by Rachael Blok
UNDER THE ICE
Rachael Blok
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About this Book
About the Author
Table of Contents
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About Under the Ice
It is the week before Christmas and the cathedral city of St Albans is blanketed by snow. But beneath the festive lights, darkness is stirring. The frozen body of a young girl is discovered by the ice-covered lake.
The police scramble for clues. A local woman, Jenny, has had visions of what happened the night of the murder. But Jenny is an exhausted new mother, whose midnight wanderings pull her ever closer to the lake. Can Jenny be trusted? What does she really know?
Then another girl goes missing, and the community unravels. Neighbour turns against neighbour, and Jenny has no idea who to believe. As Christmas Eve approaches, Jenny discovers a secret about her past – and why she could be key to everything…
Contents
Welcome Page
About Under the Ice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About Rachael Blok
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
For Rob
Prologue
The frosted snowman stands in darkness as the young girl fights for her last breath. She loses, sinking deeper and deeper into the lake. The thin ice splinters with her last, feeble kick and the cracks run outwards, fracturing the frozen water. The moon watches with one eye open as the girl sinks into her final sleep.
Jenny wakes suddenly, uneasy. Has he stirred? She leans into the crib and the baby’s breath, warm and milk-scented, blows against her cheek.
What was the noise that woke her? It sounded like a voice, a whisper. And the rustle – was it the wind? And the sudden cold. The chill like a sharpened blade. Phantasms of the night so real she felt sure it was not a dream at all.
She is drenched. Her dreams have left her painted in a skim of sweat. Lying back on the pillow and watching Finn breathe in and out, his tiny chest rising rhythmically, reassuringly, she is finally led back to sleep.
Hope Cottage, standing minutes from the cathedral, is quiet in the final dark hours of the deep mid-winter night. Morning will arrive soon enough, with all its demons and knives.
1
14 December
‘Have we written Christmas cards for my family?’ Will asks, glancing at her before turning his attention back to the M25.
Jenny watches his brow furrow. The ground will be covered in a blink and will vanish, she thinks. The lanes stretching ahead of them are wet and black, visible only in the flashing instants following the ‘thwack, thwack’ of the wipers.
She turns to look out of her window before speaking. ‘Mmm.’
‘Have we brought a cake?’
‘Not this time.’
‘No?’ He sounds surprised. ‘You always make one. Won’t they think it a bit funny if we haven’t brought anything? Nothing at all?’
The car running alongside them has two young children in the back. They are making faces out of the window. Jenny smiles at them and they shrink back in their seats, turtle-like, giggling at having been seen.
‘No, your dad said he didn’t like it last time. He said he had never tried carrot cake and he never would.’ She rests her head back. Looking up and out through the window is making her feel sick. ‘Vegetables? In a cake?’ She can hear him now.
‘You’re not going to start on my dad, are you?’ Will sighs. ‘I could do without this today. We haven’t seen my family for ages and it’s a Christmas meal – just one afternoon. We’re spending Christmas Day with your father.’
Jenny looks out at the rushing vehicles.
‘No, not starting anything.’ The heavy exhaustion is setting in, just thinking about the afternoon ahead. Jenny can feel its familiar wave swelling up inside. Her in-laws seem to survive on endless cups of coffee served up in small, delicate cups with saucers. Their immobile precision awaits her like a straitjacket.
She had thought of her mother last night. Slivers of a memory had laced themselves before her lids as sleep fell: Jenny’s fingers knotted in her mother’s, resting on the bed, the feel of her black hair as Jenny brushed it out, sticking it with clips of all colours. Since having Finn, the loss is cavernous. She had been so young, the grief had been for a figure, a picture – for what she had not known. Memories for years had held themselves like postcards on a board, sepia, inflexible. The ache a faded bruise. But since becoming a mother, questions shaped themselves in her mouth before she remembered not to spit them out. When Finn was coming, deep in the birth pool, she was sure she had heard her mother’s voice call out, ‘Jenny.’ It had fallen in the pool with her, the sound landing lightly as she heaved up to clench against the surges, arriving slowly then quickly.
She is tired a lot. She knows Will thinks she has gone a bit mad. Maybe she has. She had been so capable before. Now, trying to do one thing a day takes all her will and might. Some days pass and she realises she has forgotten to clean her teeth until bedtime. Will is Will, but busier. She worries she has become someone else. Motherhood has taken her by surprise; it has taken root and possessed her.
The snow falls, and she loses herself in the rush of flakes, remembering: day, night, day… morning, and then Finn. The gift. She has been wholly changed.
It had begun with excitement. A throb. An ache belo
w her stomach, and she had leant forward on the sofa, placing her hand across the band of her trousers, wondering.
Will had hurried in from the kitchen, nervous, laughing, asking her all the questions at once. This first stage might take a while: ‘Don’t call until they’re four minutes apart, until talking is tricky.’ So, they had watched a film and held hands. Jenny had looked at his fingers, interlaced with hers and felt thankful she had chosen him.
Later, the pain was so much more than an ache. It had taken her to a place where she had felt entirely alone, working in isolation on breathing, straining, pushing. She couldn’t remember the point at which she had taken her hand away from his and needed it for herself, or even if they had been pulled apart by other demands: calling the hospital, arranging a taxi. Later, she had not wanted his hands on her or near her, his touch peripheral. She hadn’t slept and couldn’t eat. She had sunk intermittently beneath the surface of the birthing pool, to disappear.
The murky, confused minutes ticked by. Will appeared, dressed in a surgical gown, topped with a blue hat, pulling his hair back from his forehead and leaving him shorn and strange. His chin was bristly and without his hair bouncing upwards he had looked younger, vulnerable. For a brief moment, she had not recognised him. His had been a familiar face, but she couldn’t place it amongst the many faces vanishing, reappearing.
It had been hot; time had not been linear. Things happened in waves and bursts. They had made her sign a consent form for a C-section. She had grasped the pen and moved it in circles, only partly aware of what was being asked, absolutely unable to construct anything resembling her name. She was writing in code: red, warm circles that had clenched her and held her, and wrapped her up with this tiny baby.
The movement towards the theatre seemed to have spurred Finn on and when he appeared she had been too tired to weep. When they placed him on her chest he had been so tiny, defenceless. She had navigated the birth and now she was in charge. Finn. She had been entrusted with something remarkable.
Some part of her had quietly left, and something else had crept in.
Jenny looks across at Will’s hands now, holding the steering wheel. They grip tightly as he tuts: another car pulls in front. Will brakes hard in response and Finn wakes in the back. A shrill, desperate wail goes up and Jenny can feel the familiar tightening in her chest.
At the mercy of his cries, the pounding inside will not stop until she can pick him up and soothe him. Like a kinetic watch, the engine beneath her chest feels as though it will fail her if she sits still.
The cries fill the car and she glances at Will. He says nothing, staring determinedly at the road ahead.
She turns and picks up a toy from her bag, then waves the animal face with a bell for a nose wildly in Finn’s direction and smiles brightly.
‘It’s OK, darling, nearly there,’ she sings out.
The crying continues for minutes, stretching like hours. His fragile face has become red and wet, he is squirmed up and hot. She can see him in the mirror they have positioned on the back of the seat. Reflected back at them, he seems so far away. One of the books (she has read many, many books) has said babies need to be picked up within two minutes of crying in order not to feel abandoned, and she believes it. Her body screams Climb in the back. She can’t continue like this. The bubble of panic is rising, and it will escape in a bang if she doesn’t let it out gently, bit by bit.
‘We’re going to have to stop,’ she says, tensed against his response.
‘Where? Where do we stop, Jenny?’ Will’s voice is tight.
He isn’t deliberately trying to obstruct her but it is no good. She can’t sit here for another twenty minutes, as a witness to the tears.
‘Please,’ she says.
She looks up at him. His jaw is set.
Minutes pass.
Without speaking, Will flicks the indicator and she exhales, unaware she has been holding her breath. The car slows in a lay-by.
Her seatbelt is undone before the car stops moving and she climbs in the back. Finn is latched and feeding as Will slams the door and climbs outside. She doesn’t know where he is going, but she doesn’t care. The warm of calm slowly softens her stiff frame. She watches his face, smooth and intent as he drinks.
Will’s voice floats through the car window.
‘… probably about twenty minutes late… Yes… No, Finn’s hungry. We thought he’d sleep… back on the road soon. God yes, traffic rubbish… No, not the A34… Yes, I know you said it might be better…’
Slipping her little finger in his mouth to break the latch after ten minutes, she straps him back into his car seat and watches his tiny body, fast asleep. His face her entire world.
Fastening her belt, she doesn’t immediately look at Will as he opens the door. The moment of quiet is loud with something.
‘It’s OK,’ he says, turning the key and looking at the road before looking at her. ‘It’s hard for me to listen to his cries too, but if we’re on a motorway we’ve got to be sensible. I don’t think it would hurt him to cry for a bit. For fuck’s sake, Jen, he’s four months now.’
‘I can’t let him cry. I just can’t. You know that. I told you it was the wrong time to travel, that he would be hungry.’
‘We can’t dictate every action around his feed pattern!’
Another pause.
It didn’t used to be like this.
Jenny adjusts her top, as Will checks his mirrors.
She knows Will loves him, but she also knows, every fibre of her body knows: Finn needs her. Not Will, not yet. Not grandparents, not yet. Just her. She is Finn’s mum, and that’s it; it is all she can manage.
*
‘They’re here!’
The call from behind the door disappears in the ice wind as Jenny waits outside the big stone house; Will follows behind carrying presents, crunching frosty gravel. The large wooden door, decorated with an elaborate wreath, swings open without Jenny needing to ring the bell.
‘My darling boy,’ Felicity announces, swooping in and picking Finn out of Jenny’s arms, kissing him loudly on the cheek. A waft of expensive perfume drifts out of the doorway.
Jenny first understood Felicity through scent: perfume, coffee, sherry, leather gloves, mints, talcum powder. She enters rooms smiling. Today the musk is warm and expensive, with undertones of mulled wine by the fire.
Finn squirms and writhes under the embrace. Felicity adjusts her hold so he is more comfortable, and he grasps her finger, staring upwards intently. His blue eyes are serious.
‘Hello, Felicity. Lovely to see you. Sorry we’re late,’ Jenny says, as she climbs in over the step, shivering involuntarily. ‘He woke and needed feeding. I know Will wanted us to push through but I couldn’t leave him to cry.’
‘Of course you couldn’t. I remember what it’s like. William used to scream like a wailing banshee whenever we went anywhere in the car.’
‘Really?’ Jenny is surprised. ‘How did you cope?’
‘We wound the windows down, dear, to let the noise out. Henry was determined we weren’t letting ourselves be ruled by a little one. That’s what one did back then. All different nowadays, I think. None of the “teach them disappointment” attitude we grew up with. There was lots of disappointment when we were young so I don’t think we knew how to do it any differently.’
Shoes and coats come off, and the clatter of disrobing and unpeeling fills the usual expectant pause by the shoe rack. Henry doesn’t like muddy footprints.
Floral stuffed sofas sit around a low coffee table, scattered with house interior magazines, tilted precisely.
Felicity lowers herself into a chair, and looking at Finn, not Jenny, asks, ‘Coffee, dear? How’s little Finn’s reflux doing?’
‘How is she? Coping any better?’ Jenny can hear the loud, shouted whispers from Henry coming in from the hall with Will.
‘Jenny. How lovely to see you,’ he says, entering the room, his large frame hiding Will from view.
&n
bsp; ‘Lovely to see you too, Henry. How are you?’
‘Oh well, struggling on. Now tell me about this terrible business…’
‘Henry, let them settle,’ interrupts Felicity with a frown.
‘Sorry, dear. Coffee?’ he says, picking up the pot from the tray and pouring it into the arranged coffee cups, waiting expectantly for their fill with an unblinking eye. The liquid splashes in obediently.
Felicity asks if her father caught his flight on time and Henry says, ‘Now what do you make of…’ and carries on uninterrupted.
Jenny allows the warmth of the room to relax her. Time ticks on. Will rolls into home mode, detailing work successes, nodding appropriately. She feels her eyes closing and her head lolling forward, and she jerks it upright, pulling herself awake. She catches the end of something.
‘… clear what’s going on, with this trouble up your neck of the woods.’
‘Sorry?’ Will asks. ‘The office?’
‘No, no, St Albans. They found a girl’s body in the lake this morning, I saw. Only a teenager. You haven’t heard?’
Jenny has been popped. The air whooshes out of her; she deflates, like a sagging balloon, suckered to the sofa.
‘Really, in St Albans?’ Will asks, sitting up straighter.
Henry picks up the iPad. ‘Let me get the story up.’ He flicks his fingers over the screen.
‘I can’t believe it! We were walking at the lake only yesterday,’ says Will.
‘Poor girl.’ Jenny tries to speak, but she has no voice.
‘Here, have a look,’ Henry says to Will.
Jenny leans forward, gripping her cup. The handle is hard and cold in her hands. She looks over at Finn and opens her mouth, fish-like.
‘How old was she?’ asks Felicity.
Will is reading. ‘Mmm, they don’t give her age. Either she’s not been identified, or they’re not saying yet.’
Jenny’s throat closes in, gripped by something, gently squeezing each breath. Trying to ask questions, to ask for help, nothing will come. Everything swims around her, and she feels herself begin to sink beneath the surface. Fluid, heavy, her head bobs down. Darkness closes in. The cold, like a knife.