The Woman Outside My Door

by Rachel Ryan

  Cody was calling, frightened, “Mom!”

  Anne twisted sideways, using her weight and a strategically placed foot to send Georgina sliding to the ground. Before she could get her balance, Anne’s fist struck her hard on the side of the head. While she was half Anne’s age, Georgina had never been in a physical fight in her life.

  She hit the concrete.

  Cody was shouting. Georgina pulled herself to her feet. Turning to face the car, she registered the clutter on the seats (a sleeping bag, a bare pillow, crumbs, fast-food wrappers, clothes) and realized this battered car was Anne’s home.

  Anne was in the driver’s seat, about to slam the door. No. Georgina twisted around and reached out a hand to stop her…

  Anne’s eyes followed the path of Georgina’s hand. She timed it perfectly, waiting until just the right moment. Then she slammed the door, hard, onto Georgina’s fingers.

  For half a heartbeat, Georgina felt nothing.

  Then she screamed.

  The door opened again, allowing her broken hand to slip out. Cody was shrieking hysterically.

  “You’re ruining it!” Anne shouted at her again. “You’re ruining everything!”

  Georgina could only gasp and clutch at her already ballooning fingers. Anne slammed the door shut. Through the glass, Georgina heard Cody’s wail:

  “I don’t want to go to Kerry anymore! I want my mom! Let me out! Let me out!”

  Anne reversed. The car shot backwards, over the grass, scattering crowds, causing screams, and smashed into a restaurant front. A man who had been smoking outside vaulted out of the way just in time.

  Georgina found her voice. She screamed, “CODY!”

  The car turned and sped off up the hill, the broken back bumper dragging on the concrete.

  Cody.

  A crowd was gathering. Georgina swayed, clutching her hand. She could only babble incoherently: “My son… my son…”

  “Should I call the Guards?” a stranger offered.

  Georgina sagged against a nearby car, overwhelmed. People were asking her questions, but she could barely hear them. Oh God, she’d failed. She’d let that woman take her child.

  With an effort, she pulled herself up and set off in the direction of her car. “Are you okay?” someone tried to ask, but Georgina stumbled past, trying not to think about how she would drive with an injured hand. Cody’s screaming rang in her ears. She could feel her fingers pulsing and hot, the skin stretching as they swelled.

  She was almost at her car when she heard the commotion. Car horns blaring. People shouting. Someone nearby yelled, like it was one word, “Oh-my-God-LOOK-OUT!”

  Georgina turned around, and, like a slow-motion scene from a movie, she saw it.

  The blue Volvo was speeding back down the hill.

  Pedestrians flung themselves out of the way as the car swerved up onto the path. Bursting through the low barricade, it drove straight onto the pier.

  People scattered before it. The night air was thick with screams. But Georgina couldn’t scream. Couldn’t move. Motionless as a mannequin in a shop window, she could only stare as the blue Volvo shot down the pier, off the edge—

  —and splashed into the black water below.

  Chapter 44

  All around, chaos erupted.

  Shouts. Screams. Calls for someone to dial 9-9-9.

  Georgina began to run.

  The world flew past in a ragged blur. Among the strangers’ faces, she glimpsed a familiar one: Anthony. He had an arm around his frightened-looking granddaughter. “Georgina?”

  She raced by. Across the parking lot. Onto the pier. She pulled off her coat as she ran, letting it fall behind her. She yanked her top over her head too and cried out—it jarred her crushed fingers, and the pain was a flash of fire.

  A small crowd had gathered at the end of the pier. One woman was taking a video of the sinking car on her phone. A young man was undressing ostentatiously but seemed in no great rush to jump in.

  In her jeans and bra, oblivious to the freezing air, Georgina elbowed her way through the crowd. Kicking off her shoes, she shoved past the half-dressed young man and the woman taking the video, causing her phone to tumble from her hand—“Hey!” But Georgina heard nothing over the screaming in her mind, howling her son’s name in time to the desperate beat of her heart:

  Cody-Cody-Cody-Cody—

  Several feet below, the car’s blue and silver metal was still visible for one horribly taunting moment. Then the inky black water swallowed it greedily.

  Cody-Cody-Cody—

  “Oh my God,” said a female voice. The young man who had undressed was beginning a slow descent of the rocks at the pier end. Another voice, a man’s, said impotently, “Somebody do something.”

  Georgina clambered down the rocks in seconds and hurled herself into the icy water.

  The cold hit her like a sledgehammer. Crushing her chest, cutting her skin. She rose above the surface and gasped, dragging air into her shocked lungs. She took several deep breaths, then dove down again.

  Underwater, she was groping blind. She tried opening her eyes against the burning salt, but it was futile—she could see nothing but black. Her uninjured hand found the surface of the car and slid across it, seeing by touch. Smooth metal, hard edges.

  The back of the car. It was sinking nose-first.

  She kicked up for air again. As she broke the surface, someone else emerged from the water beside her: the young man had jumped in.

  “I can’t get the door open!” he yelled up to the crowd, panicked. “I can’t!”

  Several people were filming this on their phones now. Others were shouting advice:

  “The doors won’t open ’til the car’s filled with water!”

  “It’s something to do with pressure!”

  “Break the window!”

  “No, that won’t help—”

  Georgina took a deep breath and dove back below. Her blood beat the rhythm in her ears, the old familiar rhythm that was perhaps all it had beaten since the day he was born, risen only to this desperate screaming crescendo now that his life was in danger.

  Cody-Cody-Cody-Cody-Cody—

  Her good hand slid along the metal in the dark until she found a handle. She pulled, hard, but the door didn’t budge.

  The doors won’t open ’til the car’s filled with water.

  Was that true? Georgina thought it might be. It was stored somewhere in the back of her mind, along with similar bits of trivia, like how to survive on a desert island—the kind of information you picked up but never dreamt you’d use. Because the application belonged in nightmares.

  She swam up for air and dove down again. Submerged in the salty water, limbs flailing in the dark, she found the metal, the door, the handle.

  She pulled, and this time it opened.

  A stream of bubbles escaped her mouth. Her feet begged to kick back up to oxygen, but instead she reached inside the car. Her fingers touched a seat belt, sodden material… Was that clothes she could feel? But she needed air—

  This time, she came up screaming.

  “Cody!” She floundered in the water. It was growing harder to swim. The cold was unbelievable, her limbs numb, her injured hand agonizing. “Cody!”

  “Careful!” The young man was above the surface too. “You’ll sink—”

  And in her panic, she did. Her head went under, salt water filling her mouth. She resurfaced spluttering.

  The young man swam a few strokes towards her. “Are you okay?”

  “Forget me! There’s a child in the car—a boy—”

  A murmur rippled through the watching crowd. Oh-my-God-did-she-just-say-a-child…

  The young man’s eyes widened. Georgina would never forget his shocked face, his red hair and plentiful freckles, how pale his skin glistened in the moonlight.

  In the periphery of her vision, she saw a familiar figure push to the front of the crowd. “Georgina!” Anthony shouted.

  But Georgina couldn�
��t waste a second. She filled her lungs with air and dove under.

  She had to swim farther to reach the car this time. She pushed down, down, already feeling the lack of oxygen. She and Bren had timed themselves holding their breath once. Bren had made it to forty-four seconds, Georgina only to thirty-eight. She would have to do better than that now, have faith that her body, pushed to necessity by extreme circumstances, would deliver.

  She found the back of the car. The door had closed. As Georgina pulled it open, she could feel the car sinking.

  She slid inside.

  Blindly, she groped around. The tight space was thick with sodden material, rubbish… Her chest was tightening, the need for air gathering, but she reached desperately into the dark.

  Her hand collided with warm flesh.

  She knew instantly that she was touching Anne. The floating limb was too thick to be Cody’s, the doughy skin too soft under her fingertips. She was gripping Anne’s wrist—and it was twitching.

  The realization that she was trapped in a sinking car with a dying woman struck Georgina.

  She opened her mouth to scream and a stream of bubbles escaped.

  Air. She needed air.

  She released Anne’s arm and went flailing back. Her leg caught in something soft—the sleeping bag? Her good hand, groping behind her, found the door closed. The pressure of the water as the car descended had pushed it shut again.

  The last of the air bubbled from her lungs as she tried to twist around and open the door. The pressure on her chest was incredible. Don’t breathe in, she tried to tell her lungs, it’s not air, just water, NOT-AIR-JUST-WATER, but her body was going to betray her, she was going to inhale, she could feel it. The sodden sleeping bag was tangled around her legs. She was trapped. And Cody-Cody-Cody, she hadn’t saved Cody—

  For a moment, Georgina wanted to give up.

  Then the door opened. Strong arms grabbed her and pulled her from the car, then up-up-up to the surface.

  For the length of that first breath, Georgina knew nothing but the sheer relief of air filling her lungs. But by the time she’d finished exhaling, the chorus in her mind was roaring again.

  Cody-Cody-Cody-Cody—

  She thrashed in the water. The pain and shock and terror would have caused her to sink if it wasn’t for her rescuer’s powerful arms.

  “Georgina, stop struggling! I’ve got you.”

  Big arms. Faded tattoos. A familiar voice.

  Anthony.

  Turning, Georgina saw that Anthony was wearing an expression of terrible sympathy. The young man was above the surface too, white-faced and desperate-looking. But where was Cody?

  “Cody was in that car,” she gasped. “Where is he? Did you save him?”

  She saw the answer in their faces.

  The world went dark.

  Chapter 45

  Anthony must have pulled her from the water, although later, Georgina had no memory of that happening. The next thing she was aware of was sitting on concrete, surrounded by people clamoring, sirens wailing, blue lights flashing. Somebody had wrapped a silvery-plastic thermal blanket around her. “The coast guard is here,” a stranger’s voice was saying, but Georgina knew it was too late for that. It had started being too late a while ago.

  All around was chaos and shouting. Below, the water was black and still and calm.

  Several feet away, Anthony, also wrapped in a thermal blanket, was trying to maintain his composure for the sake of a scared Lily, who pleaded, “Granda, I want to go home…” The young man with the red hair and freckled face, who had tried and failed to save her son, sat with a silver blanket around his shoulders too, and a paper cup of some hot beverage in his hands. He did not drink from it, just stared at the rising steam.

  Georgina had not known thermal blankets were made of this odd metallic material. She watched the way hers shimmered in the moonlight instead of listening to the words coming at her. “Can you hear me, Georgina? Georgina?” A policewoman kept trying to ask her questions until another Guard, an older man, snapped, “Give her some space, would you?” An ambulance driver kept saying, “The little boy? The little boy was in the car?” They were all here now—the police, Bren, Kelly-Anne, the coast guard—but too late.

  She could hear Bren crying, a terrible sound, but Georgina felt removed from it all. She watched as if from a great distance as Bren leapt into the sea and was dragged out again, as he cast around the pier in his freezing and sodden clothes, ignoring offers of a blanket, calling for his son. She could imagine the everyday Bren observing this scene and shaking his head, commenting: “A classic example of denial.”

  Kelly-Anne stood a few feet away and answered the Guards’ questions when it became clear Georgina wasn’t capable of doing so. “A great-aunt… Estranged…” Kelly-Anne was crying too. But Georgina was dry-eyed. She felt detached, as if she were floating somewhere far above. Even when Bren staggered over to her, like a drunk or a man who had suffered a terrible injury, and tried to hold her, she just sat there, indifferent. She was drifting away towards the full moon. Nothing was real. The chorus of Cody-Cody-Cody had stopped, finally, and inside her was just silence. Hollow, empty rooms. No adrenaline, no urgency, no need for it anymore.

  There was a gentle touch on her shoulder. A female medic with a kind face crouched beside her, asking questions. Georgina couldn’t make out the words. It was like listening through a thick pane of glass.

  “… get you home… in shock…”

  Disjointed bits of sentences reached her distantly. She didn’t understand, didn’t care. The moon was huge above.

  The medic took her arm, and she allowed herself to be half carried along. A reporter stepped into Georgina’s path, trying to shove a microphone in her face, but a hand decorated with long fake nails flew out and slapped the microphone aside.

  “Back off and leave her alone,” Kelly-Anne snapped, advancing like she intended to take the reporter and his entire camera crew on single-handedly. The medic steered Georgina around them and in the direction of an ambulance.

  Somewhere in the distance there was shouting. A murmur ran through the crowd.

  Georgina didn’t feel even the dullest curiosity. Curiosity was beyond her. Someone was calling her name.

  “Georgina! Georgina!”

  But she didn’t care. There was nothing to care about anymore.

  Then she heard:

  “Cody!”

  Something stirred inside her, but with great reluctance, not daring to hope. People were running towards the hill. She turned her head in the same direction—

  —and saw the small figure, alone, trailing down the slope.

  Cody.

  Georgina’s entire body sang her son’s name. Her heart seemed to resume beating. Blood flowed back into her limbs, right to her fingertips. Her broken hand began to burn again. Color rushed back into the world.

  She was tottering a little as she ran towards him. Other people got there first, but they moved aside for her. Her blanket had fallen off, but she barely noticed the cold. In her bra and jeans she fell to her knees and gathered her son into her arms. Cody was crying. There was a graze on his forehead, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he kept saying. “I’m sorry.”

  Georgina couldn’t speak. She held on to him like she would never let him go. She forgot the pain in her hand. She forgot the panic she had felt trapped in the sinking car. She forgot about everything but Cody, Cody, Cody. He was all that mattered in the world.

  Then Bren was there too, his arms wrapped around them both, sobbing. He squeezed them so tightly it was painful. He kept saying, “Oh, thank God, thank God. What happened, Cody? What happened?” and then hugging his son so hard he didn’t have a chance to answer.

  Kelly-Anne appeared and wrapped her faux-fur coat around Georgina’s bare shoulders. Somewhere in the background, someone was taking photos—the click-click just audible—and Kelly-Anne turned on them ferociously:

  �
��D’you have no respect, no? Give them a bit of space. Yeah, that’s right, you too. Put that phone away. And as for you…”

  “Excuse me, I’m a professional. We’re from the Sunday Star.”

  “I don’t care where you’re from. If you don’t put that camera away, I’ll break it over your head. Give this family some privacy.”

  The concrete was rough against Georgina’s knees, Bren’s head was pressing into hers so hard it was painful, but she didn’t want to move. Above, the winter moon glowed bright. And below, the Guards set about dragging a battered car from the water—a car that contained only one body.

  Chapter 46

  Later, the Guards would tell Georgina what little they knew of Anne’s life. A thumbnail sketch based on what scraps of information could be gathered.

  It was not the kind of life that left much of a paper trail.

  Anne McGrath never had a mortgage, a life insurance policy, or a wedding certificate. She had rarely had a fixed address. Occasional periods as a registered employee were broken up by much longer periods—often years—during which, legally, Anne might not have existed at all. She’d been lost somewhere in the underbelly of society, where cash was untaxed and turned straight into food and alcohol and shelter. Where people moved from squats to hostels to sleeping bags on park benches. She had not claimed social welfare for some years, perhaps due to her chaotic life and lack of address, perhaps because the paperwork was simply too much for her. The blue Volvo she had driven had been reported stolen in Bristol eight weeks previously.

  Anne’s most reliable paper trail was her hospital records, and they told a bleak story. In her twenties, she had been brought to St. Thomas’ Hospital in London after a severe beating at the hands of her then partner. Anne was several months pregnant at the time. She lost the baby—her second lost baby, Georgina thought—and suffered internal damage so severe she was never able to have children again.

  The medical records also noted Anne’s stays in the public psychiatric unit, which grew longer and more frequent as she grew older. “She was always asking for the baby she’d given up for adoption,” a nurse told the press anonymously, after the story garnered some publicity. “Talking about finding her baby, accusing us of taking her baby… She was obsessed.”