor to ‘Bookmarks' and click again. Another list, but this is shorter. He's only bookmarked the stories about girls.

They seem to be in date order, the most recent first. The top link is a story about the girl in the reservoir. I know about her. On to the next one.

Authorities believe that they have discovered the body of 16-year-old Narinda Pau, missing for ten days. At about 6.30 p.m. on Saturday, investigators located a body at the bottom of a well near a field in Ledington, about 2 miles from the village of Oxlade where she lived with her parents and two brothers . . .

The body of a Watchet teenager was discovered on the beach at Minehead on Sunday and police are looking for clues as to what happened to her. Maddie Kaur, 16, was last seen on 17th May at the home where she lived with . . .

And on and on. Girls who drowned. Girls who look so alive in their photos. Girls who are all dead. So many faces. I don't think I'll ever be able to get them out of my head. But why are they in Dad's head? What's the connection with him?

For a long, sick moment the words ‘serial killer' hover behind my eyes. He can't be. Not Dad. But that's probably what every serial killer's family thinks, isn't it? Otherwise
they'd turn them in, or leave or something. No one could live with someone knowing they were like that, could they?

I think back to him losing it with the boy with the water pistol. I've never seen him like that before. He just snapped and it was like something took him over – his anger, I guess. He held that boy up for ages, just held him with one arm. Do I know him? Do I actually know Dad at all?

The palms of my hands are wet. My throat's dry and swallowing doesn't make a difference. I scan up and down the list of articles. Hang on, let's do this logically. A field in Gloucestershire, the beach at Minehead. None of these can have been anything to do with Dad. He was right here, wasn't he? At least he was here at eight forty-five in the morning and again at three-thirty in the afternoon. Could he drive somewhere in between, find a victim, deal with them and drive back by the time I got in from school? Could he disappear during the night? I don't think so.

And Sammi was with all her friends when she died.

So it can't be anything to do with Dad. But knowing that doesn't reassure me. There's something bothering him. Something to do with these girls.

I wish I hadn't started this. I wish I'd never looked.

I shut the internet and close the laptop. It's still only half past four. I've got time.

Misty pads after me into the hall. She makes to come up the stairs with me. ‘No,' I tell her, ‘get down. You know the rules.' She backtracks and sits on the hall floor, looking
up at me reproachfully.

I tiptoe upstairs, feeling like an intruder in my own house, and push open the door to Mum and Dad's room.

I used to come in here all the time when I was little. I remember standing in the doorway and announcing to a dark room: ‘I can't sleep.' ‘I've got a tummy ache.' ‘I had a nasty dream.' They never told me to go away. And their bed was a place of refuge – it smelled of washing powder, of the stuff Mum used on her hair to make it shiny, and of both of them. A good smell.

I walk over to the double bed and lean over to smell Mum's pillow. I know that this is a weird thing to do when you're sixteen, but still . . . and there it is. Honey and almonds. Mum.

I picture her head on the pillow, and Dad next to her, and suddenly I'm aware that this is where the stuff that happens between husbands and wives, men and women, goes on. Where they had sex.
Have
sex?

I straighten up. I want to get out of here – I feel dirty, inside my head and all over my body. My T-shirt's sticking to me. God, I'm gross. But I haven't even started. I need to do what I came for.

This shouldn't take long: it's a small room and there's not much in here. Either side of the bed, there are bedside cabinets, then there's a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. Each cabinet has a pile of books on it – his 'n' hers reading. They've both always loved books – they passed that on to me. The cabinet itself has a shallow drawer and a little cupboard underneath. But I can't bring myself to open a drawer. I've still got that three-letter word in my head, the
word I want to wash away with soap and water.

I move over to the wardrobe and open the door. Mum and Dad's clothes hang like empty skins on metal hangers. Underneath the clothes there are shoe boxes, stacked up on top of each other. A shoe box would be a good place to store other things. I take them out, one by one, and lift off the lids. No surprises here, and nothing behind the boxes at the back of the wardrobe. I replace everything and move on to the chest of drawers. I work my way down methodically, riffling through, feeling right to the back of each drawer. I try to switch off, be mechanical, but it's difficult when the stuff you're touching is other people's.

At the back of Dad's T-shirt drawer, my fingers find something different. I draw it out – a roll of notes, kept tightly together with an elastic band. I pick it off and count the notes. A hundred and seventy pounds. Money scrimped and saved by a man who hasn't had regular work for years. I roll it up and fasten it again, and put it back where I found it.

There's nothing unusual in the other drawers: T-shirts and jumpers, jeans and leggings, belts and pyjamas and vests.

So, the bedside cabinets.

I'm looking for clues about Dad, so I guess I start with his. I slowly pull out the top drawer. There are hankies and coins and a box of earplugs and a packet of condoms. Oh God. I don't want to do this any more.

I start scrabbling through. Let's get this over with. The other drawers are no more use. Socks and pants crammed in, that's all. I push the drawers back in and walk round to
Mum's side of the bed.

My phone pings and I jump. The noise is too loud in the hush of this room. I check the screen: a new text message. I can't look right now. I switch it off and put it back in my pocket.

I pull the top drawer out until it's nearly at the end of its runner. Inside is neat and tidy. A collection of little boxes, some open, others with lids, make-up, earrings, and rings, ribbons and buttons. It's actually beautiful, like a miniature world, or a doll's house. I don't need to take things out. It's all one layer, neatly on display. I open any closed lids, allow myself to get a little lost admiring the contents, remembering the sparkle of a pendant against one of Mum's floaty tops, or the way a set of earrings catches the light.

I'm ready to move on to the little cupboard underneath when something catches my eye. Right at the back, there's something poking out above the side of a button box. I move the box a fraction and draw out an envelope.

It's an ordinary-looking kind of envelope; brown and small. There are three handwritten words on the front, and a date and some initials:
Found with Nicola. 22/1/17. K. A
. The writing is crude – hardly joined up, almost printing.

I turn it over. The flap has been opened and taped shut again. There's a lump inside, the paper bulging at the bottom. I run my fingers over it, then hold it between my palms, testing the weight of it. I hold the envelope up to the window, but the paper's too thick to let any light through, give me any clues.

22/1/17. I would have been nearly two and a half.
And this, whatever it is, was found with me. I was found somewhere. Where was I?

Something in my brain flips. If I was found, does that mean I'm adopted? Is this for real? A secret they've both kept from me?

My legs buckle underneath me. I sit on the floor as the room around me fades, blurs, falls away. All I can see is the envelope in my hands. It's the only thing in focus.

A little brown envelope.

Found with Nicola
.

I can't stop now, can I? I mean, it can't get any worse.

I poke the end of my finger into the gap at one end of the flap, and work away at the tape, trying to tease it open in a way that I'll be able to stick back again. The envelope starts to tear and I give up trying to hide my handiwork. At the back of my mind I know that, one way or another, this isn't going back in the drawer.

I rip a little hole and peer inside. There's something metal inside. I hold my right hand flat, palm upwards, and tip the envelope. A round, smooth thing spills out: a pendant, followed by a chain. The pendant slips out of my hand, but the chain catches on my fingers, and then it's caught, suspended, swinging to and fro in a shaft of bright sunlight from the window.

And I get the weirdest feeling. The room's not here at all any more. The floor gives way
. And I'm falling, sinking, the breath shocked out of me by the cold. I drift down to a place sucked clean of colour and light. And someone says, ‘Got you,' like this is a game, but it's not another little girl or boy. It's a deeper voice and I don't like it. I've hit the bottom now and I crumple and grab blindly and my hand finds
something, a cold, cold pebble. No, colder than a stone. And my fingers close round it and get tangled in its tail . . .

Sweat trickles down my face and drips on to my hand. At the same time I hear the sound of a car pulling up outside. I scramble on to my feet, push Mum's drawer in, have a quick look round the room to check for any signs of intrusion and beat a hasty retreat. I've got the envelope in my left hand and the pendant still dangling from my right.

In my room, I stuff the envelope between my mattress and the wooden slats of the bed. Without really thinking I open the clasp of the necklace, reach behind me and put it on. I look in the mirror. My T-shirt has quite a high round neck. I pull it out in front a little and drop the pendant inside, then press the chain down towards my shoulders a little, tucking it away from view.

Found with Nicola
. It's mine, right? So it's fine to wear it. It can be
my
secret.

Dad doesn't shout out a hello when he comes through the front door, the way he usually does. I hear the door opening and closing, the scrabble of the dog's claws on the tiles and Dad's footsteps going into the kitchen. I go downstairs to find him.

He's got his back to me. His jacket is on the back of a chair and he's tugging at his neck, wrenching the tie off.

‘How did you get on?' I say.

He turns round and I don't need to see the shake of his head to know. His disappointment is written in his eyes.

‘Sorry, Dad.'

‘Two hundred and fifty of us for three jobs.'

‘Sorry.'

‘I'm starting to think I'll never work again.'

Standing there with his shirt sticking to his ribs, he looks defeated. The word ‘adopted' doesn't mean anything any more, even if it's true. He's my dad, and I love him. I walk over to him and put my arms round his waist.

‘You can be my manager when I'm rich and famous. You can carry my gold medals in a box when I do personal appearances.'

He gives me a little squeeze.

‘Ha, that's right. We've got that, haven't we, Princess? We've got your swimming. Gonna get you to the Olympics, aren't we?'

I rest my head on his shoulder, and I think of all the times he's taken me to practice, the hours he's spent watching me. The last couple of swims have been dire, but I know I can do better. I've got to, haven't I? I've got to do it for Mum and Dad, especially Dad. What else has he got?