The Girl in the Water

by A J Grayson

  5

  David

  I was perched across from her, the day I met the woman that changed my life. I don’t know for how long. It doesn’t matter. I was in my government-issued moulded plastic chair, clipboard in hand, diagonally opposite her position in the little room.

  I didn’t know who she really was then when we first began. I only knew what was in the official reports and my stack of references.

  ‘I’ve read your file, Miss.’ I listened to the doctor’s voice as he spoke directly to her, facing squarely across the metal table between them. ‘What the records say about you is pretty clear.’

  He spoke in cold, formal phrases. He was a medical professional, of course, and of many years’ standing. But he was also an officer of the state, and she was not here under circumstances any would consider friendly.

  Her expression didn’t change. Her eyes remained motionless. From my position in the shadows at the side of the room, I felt unnerved by her solidity.

  ‘We both know what’s brought you here,’ my superior added. Dr Marcello was an old hand at this, and I’d heard him make similar beginnings before. I craned my neck, trying to observe some emotion on the woman’s face.

  ‘Do you realize why you’re in this room, at this moment?’

  A common formula of approach. Begin with a querying of the context; find out how much the person in front of you is willing to admit of their position, and proceed from there. With an assistant at the side, from the pharmaceutical wing, taking notes in silence in order to help with the medicinal diagnoses.

  Thus far, Dr Marcello was keeping things by the book.

  The woman said nothing. She was alone in the room, for all her expression would have suggested. She just stared through the walls into a space I couldn’t see.

  ‘You’re not here because you asked to be,’ Dr Marcello added, stating the obvious. No one came into that room by choice. Still, the comment might jog her.

  Her eyes had begun to drift upwards, as if something on the ceiling was attracting her attention. My superior almost spoke again, but then a sound – nearly imperceptible – emerged from the woman’s lips.

  ‘Not … by … choice.’

  It was the first time I heard her speak.

  She was mimicking Dr Marcello’s speech, or so I thought, but still – her voice. Almost. She whispered the words, as if holding back a more personal moment.

  I leaned forward in my chair, frustrated by the odd angle that kept me from gazing at her face-on. I tried to make out everything I could. She had short black hair, cropped and fine. Visible softness in her cheeks. Rose gloss on her lips that glistened in the fluorescent light as she whispered.

  She was beautiful. It might have been wrong for me to think that way. Inappropriate to institutional objectivity. Too subjective and personal. But she was, and I noticed. Even from an angle, even out of reach. She was beautiful.

  Dr Marcello remained impassive.

  ‘Call you tell me your name?’ he asked, hoping to elicit more words from her with a question that hardly required analysis.

  The woman’s eyes fell back from the ceiling, straight into his. And then, to my shock, she swivelled her head and stared straight into mine.

  Our first gaze. The moment my life changed.

  ‘My name,’ she said softly, ‘is Emma Fairfax.’

  6

  Amber

  Somehow, the day has disappeared. I’m not sure how it’s happened. I’ve been in the bookshop since it began, going about my usual routine, and it doesn’t seem it’s lasted that long. Not long enough for end-of-the-workday noises to be emerging from the street outside, or for quick drinks at Trader Tom’s around the corner to be the subject of conversations by colleagues, not quite out of earshot, as the metal blinds are lowered inside the windows. Yet I hear them, just like that, and the clock on my monitor agrees with the voices.

  Time, I suppose, gets away from us all, now and then. Einstein may have theorized that time changes relative to speed, but I’m pretty certain it also changes relative to concentration. Focus on something hard enough – as I’d apparently been doing with the news on my screen and the other work of the day – and the clocks slow down. Then you blink a few times, smear away the haze of all that intensity from your eyes, and you find you’re back in the present, situated awkwardly in the skin of the person you’d forgot you’d been a few moments before.

  So I refuse to be too surprised by the noises around me, now, of a workday at its end. Nor am I overly disappointed. I love this little den of respite, yes, but I’m not a lonely woman, wedded only to my work to give my day its meaning. I have my corner of the shop, my papers, my computer, my employment that feels half like a retreat. But I also have home.

  I have David.

  I’m out the door by 5.07 p.m.

  Mitch walks behind me. With all that mass, it’s rare he walks in front.

  ‘You going straight home, or you up for a drink?’

  His questions are always pure, though he says them with the kind of raunchily exaggerated tone of voice that suggests we might follow up that drink with a steamy escapade, entwined in each other’s naked skin in a hotel that charges by the hour. But it’s all smoke and sarcasm with Mitch. In reality, he is devoted to Susan, the most doting wife in the world, and he knows I’m well and truly hitched and not looking to break that bond. He’s just a kind man, and one who’s fairly certain alcohol won’t be on the menu when he gets home. Nor, for that matter, any particular act that could be described as an ‘escapade’.

  ‘Not today, Mitch.’ I smile, pausing to allow him to catch up and lowering a hand onto his wide shoulder. There’s the uncomfortable sensation of moisture rising through the fabric of his shirt. I force myself not to lift my hand away. ‘Thanks for the offer, though.’

  ‘You sure? Wouldn’t take more than an—’

  I switch my grip to a pat. The motion accentuates my headache, which has grown worse throughout the foggy day. ‘I’m sure.’ A bigger smile. ‘Stuff on the mind. But go have one yourself. Susan’s not bound to have a glass of Jack on the counter, is she?’

  He heaves a resigned but happy sigh, muttering something indiscernible about pigs and flight, then chortles. ‘Till tomorrow, Amber.’ And he turns, and I blink, and he’s already halfway to his car.

  The drive home is, as always, twice as long as the commute in. The roads are packed, the commuter congestion I’d avoided in the morning now at its predictable height. To emphasize the plight, the woman’s voice on the National Public Radio affiliate for the Bay Area suggests there’s no hope for improvement ahead. I settle passively into the time set out before me.

  I have a water bottle in the cup holder at my left, its flimsy plastic only slightly sturdier than the interior of the car itself. The myth that water eases headaches is a lie, but it does make popping the ibuprofen easier. Another two are down before I’m fifteen minutes into the drive, leaving their lingering, slightly sweet taste on the back buds of my tongue. It’s too familiar. Advil’s parent company should offer me some sort of loyalty card.

  The details of what I’d read during the day peck at my attention as I play tap-dance between the accelerator and the brake.

  My spine tingles again with the memory of the headline that had captured my attention. An ice cube projects itself up my back.

  This woman in the river.

  It had been on the computer, not in print, which meant it was fresh. Probably only became known after the papers had gone to press for the day. I’d looked through them again, just to be sure, but found nothing there.

  I’d gone back to the Internet, oddly enthralled, and chased up what few details were available. Age, 40. The woman who’d been found was just a year my elder. Her body had been discovered at approximately 9.45 p.m. by an advocate of late-evening walks who reported his find to the local authorities. It was situated on the Russian River – the 110-mile-long gentle beast that stretches out from near Lake Mendocino, twisting and
turning south and west until it joins the Pacific Ocean in Jenner, two hours north of San Francisco. I know the river as well as anyone does who lives in the area, more by simple proximity than first-hand experience. I’ve driven along stretches of its length that run near the highways, that’s about all I can say. At places it appears mighty, at others barely more than a stream.

  As I drive, now, I recall the process of searching for these facts on various police websites. It had taken over an hour. Maybe several. The day, as I say, had kind of slipped away from me.

  The details, though, continue to cycle through my mind.

  A hiker coming upon the body, still floating in a gentle bend in the water.

  It wasn’t an overly bloody find, or particularly terrifying or grotesque. This wasn’t a dismemberment or chainsaw attack. What was disturbing was, in fact, the simplicity of the whole situation. The fact that it was almost … scenic. The river water, flowing. The mention of someone out for a casual stroll. ‘Rambling’, as the English would say, which seems appropriate as I drive towards a Californian town called Windsor.

  A foolish song I knew as a child tussles at my memory, its tune playful and ridiculously out of concert with the topic of my thoughts.

  Rambler, brambler, with rushes at my knees,

  Walking, talking, to bushes and to bees …

  I shake my head in protest. It seems inappropriate that my mind should wander to such things at this moment. I try to push the tune out of my thoughts.

  Beyond the victim’s age, none of her private details – name, residence, so on – have been released to the media, except to indicate that she was a Caucasian female and apparently in good physical condition.

  I fidget. But it’s not a fidget, it’s a squirm. I’m uncomfortable. The air in my car is too hot, I realize all at once. I switch on the A/C and turn the knob as far as it will go towards the little snowflake symbol. It lights up with a reassuringly blue glow – blue having at some stage become a colour we all associate with being refreshed and cool. For a moment, this meaningless fact distracts me.

  The tune, though, won’t leave my head. Rambler, brambler, with rushes at my knees …

  I stomp my foot beside the accelerator to shake the melody from my mind. Enough!

  The cause of death I’d found was listed only as that ambiguous ‘suspected foul play’. Any further detail is apparently under embargo. Hardly surprising, as the case is so new, but it doesn’t close the door to informed speculation. As a woman who reads the news religiously, I know that ‘suspected foul play’ usually means there’s some physical evidence of additional trauma – maybe a gunshot wound, maybe stabbing. Something more than simple drowning, which would be the more obvious cause of death in a river. Drowning could indeed be murder, of course, but it could also be just a fall. Or suicide. ‘Suspected foul play’ hints there’s something more.

  My temples are starting to throb. Stinking, ineffectual pills. And the air con is doing shit, blue snowflake or not. I can feel my blouse clinging to the sweat on my back.

  I recite the details over and over, making them almost a chant.

  A thirty-nine-year-old woman’s body.

  Found at the river’s edge.

  White.

  Cause of death – unannounced.

  Foul play.

  Sinister.

  I’m sure there were other things I looked at in the news today, other happenings that will have attracted me at the bookshop. But my mind is stuck on just this. On this, and …

  Rambler, brambler, with rushes at my knees …

  The song won’t leave my head. My breathing has become heavier, and for some reason my right leg is starting to ache. I can’t think of any reason for that. I try to reposition myself on the seat.

  The lane to my left suddenly shifts to life. I click on the indicator and push myself into the moving traffic at the first opening. Distraction from the odd sensations. Triumph. We clock a stellar seven miles per hour before the motion slows again, and within a few seconds we’re back at a standstill. The lane I left is moving. I clench my fists tight on the wheel. The urge to unleash a satisfying barrage of profanities is almost overwhelming, but I try not to recite the curse words David describes, with mock old-world flare, as ‘so awfully unwomanly’. Though, to be honest, he always says it with a very un-old-worldly grin, which makes me think he half-likes those moments when I lose verbal control.

  I blink heavily two or three times. There are trails there, again, following my eyelids as they move.

  The traffic starts to flow once more, and I attempt to distract myself, shifting my attention to the hillsides and vineyards alongside the road. All the locals along this particular stretch of Highway 101 refer to it as the Redwood Road, though I’ve yet to spot a Redwood tree anywhere near it. An enormous growers estate, entirely modern but designed to look ancient and historical, sits off in the sweeping green hills to the left of the highway. It’s a winery, of course, as most things are around here, but I can never remember the name of it. It’s built like a castle, complete with turrets and triangular flags. An odd way to sell wine. But the visual effect is dramatic, and the delivery trucks pulling in with supplies could as easily be wagons with mounted drivers, their diesel horsepower replaced with the actual thing. It wouldn’t look the slightest bit out of place.

  But then there’s a Beyoncé cutaway on the radio and a new update on the refugee crisis in Eastern Europe, and the world again seems so very, recognizably, modern. Even the vineyard castle suddenly looks pallid and uninspired. Just another hoaxy specialty shop along the roadside, different only in size from the shed a few miles back and the Safeway warehouse at the next intersection.

  That’s how quickly the world changes. A soundtrack, a flash of circumstance, and it’s a different land. A familiar one, where David is waiting at home and the universe is as it should be. God, how I want that, in this moment. My normal world. My comfy home. My wonderful man.

  But suddenly I’m sweating fiercely. My breathing has become tight and rapid. The northern California landscape around me is as it was a moment before, nothing at all has changed – and yet it has, all the same and all at once. The woman’s situation has thrust itself back into my mind, powerfully, her circumstances flashing like lights in my vision.

  I think I might hyperventilate – maybe I already am. My pulse, I’m sure of it, is out of control. This isn’t a headache any more. I don’t understand what is happening to me. The edges of the highway are glowing white, a phosphorous light that is too bright for me to look at directly, bleeding into every inch of my vision.

  And I can see a girl, like a picture from a perfectly told story. She’s right there, in the glow of white that has overtaken the world. I am an observer at the solemn portrait of something ethereal and other-worldly.

  And … wrong.

  I can no longer see the traffic around me. I’m not sure if I’m still in my lane, or even in my car. Life itself has gone out of focus.

  I only see the girl. Her. The girl from the headline – of whom no photos have yet been released. The girl whose face I have no reason to know from Eve’s. There’s something peculiar to her eyes. Something wrong with her neck. Yet it’s her, I’m sure of it, and she’s there, her face bathed in white, staring at mine. Her life ebbing away.

  And for some reason I want to call her Emma.

  7

  David

  The way things went, after I first gazed into her eyes, first heard her voice – it’s not the way I necessarily would have wanted it to go. I would have liked there to have been less trauma. I would have liked to have avoided the pain. The pain I bore, and the pain I had to inflict.

  But this is what happens. This is where you end up.

  I hadn’t expected that any woman would change my life. My experience with women had never been good. When one you love dies, so early in your life, you’re not exactly left with the most optimistic hopes for the future. And if another, who ought to love you, doesn’t, t
hat doesn’t help mend the wound. I’d been through both scenarios, with a sister in the grave before her time, and a mother who, together with my father, hadn’t left for the next life soon enough. Childhood was a mass of misery in my head, and in my youth I’d hoped one day I’d flee from it. Get far enough away to at last be free. But time was a vicious teacher, and eventually I had to learn to be satisfied with an unhappiness as deeply set as my bones and my blood. And eventually I did: I simply got used to it. Give a man enough pain, and for long enough, and he’ll stop hoping for anything else.

  But that encounter, that first moment with her – it changed things. I’d long since given up on escaping my pain; hell, I’d made a career of wallowing in it. Surrounding myself with more of the same. I had become a man condemned to live in the never-ending cycle of sorrow I’d carried as long as I could remember.

  And then, in a single instant, something new. A doorway into a new life.

  Not that the pain would leave, even then. Not for me. That was, in the end, simply too much to hope for. In the days that would come I would smile, and hope, and sing, and even find the means to rejoice. But never to sing the pain entirely away.

  Some pain, we learn too late, exceeds the songs that are sung of it.

  8

  Amber

  I don’t burst through doors, it’s just not my way. Never has been. But today, just now, as I tentatively push ours open enough to catch the sight beyond, I wish I was the kind of person who bursts through doors. The day’s been too strange, and I want the surety, the comfort that I know waits on the other side – and I want it now, instantaneously, all at once.

  But I don’t burst through. I push gently. Wood parts from wood and scrapes across our much-abused carpeting. And though the opening is tentative, the reveal is what I long for. The open door gives way to the reality of genuine happiness. This is home. Within …