The Dark Water

by Helen Moorhouse

  A pang of regret hit Will, then he pushed that away, reminding himself of how he had felt when Dan had blurted out what he had to say that day in Dubhglas. What a vile, vile individual, Will thought, remembering the relish with which he had told the tale. He was a creep, he knew. But a creep who Martha had been married to for a long time, had wanted to share the rest of her life with. And who she had said as much to only a few weeks ago.

  He pressed his finger on the doorbell and heard it ring loudly inside. A moment later he heard a door open inside – the living-room door, he knew by the sound – and the click of the latch on the front door.

  Martha’s heart gave the little leap it always did when she saw him. The split second of first seeing his face, him and Ruby together, when everything was normal, before it was replaced by the dread, the regret, the guilt – the plain misery of living without him. She longed to get Christmas over, to get into the penance of January.

  She saw her daughter asleep on his shoulder and looked awkwardly at them for a moment, and then up at the sky where the whirls of snow were coming down thick and fast. She looked back at Will, watched thick flakes land on his coat and stick there, wondered whether or not to invite him in.

  In the long run, it was he who gave her the answer. “You’d better take her,” he said. “I have to get Gabriel into town.”

  Silently, Martha slid her arms around Ruby, feeling a small electric charge as she touched against Will’s hand as she took Ruby’s book from him. A deep pang of longing hit her.

  “Oh yes, he’s finishing up with Ghosts R Us today, isn’t he?” she said.

  Whatever about herself and Will, she wasn’t going to lose touch with Gabriel again. Then again, he was Will’s friend of course. Over time . . . she blocked the thought from her mind and pulled Ruby toward her, taking her awkwardly, herself and Will close to each other as they made the exchange.

  Will didn’t answer, just made sure that Ruby was secure in Martha’s arms and stepped back with a long step. Martha was wearing Jo Malone’s Orange Blossom – her favourite perfume. He recoiled from the scent. In his mind’s eye he saw the bottle on the dressing table in their bedroom. Such little familiar things, he thought to himself and felt the pain fresh again.

  Martha settled Ruby in her arms. The little girl grizzled a little, made to wake up and then thought better of it, nuzzling into her mum’s neck. That was it, thought Martha. Handover done, what next? She was always terrified at this point. Terrified that it would be the time that Will would say he couldn’t see them again, that he didn’t think it was a good idea for him to take Ruby. He didn’t have to keep in touch with her, Martha knew. But if it was the only way that she could still see him . . .

  She longed to apologise for the hundredth time, to protest that she hadn’t been in her right mind, that Dan meant nothing to her and neither did anything she had told him. But she couldn’t. Couldn’t risk doing something that broke the fragile peace that had settled between them. She couldn’t allow him out of her life. Couldn’t risk that for a second.

  “Would you –” she began.

  “I’d like to see her again once Christmas is over –” he started at the same time.

  Martha felt her stomach flutter faintly with habitual possibility and immediately quashed it. It didn’t do to hope when there was none. “Fine,” she said.

  “I’ll drop you a text to arrange,” Will said in a businesslike fashion and without another word he turned his back and walked back across the gravel to the car.

  In the passenger seat, she saw Gabriel crane his neck to catch her eye, frantically waving an envelope in his hand to which he pointed with exaggerated motion. His resignation letter, she knew, and allowed herself a smile. She’d helped him write it. No – she’d written it and emailed it to him to hand in. He made a gesture with his hand to indicate that he’d call her and turned away.

  Martha stared at Will’s tall figure as he opened the driver’s door and climbed in. Please look back, she thought to herself. Please, just a glance, a wave – anything.

  Nothing.

  She saw him turn the key in the ignition, and leave without a backward glance. He drove slowly. The driveway was treacherous with the earlier snowfall and even in the few short moments of their exchange it had grown darker. Visibility was low with the thick snow that pelted down now. Taking a final look up into its mesmerising descent, Martha slowly and quietly went inside, closing the door behind her.

  “Put it away, Gabriel,” said Will to his friend as they turned around the corner in the drive and he could no longer see Martha and Ruby’s shapes in the reflection of the rear-view mirror. He glanced back over his shoulder through the curtains of falling snow at the closed front door. His heart broke a little, as it always did. He turned on his headlamps and stared straight ahead.

  Disappointed, Gabriel tossed the small box back into the glove compartment and had just managed to snap it shut again before he was flung forward in the seat. The car skidded slightly as the brakes were applied with force.

  Martha laid Ruby in her cot, having first managed to extract her from her coat, hat and gloves. She sighed and made her way from the room back out onto the landing, turning to head into her own room and begin the nightly ritual of closing blinds and curtains, of blocking out the real world. Out there, she realised, people were finishing work for the Christmas holidays. Scores of merrymakers were filing into festive pubs, fathers and mothers were returning to their families to close their own blinds and curtains, to block out the world until the following morning. Christmas Eve, she thought with an inner groan. The day of the year that should most be filled with promise, yet here she was, alone, filled only with dread.

  For a moment she thought she’d imagined it – the ring of the doorbell downstairs. She’d grown to hate the tone. That was one job to get done after Christmas, she thought. Get a new doorbell. Since that night it gave her the creeps, the only remnant of the encounter that still unnerved her. That in itself had been a huge source of surprise for her, the fact that Calderwood felt just as safe as it had beforehand. Once she’d tidied the living room, rearranged the furniture and given the walls a fresh colour as well as installing a brightly lit tree and some garlands, it had begun to feel like a sanctuary again. Martha felt safer here, in fact, than she had done beforehand. She wondered sometimes if there was a reason for that, if she had done something to incur protection?

  She quickened her step down the stairs as the doorbell rang again. There was no mistaking it that time. Martha frowned. She wasn’t expecting anyone – her father wouldn’t arrive until the morning, weather permitting. The heavy snow made her nervous. If it stayed that heavy, then she and Ruby would spend Christmas alone and she wasn’t sure if she could cope with that. Unless of course he had taken pre-emptive action and come a day early? But surely he would have phoned?

  Martha heard music come from outside as she crossed the hallway and frowned again. Surely not carol singers? As she neared the door, she recognised the tune as ‘Hark, the Herald Angels’ – her favourite – and was stunned to feel tears prick her eyes. It should make her feel so joyous. Martha blinked back a tear as she opened the latch and pulled the door toward her.

  She couldn’t see him there at first. She peered out into the thick flakes of snow – like feathers drifting toward the ground. She looked out further to find the source of the music and was stunned by what she saw.

  There, at the top of the driveway, Will’s Volvo was parked again, the driver’s door open, the engine still running, the radio blaring the carol. And out in the snow, a tall black shape becoming clearer as it stepped into the light spilling from the front door. It was Will.

  He was before her in a single step, thrusting his hand in her direction, something clutched in his fist. Martha held out her hand to receive it.

  “What did she forget now?” she asked, attempting a friendly smile. “Something vital, no doubt!”

  She halted when whatever Will held in his hand
wasn’t forthcoming. She looked at his face directly and was surprised to see how serious it was. Her stomach sank. What had he come to tell her now?

  They stared at each other for a few moments, Martha’s eyes filled with fear and anxiety. Will’s searching her face in an attempt to find the right words. Eventually, they came.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  Martha turned her head to one side to hear him better. She wasn’t sure that he had said what she thought he did.

  But she had.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, his voice growing more urgent now. “These last few weeks, Martha – they’ve been hell. Being without you . . . I can’t . . . I’ve realised . . . I’m not made for that. Please listen to me when I say that I was all the way down that drive, in that snow . . . with Gabriel nagging me about being late for his bloody meeting and suddenly, it just felt . . . wrong . . .”

  He paused for breath and Martha stared at him in confusion, straining her ears to hear what he was saying against the music coming from the car which seemed to have grown in volume since Will had started to speak. He had noticed it too, it seemed. When he spoke again, he found that he had to shout over the choir from King’s College.

  “If you’d seen Ruby’s face today – in the store – when she saw Santa . . . Will you turn that fucking radio down!” he hollered suddenly in the direction of the car, turning his back on Martha as he did so.

  The response was immediate. The swelling of the carol deflated instantly and a chunky arm poked from the passenger window as it did, waving in acknowledgement. Will turned back to face Martha who had started to laugh at the scene. It was preposterous.

  “Look, when I saw her today, I had a wonderful time – I always do,” Will went on. “She’s such great company. But I find when I’m with her . . . I’m always lonely.”

  Martha tilted her head as he spoke, taking in his confused face, his flushed cheeks. He suddenly looked directly into her eyes.

  “Because when I’m with her, I know that I should also be with you,” he said and looked away again, momentarily embarrassed.

  Martha gasped, her stomach lurching at his words. “Will,” she began. She needed to stop him now. Whatever he was going to say would hurt her afresh, she realised. This was some sort of long goodbye. In the snow at Christmas time. She couldn’t bear it, she realised. Couldn’t listen to another word.

  “I’m sorry, Martha,” he said again.

  “What have you got to be sorry for?” she replied. “It was me . . . it was all my fault. And I’m so sorry, Will. I never meant to hurt you – never meant to do what I did. Dan means absolutely nothing to me – even less now, if that’s possible – you’ve got to believe me.”

  She was silenced by Will reaching out and taking her hands in his, the bulk of the small box which he still gripped awkward between them. Martha didn’t even notice it. She was too anxious.

  “I know,” he replied firmly. “I know that now . . . in fact, I knew that then – when Dan told me – but I couldn’t let myself believe it – it all hurt so much. I shouldn’t have run off on you like that, but I was so hurt. I thought I’d lost you that night in the lake – I was still in shock from what had happened and I just couldn’t deal with it, had to get away. But I’ve had so much time to think in Gabriel’s spare room and I realise that, yes, we still have some things to work out but I don’t want to be alone any more. Actually, that’s wrong – I don’t mind being alone – I can cope with that. What I can’t cope with is being without you.”

  He paused, looking directly into her eyes. A movement behind him caught Martha’s eye and she saw Gabriel emerge from the car and stand to watch, silent, his black coat pulled around him and clouds of vapour dissipating into the air as he blew on his hands to keep warm.

  And then she acknowledged the bulk of the small box being pushed into her hand as Will finally released it. She gasped slightly, unable to tear her eyes away from his face.

  “I think I’m doing a really rubbish job of this,” mumbled Will, “but I’ve started so I’ll finish.”

  He paused for a breath, looking at the box and then back at her face. “Open it,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  And she did, her expression softening, then turning to shock as she saw what was inside. Her eyes grew wide as she looked from Will to the ring and back again.

  “Will you wear it?” he managed. He rolled his eyes at his clumsy turn of phrase but it was as much as he could manage through the tears that were forming in them.

  In turn, a drop trickled down Martha’s face as she stared at him. Stared at his familiar features, at what she saw in his eyes – everything that they had been through, already the stuff of life and death, and everything that was yet to come. All the hope, the dreams . . . she was stunned into silence for a moment.

  And as the snow drifted silently around them, and their closest friend watched from a little way down the drive, Martha looked around her for a moment and saw everything with clarity. This is how it’s meant to be, she said to herself all of a sudden as the scene before her, around her and ahead of her felt absolutely right.

  Feeling the warmth as yet another tear trickled down her cheek, Martha looked back at Will and felt herself fill with love. And hope.

  “I will,” she said.

  If you enjoyed

  The Dark Water by Helen Moorhouse

  why not try

  The Dead Summer also published by Poolbeg?

  Here’s a sneak preview of Chapter One

  The Dead Summer

  CHAPTER 1: The Dead Summer

  28th May

  It was a balmy evening in Martha Armstrong’s garden in London and she and five friends were drinking champagne.

  “To Martha!” said Polly Humble and lifted her glass, insisting then in clinking it in turn against each of the five other glasses. It meant that she had to stand up out of her seat and lean over awkwardly to reach some of the others, but to Polly it had to be done this way or the toast hadn’t been done correctly at all.

  “To Martha!” chorused the other five.

  “On her great country adventure!” added Polly, who thought the whole thing a great lark indeed.

  All six took sips of champagne. Polly pretended to shudder with delight and rolled her eyes to the sky. Fiona smacked her lips loudly and Sarah said “Mmmm . . .” in an exaggerated fashion.

  Standing behind Fiona, Sue Brice made a face at Martha and stuck out her tongue at each of the people at the table. Martha looked downwards, trying to suppress a giggle but also feeling sad at the sham of it all.

  It took Claire Smith, one of Martha’s ex-colleagues, to finally say what the others were thinking: “So, Martha, what does Dan think about all this?”

  Sue opened her eyes wide at the question and cast a worried glance at Martha, who never flinched.

  “Oh, I think he’s actually quite pleased, to be honest,” Martha said casually. “Me moving to the country gets the fly out of his ointment, the elephant out of his room so to speak.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “And is Ruby all excited about packing her case and moving away with Mummy?” chirped Polly in an exaggeratedly high-pitched voice, as if she were talking to a child or an idiot.

  Sue rolled her eyes, unseen by the group.

  Martha fixed Polly with a stare. “She’s six months old,” she replied drily. “She can’t really tell the difference between moving to the country and next Tuesday fortnight.”

  Polly looked sideways under her lashes at Fiona and Sarah. Martha observed the glance, thinking that they couldn’t wish to be gone any more than she wanted them to be.

  “Are you sure that this is what you want to do?” asked Sue later when the others had gone and it was just the two of them left. She stood by the back door, smoking a cigarette out into the garden, while Martha shuffled about the kitchen making coffee for them both.

  Martha stopped pouring milk int
o the two cups, picked up an envelope which had been tucked in beside the microwave and held it out to her friend.

  “What’s this?” said Sue, opening the envelope and drawing out a document. “Oh.”

  “Yup,” said Martha. “Decree Absolute. Arrived this morning.” She looked around her at the bare kitchen, all of the furniture sold or gone to Dan’s new home, save the white goods which were remaining for the new owners. She sighed and handed Sue her coffee. “Oh, Sue, you know as well as I do that there’s nothing left for me in the city.”

  “Your friends –” offered Sue.

  “Who?” Martha cut in. “Polly Humble? Fiona Oldham? Sarah James? They’re all wives and girlfriends of Dan’s friends, not mine. They only turned up tonight to tick the box, as it were. I know for a fact that Sarah had Dan and Paula to dinner when I was five months pregnant!”

  Sue blew out a cloud of smoke. “Oh yeah, forgot about that, sorry,” she said apologetically.

  “As for Claire . . .” continued Martha, sipping her own coffee and wandering over to join Sue in the doorway. “Well, she’s been a good old sort but I know tomorrow she’s just going to go into the office and get into a huddle with Liz and tell her that I’m storming off to the country and giving up my job because I’m all bitter and twisted about Dan. She’ll make it sound all juicy and then by next week I’ll be ‘Remember Martha?’ and pretty soon Claire will have moved on as well.”

  Sue dropped the cigarette butt and ground it with her foot. “And you’re not at all bitter and twisted of course!” She picked up the butt between her forefinger and thumb. “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “Oh, plant it somewhere and see if a ciggie-tree grows! I don’t actually care any more – it’s not my house, right?”