Into the Water(4)

She sat and watched all the comings and goings, and if she didn’t see, she felt. Even before the lights had started flashing blue over on the bridge, she’d felt something. She didn’t know it was Nel Abbott, not at first. People think the sight’s crystal clear, but it isn’t as simple as all that. All she knew was that someone had gone swimming again. With the light off, she sat and watched: a man with his dogs came running up the stairs, then a car arrived; not a proper cop car, just a normal one, dark blue. Detective Inspector Sean Townsend, she thought, and she was right. He and the man with the dogs went back down the steps and then the whole cavalry came, with flashing lights but no sirens. No point. No hurry.

When the sun had come up yesterday she’d gone down for milk and the paper and everyone was talking, everyone was saying, another one, second this year, but when they said who it was, when they said it was Nel Abbott, Nickie knew the second wasn’t like the first.

She had half a mind to go over to Sean Townsend and tell him then and there. But as nice and polite a young man as he was, he was still a copper, and his father’s son, and he couldn’t be trusted. Nickie wouldn’t have considered it at all if she hadn’t had a bit of a soft spot for Sean. He’d been through tragedy himself and God knows what after that, and he’d been kind to her – he’d been the only one to be kind to her, at the time of her own arrest.

Second arrest, if she was honest. It was a while back, six or seven years ago. She’d all but given up on the business after her first fraud conviction, she kept herself to just a few regulars and the witching lot who came by every now and then to pay their respects to Libby and May and all the women of the water. She did a bit of tarot reading, a couple of seances over the summer; occasionally she was asked to contact a relative, or one of the swimmers. But she hadn’t been soliciting any business, not for a good long while.

But then they cut her benefits for the second time, so Nickie came out of semi-retirement. With the help of one of the lads who volunteered at the library, she set up a website offering readings at ￡15 for half an hour. Comparatively good value, too – that Susie Morgan from the TV, who was about as psychic as Nickie’s arse, charged ￡29.99 for twenty minutes, and for that you didn’t even get to speak to her, just to one of her ‘psychic team’.

She’d only had the site up a few weeks when she found herself reported to the police by a trading standards officer for ‘failing to provide the requisite disclaimers under Consumer Protection Regulations’. Consumer Protection Regulations! Nickie said she hadn’t known that she needed to provide disclaimers; the police told her the law had changed. How, she’d asked, was she supposed to know that? And that caused much hilarity, of course. Thought you’d have seen it coming! Is it only the future you can look into, then? Not the past?

Only Detective Inspector Townsend – a mere constable back then – hadn’t laughed. He’d been kind, had explained that it was all to do with new EU rules. EU rules! Consumer Protection! Time was, the likes of Nickie were prosecuted (persecuted) under the Witchcraft Act and the Fraudulent Mediums Act. Now they fell foul of European bureaucrats. How are the mighty fallen.

So Nickie shut down the website, swore off technology and went back to the old ways, but hardly anyone came these days.

The fact that it was Nel in the water had given her a bit of a turn, she had to admit. She felt bad. Not guilty as such, because it wasn’t Nickie’s fault. Still, she wondered whether she’d said too much, given too much away. But she couldn’t be blamed for starting all this. Nel Abbott was already playing with fire – she was obsessed with the river and its secrets, and that kind of obsession never ends well. No, Nickie never told Nel to go looking for trouble, she only pointed her in the right direction. And it wasn’t as though she didn’t warn her, was it? The problem was, nobody listened. Nickie said there were men in that town who would damn you as soon as look at you, always had been. People turned a blind eye, though, didn’t they? No one liked to think about the fact that the water in that river was infected with the blood and bile of persecuted women, unhappy women; they drank it every day.





Jules


YOU NEVER CHANGED. I should have known that. I did know that. You loved the Mill House and the water and you were obsessed with those women, what they did and who they left behind. And now this. Honestly, Nel. Did you really take it that far?

Upstairs, I hesitated outside the master bedroom. My fingers on the door handle, I took a deep breath. I knew what they had told me but I also knew you, and I couldn’t believe them. I felt sure that when I opened the door, there you would be, tall and thin and not at all pleased to see me.

The room was empty. It had the feeling of a place just vacated, as though you’d just slipped out and run downstairs to make a cup of coffee. As though you’d be back any minute. I could still smell your perfume in the air, something rich and sweet and old-fashioned, like one of the ones Mum used to wear, Opium or Yvresse.

‘Nel?’ I said your name softly, as if to conjure you up, like a devil. Silence answered me.

Further down the hall was ‘my room’ – the one I used to sleep in: the smallest in the house, as befits the youngest. It looked even smaller than I remembered, darker, sadder. It was empty save for a single, unmade bed and it smelled of damp, like the earth. I never slept well in this room, I was never at ease. Not all that surprising, given how you liked to terrify me. Sitting on the other side of the wall, scratching at the plaster with your fingernails, painting symbols on the back of the door in blood-red nail polish, writing the names of dead women in the condensation on the window. And then there were all those stories you told, of witches dragged to the water, or desperate women flinging themselves from the cliffs to the rocks below, of a terrified little boy who hid in the wood and watched his mother jump to her death.