Lost in the Lake

by A J Waines

  Rosie placed her hands deliberately on her thighs and carried on telling the story as if she was delivering a fairy-tale to a hooked audience. ‘Two hours later Mick was dead.’

  My pen came to an abrupt halt. Maybe this was important after all.

  ‘That second incident – when Mick came to a sticky end – happened soon after, when the concert was underway in the big hall,’ Rosie went on. ‘The Hinds’ residence is massive, all columns and staircases. Everyone was mingling, sipping glasses of champagne and we’d just started the last piece when there was a kerfuffle. A number of guests were pushed aside and chairs toppled over. Several women screamed and a man wearing an anorak, certainly not a guest, ran through the hall and up the stairs. The four of us looked at each other mid-crescendo; we all recognised him as the interfering bloke who’d very nearly wrecked my viola that afternoon. Two policemen charged up the stairs after him. We found out later that Mick was involved in some sort of scam to do with a stolen painting or document or…I don’t know what. He ended up climbing out of a bedroom window, but he fell off the drainpipe and broke his neck.’

  She brushed an errant curl away from her eyelashes.

  ‘“The police never did work out who he was working with, did they?” Max had said during the lunch.’

  She stared ahead, looking as confused by the story as I was. ‘Nothing untoward was found on his body when the police got to him, so it was all a bit odd. But apparently Mick Blain had had an accomplice.’

  She paused, waiting for me to say something.

  ‘And this incident with Mick was fifteen years ago?’ I asked, unable to hide my scepticism. Was it seriously likely to have had anything to do with the accident in the van so many years later?

  Rosie twirled a loose strand of hair around her finger and gave a puzzled shrug. ‘The Hinds’ didn’t have much luck hiring us for their parties, did they? A man fell to his death at the first one, then when we all show up again, there’s the awful crash.’

  She gave a half-laugh. I waited to see if her expression dropped, but she looked up expectantly, waiting for me to speak again.

  ‘So, on the day of the crash,’ I said, ‘you can remember the lunch, the afternoon – everything up until the van was in the water?’

  Rosie looked at the floor for a moment, thinking. ‘No…there are definitely gaps when we were on the road before the crash…and bits when we were underwater…it goes a bit sketchy after I passed out on the bank, too.’

  ‘We’ll work on trying to fill those in,’ I assured her.

  ‘Actually, something else strange happened at the lunch now I think about it. Max was entertaining everyone over raspberry pavlova with more drab little yarns, and I remember Karl Hinds looking fidgety, in a world of his own. It was almost as though Max had reminded him of something and Karl was back at the original party.’ She fiddled with a button. ‘Karl said something then, but I can’t remember what it was. It probably doesn’t mean anything. That’s all really. After lunch, we had another crappy rehearsal and called it a day.’

  ‘And what about the day you drove up to the Lake District? Any memory lapses there, do you think?’

  ‘Yeah, absolutely. I remember getting to the B&B, but scraps are missing here and there. I don’t know if any of that is important.’ She stared at me as if I should know. ‘I want to find out why the van crashed, but what I want more than anything is to get my viola back,’ she said, her voice unsteady.

  The desperation in Rosie’s screwed-up eyes said it all, and given the way she’d been shunted from one home to another, taking scant belongings with her each time, I could see why the viola would be so important. It was probably about as close to ‘family’ as anything she’d ever had – or anyone she’d ever known.

  ‘I don’t like to think of it being lost out there, all alone,’ she added, fiddling with her lip. ‘It’s probably ruined by the water, but I don’t care. I want it back.’

  Once she’d left, I leant against the edge of my desk mulling over everything Rosie had told me. I’d looked up the incident online on the North West news site shortly after our first session and I’d been keeping an eye on it every few days, in case there were any further developments. One thing certainly seemed odd to me. After nearly a month, coats, shoes, music and rucksacks had come to the surface, but none of the three bodies had been recovered. Nor had any of the instruments or wallets. Not one.

  Chapter 8

  Sam

  It was my first afternoon off in ages, but when I got home from the hospital my flat was crying out for a tidy up. Last week’s newspapers were spread out on the table, covered in dirty tea-towels and unwashed mugs. Furthermore, a tower of ironing was about to topple off the sofa. I wasn’t in the habit of letting it get to this state, but it seemed as if a tide had swept over all my belongings when my back was turned, leaving a trail of random detritus behind it. I needed to pull my finger out.

  I purged every room, stuffing dishes into the sink, clothes into drawers, junk mail into the bin, until the surfaces were clear. From coat pockets in the hall, I emptied old shopping lists and sweet wrappers, picked up the crusty rind of a clementine from the ledge by the front door, but left the spare set of keys where they were. I’d been meaning to do a key swap with Mrs Willow for at least a week – ever since she slipped over in her bathroom and no one could get into her flat to help her.

  I should have got the vacuum out to begin the real work after that, but apathy got the better of me. Instead, in a moment of ultra-decadence, I rang my favourite spa in Chelsea. Twenty minutes later, I was on my way over for a steam and massage.

  The package was pricey – but just what I needed. In the last few months I’d buried myself in my job at St Luke’s and I’d had virtually no quality time to myself. Miranda might have a point – maybe it was making me worn-out and grumpy.

  I got off the Tube at Sloane Square and started walking along The King’s Road. I love London’s incessant barrage of sounds: car horns, bicycle bells, people hailing taxis and selling newspapers. The sound-track of this hot-blooded city at full throttle.

  Leaves had already begun peeling away from the trees and were catching on the bottom of my shoes. I didn’t want autumn to take hold. I hadn’t made the most of summer, still hankering after the chance of an evening sitting on the warm grass with a dazzling new guy, watching the sky slowly dissolve into darkness.

  In the midst of my daydream, I walked straight into a man carrying three buckets of roses. The collision sent water all over his jeans.

  ‘Watch where you’re going, you stupid bitch,’ he yelled, shoving past me.

  My little reverie was gone.

  I got changed at the spa and left my gear in a locker, taking just my towel with me. Aqua Dulcis is a small place and there was no one else in the steam room for the ‘women-only’ session. Blissful solitude. I laid out my towel on the slatted bench and stretched out. The soft hiss of water droplets turning to steam acted like a potion from a magic lamp, letting my body float away into relaxation. As I luxuriated in the inertia, the heat eased my pores wide and cleansed me from the inside. My arms and legs flopped as I closed my eyes, feeling weightless.

  My mind, however, wasn’t playing the game. I wanted to drift away onto a tropical beach somewhere and have pina coladas in tall glasses brought to me by tanned hunks in floral shorts. Instead, my thoughts were straying to places I didn’t want to go. Places that were dark and tragic. I might have been able to send my muscles to paradise, but my brain was pulling me in the opposite direction.

  An altogether different scene was playing inside my head. A video loop without a stop button. It was all so abhorrently clear: the dressing gown on the back of the door, the door creaking as I pushed it wide, the cat oblivious to everything still curled up on the pillow.

  Last Christmas.

  Was it Rosie – child-like, innocent and eager to please – who had brought it all back? Did she remind me of Joanne?

  No, I couldn’t bla
me Rosie. The shadow had never gone away.

  Miranda was the only person I’d told about it and even that had never been my intention. The night it happened I’d gone back to my flat in a terrible state and she’d turned up unexpectedly to return a pile of cookery books. She’d prodded and pummelled me until I opened up, then kept telling me it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t believe her.

  I quickly scrabbled around inside my head for something else to focus on and Con’s face floated into my mind. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. Although we hadn’t spoken in a long while, I’d heard Con was doing well. He’d had good reviews for his part in a British film and was auditioning for a meaty role as a ship’s captain in a potential Hollywood blockbuster. He’d sent a postcard to tell me about it. I only got cards when he wanted to brag; perhaps it was his way of reminding me how foolish I’d been to let him go.

  As the steam enveloped me, I found myself finally drifting off to a sweet and dreamy place. But not for long. Lost in my reverie, I began to hear Rosie’s voice breaking through, telling me about the crash. I found myself picturing the van before it went off the road and hit the water. The pompous Max with Stephanie beside him and Richard behind the wheel.

  I saw the three of them in my imagination clawing at the door handles. I thought about how they must have fought to get the seatbelts off, ripped their nails to shreds as they clawed at the windows, launched their shoulders at the doors. At least Rosie, in the back, didn’t have a seatbelt to worry about. She was the only one with a way out. The picture brought up a question about the windows I hadn’t thought to ask before. Were the winders manual or electric? If they were electric, would they work underwater? Had the others ever stood a chance?

  I didn’t want to think what they must have gone through as they knew they were running out of breath, about to drown.

  As I laid still, safe in the spa, the steamy water hissing under me as my skin got hotter and hotter, I couldn’t help wondering whether there was any realistic chance Max, Richard or Stephanie could have survived.

  Rosie’s voice was clear now, almost in my ear.

  ‘…seeing you here…’ she said.

  I opened my eyes.

  ‘I said, fancy seeing you here?!’ she repeated gleefully.

  I sat bolt upright, rubbing my eyes, half in and half out of my daydream. This was the real Rosie, no doubt about it – she was right there beside me. She had a yellow towel tightly coiled around her fleshy body revealing only a tiny chink of cleavage. All nicely covered up – unlike me.

  I gave her a weak smile. ‘Yeah, fancy that?’

  I was lying in front of her completely naked. As slowly as I could, not wanting to seem prudish, I edged the towel out from under me and innocently used it to dab my face allowing it to fall across my body. Rosie seemed oblivious to my awkwardness and sat on the bench in the far corner, her hands over her belly, thrusting her feet out.

  ‘Oh – I so need this,’ she said. ‘Afternoon off from the music store. It’s in Charing Cross Road, did I tell you? CDs, DVDs, sheet music, we even sell—’

  ‘Rosie, it’s…nice to see you, but we shouldn’t chat. We have a specific therapeutic relationship and chatting together confuses that.’

  ‘Oh…does it?’ She looked perplexed.

  We were quiet for a while. I closed my eyes, but I had no hope of relaxing now. I felt overheated, sweaty, irritable. I was tempted to get up and leave, but I wasn’t sure how she might interpret my sudden exit. Besides, I hadn’t had my full thirty minutes; I wasn’t going to let her impromptu appearance cut short my precious treatment.

  ‘I wasn’t going to see anyone, you know, after the crash,’ she said, ignoring my earlier comment. ‘But I’m glad I did.’

  ‘Right…’ I opened one eye. She was lying flat on her back now, her eyes closed.

  ‘You’re very good at your job,’ she added. ‘I think I’m going to get a lot out of our sessions.’

  I made a noise that came out like a little yelp and cleared my throat.

  She opened her eyes and held up her little finger; the one she’d told me had been damaged by the garage door. ‘I was quite good on the viola once, you know.’ She winced. ‘It’s been bothering me again in the last few days. I had such early promise and it all came to nothing.’ She sniffed. ‘Playing the viola was the focus of everything. I don’t have any other gifts. Without that I’m nobody…’

  I could sense tears bubbling away under the surface, but she battled to fend them off. I was annoyed that Rosie had put me in this awkward position, but I felt I had to say something.

  ‘It must be hard working in a music store with other people’s music around you all day.’

  ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘You so dearly wanted that for yourself,’ I said. ‘To be playing to an audience and recording your own CDs. You could so easily have been one of them.’

  She gave a hollow laugh and turned to look at me. ‘I’m used to being invisible.’ She wriggled on to her side and made a pillow with her hands. ‘Do you believe in God?’ she said.

  ‘Er…that’s a big question, Rosie.’ I hid a sigh.

  ‘It makes no sense if I was the only one who survived the crash. I mean what would be the point in that? Why would God or fate or whatever bother to save the runt of the pack?’

  When I got home I opened my laptop. I needed to know. Rosie had skimmed over her history during our sessions, but I wanted the details of all the bits she’d left out.

  I typed a few key words into the search engine: death, Rosie’s surname and seven years old to see what came up. It was all there. Big news at the time, twenty-seven years ago. Mildred and Keith Chandler lived in a tiny rundown terraced house, in Bognor Regis. Rosie was their only child.

  Mildred had come home one day, ready to pack her bags. She’d had enough. She was finally leaving the man who had gambled away all their money and beaten her on and off since their wedding day. She’d told a close friend she was taking Rosie to Portsmouth then heading over to the Isle of Wight, until she worked out the next stage of her plan. Keith Chandler had other ideas, however. He’d come back unexpectedly from the pub and as soon as he realised what was going on, he locked Rosie in the garden shed, telling her to see if she could count to a hundred before he came back. Then he took his air rifle, went into the bedroom and fired fifteen shots at his wife at close range as she folded her pyjamas. Rosie climbed out of the shed window and walked in on him just after he’d stopped firing.

  He’d led her to the kitchen, saying there had been a ‘terrible accident’ and told her to butter slices of bread for tea while he went to get help. As she ran the knife across the squares of Sunblest, he took a length of rope from the shed and hung himself from the banister on the landing.

  I closed the lid of the laptop and pressed my hand over my mouth. Rosie had been seven years old. Both her parents had died within minutes of each other. Right in front of her. How does anyone ever lead a normal life after that? How can you possibly pick yourself up, dust yourself down and get on with your life after something so devastating?

  Rosie said she’d been passed from one set of distant relatives to the next never getting close to any of them. They took turns to reject her and then she embarked on an endless round of foster homes.

  In the three sessions we’d had she came across as terribly immature for her age: hapless, inelegant and unsophisticated. Quite possibly, a result of never having had a consistent and solid role model. It occurred to me that she’d probably not been any real trouble to anyone; her only crime being a desperation to be loved.

  I drew my feet up on to the sofa and stroked the threadbare velvet cushion that had gone everywhere with me since I was a teenager. What happened to Rosie wasn’t fair. It wasn’t her fault. None of it. I squeezed the cushion and made a decision. I was going to help this woman. I was going to give her the best shot I possibly could.

  As promised, Hannah sent me an invitation to the retirement party of a psych
oanalyst at her clinic. Being Harley Street it was a lavish affair with lashings of champagne and trays of speciality nibbles; odd little creations involving caviar, king prawns and avocado. There was even a melted-chocolate fountain for marshmallow and strawberry dipping.

  Hannah wasted no time in introducing me to Giovanni, the new hypnotherapist. I saw his eyes travel down my slinky black cocktail dress and dizzily high stilettos and felt sultry and a little risqué, especially as our glasses were being constantly refilled by the waiters hovering at our elbows.

  Hannah had already told me that Giovanni was in his mid-thirties and from Milan. A thin, expertly clipped chinstrap beard made him look like a philosopher and the whites around his smoky brown eyes were pure, without a single red vein. He explained he’d travelled as far as Peru, loved reading the Russian Classics and was partial to dancing salsa. He listened attentively, asking pertinent questions about our shared interest in the hidden machinations of the human mind. He was smart, erudite and thought-provoking. He couldn’t have been more perfect – except there was simply no spark.

  After the obligatory speeches, a singer took to a small stage at the side of the room and began crooning his way through a few slow ballads. When I heard the opening sax intro to Careless Whisper, I stood and listened, my neck tingling as the melody surged around the room. The singer caught my eye and from then on he seemed to be directing the words straight at me, holding his microphone suggestively, his voice seductive and intense.

  Guilty feet…should’ve known better…

  He was breathtakingly good-looking – and very young.

  ‘You’re not serious?’ exclaimed Hannah, when she spotted me ogling him. ‘Melissa, over there, has just told me he’s twenty-two, for goodness sake – and lives in Leeds.’ She put her hand up to my eyes to block my view of him. ‘He’s totally unsuitable – don’t even think about it.’