Hold My Hand (35 page)

Chapter Sixty

The shock of first hitting is like death by a thousand knives. There is a thin layer of ice on the surface, and the water below is so cold he feels his heart stop momentarily. And then he's through, still falling, and his foot catches on something, goes sideways, and he feels the ankle snap. Screams, underwater, loses his breath and chokes as he tries to take another, and then he's floundering toward the air: burning, freezing, red agony swimming across his vision.

He breaks surface, gasps, coughs, throws his arms outward to spread the weight of his body. His ankle feels as though it's being crushed in a vice and there's no strength in the leg below the knee. My boots, he thinks. My boots will drag me down. Oh, god, it's so cold, so
cold
. I've got to get out, get out, my God, this cold will kill me.

His skin is burning. It feels like it's been stripped with acid, like someone's stabbing red-hot needles into him. He grabs a huge, ragged breath, and swim-pulls himself toward the stairs. The top of the dock is six feet above him. The water level must have dropped over the years since the house was built.

His hand lands on wood and he knows, even before he tries it, from the sponge-like texture, the way it squeezes down beneath his grip, that it will never hold his weight.

He tries, anyway. Pulls himself one, two hands'-lengths up the sloping support before he feels it crumble in his hand and he slaps back down into the lagoon. Tries again. This time a larger chunk breaks off; hurls him backwards horizontally so he catches his skull a sharp blow on the wall.

It's my coat, he thinks. My coat and my boots. They're making me heavier. I've got to get rid of them.

He holds himself steady against the wall as he struggles out of the coat. Lifts his good leg, and jabs with numb fingers at the laces. I can't. I can't do it. I can't grip.

“Hello?” he calls.

No answer.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

No response.

Kieran swims back to hold on to the rotten upright of the stairs. Clings to it like a child to a hot water bottle. The cold is really taking a grip now, great gusts of shivering racking his torso.

“Hello?” he calls again, “I'm in trouble, down here. You've got to help me.”

In the gloom, a small figure, indistinct, pale against the night, leans out over the hole in the ceiling. She doesn't speak.

“Look,” he says, and stops to breathe. Coughs, and spits into the water. “I'm sorry if I frightened you. But you've got to help me. I can't get out of here. The stairs are rotten and the walls – I think I've broken my ankle. I'm going to get really ill really quickly if you don't help me.”

No movement. He finds the torch in his pocket – thank God they're all waterproof these days – switches it on, points the beam at her face. She is grinning. Piercing dark eyes and carved-out cheekbones. I don't know what it is she's wearing, but it looks like it's made of satin or something. It's too loose. It's all wrong.

“I'm just – you don't have to come down here. I'm just asking you to – to go and get help.”

Lily cocks her head to one side. Frowns, as though confused.

“G-g-g-go and g-g-get someone,” he stutters. “From the house. Tell them there's someone in the dock, tell them to get a rope. Tell them to call the police. Please. I need you.”

The smile is back. Lily sits back on her haunches and tosses her tangles.

“I will – I will die,” he says, “if you don't help me.”

She lets out a sharp laugh. Opens her mouth wide so he can see where she is missing her back teeth.

“I'm cold,” says Lily. And vanishes.

He wants to scream. It's my mind. I've started hallucinating.

“Hello?” he calls.

Silence. Just the sough of the breeze in the eaves.

He can feel his heartbeat slow. Where is she? She can't just…

There's no sound from above. No footsteps, no shifting. He strains to hear, plays his torch over the hole in the ceiling.

Nothing.

There is no way out.

Yes there is, says his failing brain. Those doors: the ones that lead out to the lake. They never go all the way down to the ground, because they'd be too heavy to open if they did. I can swim under. I can swim under and swim out, and… I don't know what I'll do after, but I have to take the first step and get out of here.

He makes his way, slowly, painfully, across the dock. I can barely swim. This leg: it's not working properly. I'll have to crawl when I get out. Crawl across that lawn. That door won't take much more pushing to let me in. I can get inside. She'll have to let me stay. Have to. She can call the filth if she wants. I don't care. She can't leave me out here in the cold.

The door is rough against his hand. He hangs on to the cross-strut and tries to catch his breath. “Hello?” he calls again, hopelessly. And when the cry is answered by silence, he takes a lungful of searing air and dives.

The water is black, viscous. Kieran pulls himself down, down, hand over hand, gropes for the bottom. It seems a long way. It can't be this far. Hand by hand down the cross-strut: the same spongy, leaden feeling to the planks. He punches at the barrier, feels his hand sink through. Rotten. It's rotten like the rest of it.

He lets go. Drifts upward. Breaks surface and gasps at the blessed air.

My God, I'm so cold. This water: it's sucking the heat from me. I can feel it, deep inside now, the black; tentacles spreading out from my stomach, consuming me. I won't stay conscious for much longer. I have to go now.

He hyperventilates, once, twice, drops down on the third. Pressure. Down.
Can't come up again. This is my last chance.

He holds the cross-strut, kicks with his good foot.
Yes. I can feel it. It's going. It's…

A crack, dulled by the water. Yes.
It's gone. I'm there. I can… maybe I should go back. Take another breath.

No. Go now. Go. You can breathe on the other side.

He levers himself down again, launches himself forward at the gap. Takes two swooping strokes with his arms.

Something snags. A belt-loop, a nail; all forward motion halted.

No. Nononono…

Panic. Red, black, all-consuming.

Let me go. Let me go. I'll say I'm sorry. I'll take it all back

Thrashing, in the water, trying to turn round, face the enemy, fight off the imprisoning hand.
Godgodgodgod. Mustn't scream. Mustn't waste breath.

He feels the seconds tick by. Feels the air burn in his lungs, his trachea contract. Flails, blindly. Drops the torch as he scrabbles behind him.

The wood gives way. The nail lets go. He's free.

Forward. Now. Forward.

Kieran pushes back with his hands, kicks hard with his good leg. Shoots away from the door. Cups his hands, and pulls.

Reaches the ice on the surface. Thick and hard and inevitable, because the open air is always colder than the air indoors.

Chapter Sixty-one

Yasmin wriggles out of the bundle her mother has made of them, wrapped against the cold in duvet and bedcover. Cold light streams round the curtains, draws her to the window. She no longer feels afraid. Something has shifted in the night, she senses it, and there is nothing more to fear. Her mother has succumbed, sometime in the night, to exhaustion; sleeps on like the dead, her mouth slightly open, head lolling on her shoulder.

She ducks beneath the curtain, climbs up and kneels on the window seat, traces the ice-patterns on the outside of the window with her finger. The clouds have cleared in the night, and the sun shatters the snowy morning into a billion shards of gold. She can see, filled in by fresh snowfall, faint traces of where her father walked down the path to the front door, where he worked his way from window to window round the house's perimeter. Otherwise, the garden is pristine, untouched, as it was when she woke yesterday.

A yew branch shivers, shrugs off its load with a dull
whump
.

She can feel it. The quietness. Whatever it was, whatever gave them such cause for fear last night, it is over.

It takes a moment, screwing her eyes up against the brightness of the snow, for her to notice Lily, standing by the garden gate. She's got her evening dress on. She smiles, waves.

Quietly, quietly, Yasmin edges the casement open, leans out into air that feels like the beginning of the world.

"Shhh," she whispers. "My mum's asleep."

Lily swishes across the garden, comes to stand below the window.

"I came to say goodbye," she says.

Yas feels a little lurch, the first tiny register of loss.

"Where are you going?"

"Portsmouth," says Lily. "Find my mum. She must be missing me."

"Don't go," says Yasmin.

"It's time," says Lily. "Don't worry. You'll be all right, now."

"But who am I going to talk to?" asks Yasmin.

Lily throws her head back, laughs. "Well not me, that's for bleeding sure."

"But..." says Yasmin.

Lily shakes her head.

"I'm going, now," she says. "I can go, don't you see? I’m allowed, now."

"Oh." says Yasmin. She doesn't have the vocabulary for it. Doesn't know what to say.

"Don't worry," says Lily. "It'll be all right now. He can't hurt you no more. It's over."

"How will you find your mum?" asks Yasmin. "Portsmouth's a big place."

Lily shrugs. "Dunno. Guess I'll find out when I get there."

"Will you come back? If you can't find her?"

"You have got," says Lily, "to be joking. I ain't coming back here, never."

She feels the prick of tears behind her eyes.

"But what about me?"

"Give it a rest," says Lily. "You've got your mum. I ain't got nothing here now. I've got to go and find out what I
do
got."

She turns and swishes back to the gate. Passes through it and starts up the hill. She doesn't seem to be hampered by the snow: passes over it as though it were thick white ice. Yasmin leans her elbow on the windowsill, her chin on her hand, and watches her progress. A hundred yards out, Lily stops, turns back and looks at her again.

"Toodle-pip!" she shouts. "Don't do nuffink I wouldn't do!"

When she reaches the top of the hill, disappears over its brow into the grey-white nothingness beyond, Yasmin closes the window. Climbs down and makes her way across the carpet. Tugs at her mother's shoulder.

“Wake up, Mummy,” she says. “Wake up.”

Bridget, deep asleep against her will, starts, tenses, returns instantly to last night's defensive crouch.

“It's all right, Mummy,” says Yasmin. “It's okay.”

 She's still half-asleep, eyes barely focusing; casts about her with a gaze half-feral, half-paralysed.

Yasmin kneels and puts her arms round her neck. Holds her there, comforts her, warmth of childish breath in hair. “It's all right, Mummy,” she murmurs again. “We're safe now.”

She feels a hand come up and stroke the back of her hair. Bridget lifts her other arm and looks at her watch. It's past eight o'clock. They've been in here ten hours, waiting, and exhaustion must have overcome her, dragged her down in the small hours into an opiated, dream-filled sleep.

I have lived it over and over. He has come through the door, through the window, through the walls. Larger, darker, stronger than before, face obscured, intent palpable. He has been in here with me, with us – and yet we have survived the night.

Her mouth is gritty, her throat sore. Her back, knees, hips ache with cramp and tension. And yet, she is alive.

“It's all right, Mummy,” Yasmin repeats. “Come on.”

She holds out a hand.

“I dreamt –” says Bridget – “I dreamt he came.”

“I know,” replies Yasmin. “But he won't come now. It's okay. Lily made it stop.”

Bridget frowns at her. She looks, strangely, older – not older, just more adult, wiser. Serene, as though she has learned great secrets in the dark. “It's okay, Mummy. It's over. He won't come again.”

Bridget uncurls herself and crawls across the carpet. Ducks beneath the curtain and peers through glass at quiet snow, at rising sun. Something's happened, she thinks. Something's changed. Did I dream it? Did I imagine he was here?

“The lights are back on,” announces Yasmin.

She glances back into the room, sees that the bedside lamp, left on last night as she went to the bath, glows feebly in the morning light.

“Come on,” says Yasmin. “Let's have breakfast.”

“No,” says Bridget. “No. I'll call the police. The phone will be back on, if the electricity is. They can come. They can check.”

“I
told
you, Mummy,” says Yasmin. “It's all right. I know it's all right.” But she sits back down on the bed, hands between knees, and waits, patiently.

Bridget looks at her for a few seconds. Takes in the calm, the self-possession, the blue, blue sunshine of her smile. Lifts the phone from the charger, waits for the tone, dials.

Yasmin pushes back until she is sitting against the wall. Picks up a pillow and wraps her arms around it.

“She's gone,” she says.

Bridget, listening to the phone click through to the emergency-line press-button options, is distracted, only half-hears her. “Who's gone, baby?”

“Lily,” says Yasmin. Lies down, and gazes across at her. “Lily's gone.”