The Drowning (13 page)

“Neisha!” I shout at the top of my lungs.

She turns.

“Wait! Wait for me!”

I set off down the hill, skidding and sliding but somehow staying on my feet. Water oozes around the sides of my shoes with each step. Neisha watches me run, and as I come clattering toward her she holds one of her arms out to the side as if she’s going to catch me. I pull up before we make contact, but even so she smiles and says, “Whoa.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I just …”

And now I don’t know what to say. How can I tell her to stay away from the lake without sounding crazy?

“Where are you going?” I ask, though I know the answer already.

The smile disappears from her face and she shrugs and looks down at the ground.

“I was just … I was going back to the … you know.”

“Going back to the lake?”

“Yeah. I thought it might help.” She’s awkward, apologetic.

“No!” I say, though it comes out more like a shout.

She looks up sharply.

“It’s all such a mess, Carl. It’s all so horrible. I want to try and make sense of it. Or find some sort of peace or something. Sorry, that sounds lame.”

“No,” I say. “No, it doesn’t. Just … just not there, that’s all. Don’t go back there.”

“Someone said there were flowers there, like at your house. I wanted to see. That’s all.”

“It’s just flowers, Neisha. It doesn’t mean anything.” There’s a sulky edge to my voice and I think,
I’ve blown it now. She’s going to tell me to get stuffed.

“It’s okay,” she says, putting her hand on my arm. Even through my sleeve I feel her warmth and it shocks me all over again. “I understand if you don’t want to go. It’s fine. We’ll go somewhere else. I can go back there on my own sometime.”

“No!”

There I go again, shouting in her face. This time a little fleck of spit jumps out of my mouth and lands near the corner of hers. Instinctively she takes her hand away from my arm and wipes the wetness away.

“For God’s sake, Carl,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I stand uselessly before her, shoulders hunched, no idea how
to stop this beautiful girl from doing something that might put her in terrible danger.

She sighs. “Let’s go somewhere,” she says. “Somewhere else.”

She slips her hand into mine and there’s that warmth again. My fingers curl around hers and suddenly everything seems possible.

I can figure out what to do about Rob.

I can keep Neisha safe.

We start walking up the hill.

“Nice umbrella,” she says, and I take the hint and move it over a bit so it’s covering her. My shoulder will get wet, but I’m too dazzled by her to care.

“Er … it’s Mum’s.”

Wrong way, Cee.

The voice is here. Rob is here, somewhere. Watching. Wanting us to turn back toward the lake. A chill touches my neck, cold air raising the hairs. I jerk the umbrella back toward me.

“What are you — ? Oh, you’re getting wet. Come here.”

She lets go of my hand and moves closer to me, putting her arm around my waist.

You’re dead, you bastard. You’re both dead.

I stiffen. What will he do next? How can I keep her safe? I peer behind us, expecting to see Rob’s pale face at my shoulder.

“It’s all right,” Neisha says. “No one’s looking. Anyway, we’re not doing anything wrong.”

That’s what she thinks. But I want my brother’s girl. I want her so badly every cell in my body is aware of her closeness. My
neck was cold a moment ago. Now there’s blood flushing into it and up to my face. It’s surging so hard into my groin I can hardly walk. I fancy my dead brother’s girlfriend. How messed up is that? He’s right to want me dead.

“I miss this,” she says. “Being close to someone.”

I’ve never had it. Have I? Any closeness me and Rob had was a different sort of contact. Holding each other in a wrestling grip, struggling to get the upper hand. This is different. This is comfort.

And it could be more, so much more. It wouldn’t take much. She could turn or I could and then we’d be face-to-face. My face near her face. My face touching hers …

“… to go?”

She’s looking at me as if she expects an answer, and I’ve got no idea what she just said. I look at her blankly.

“Shall we try the coffee shop in town?” she says. “The new one?”

“I dunno. Your dad’s expecting you home.”

“My dad? When did you — ?”

“I called round there first. He was a bit antsy …”

She rolls her eyes toward the sky.

“I’ll ring him,” she says.

She disentangles herself from me, then takes her phone out of her bag and switches it on.

“Dad? I’m in the park. No, I’m fine. Honestly. I’m with a friend, we’re going to — Yes, Rob’s brother. Dad, don’t be like that. We’re going for a coffee, okay?” She holds the phone away
from her ear for a few seconds, then quickly says, “I’ll see you later,” and finishes the call.

“He’s fussing,” she says.

“Can’t blame him,” I say.

“I know, he never liked me going out. Now … well, now he doesn’t want me to leave the house at all.”

“At least he cares,” I say.

“Yeah, I know.” The phone’s ringing. She checks the screen, makes a face, presses the
OFF
button, and puts it in her bag.

“So where shall we go? Not the new coffee shop?”

I don’t want to be around people. I want it to be just me and her, like it is now. We’re walking past the park café now — a bedraggled collection of plastic tables and chairs huddled on a square of concrete by a hut with a serving kiosk. There are a couple of smokers sitting at one of the tables, hardened nicotine addicts who would still be out here even if it were snowing. And that’s all. No one else.

“What about here?” I say.

“Whatever,” Neisha says easily. She catches my eye. “What do you want? You hungry?”

I shake my head and we’re both smiling. It feels familiar, as if we’ve shared secret smiles before.

We go up to the counter and order a couple of drinks: Coke for me, coffee for her. I don’t want to give up the umbrella and I don’t have enough money to pay for both drinks, so I stand awkwardly for a moment until Neisha pays and picks them up. We walk over to a table, the one farthest from the smokers. The
umbrella in the middle is standing at an angle and one edge is hanging over the table, dripping onto it.

“Not here,” I say. “It’s wet.”

“Everywhere’s wet,” Neisha says. “Don’t be soft. I’ll get some napkins.”

She puts the drinks down, wipes the table, and sits down. I push at the pole of the umbrella, trying to get it to stand up straight, sending a shower of drops onto Neisha, the table, and me. The pole settles back down at the same angle.

Bring her to me.

“Shut up!” It’s out before I can stop it.

Neisha frowns at me.

“I didn’t say anything. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

I feel stupid, exposed. To hide my embarrassment I crack open my can and, still standing, I sip my Coke. The sharp fizz doesn’t soothe me this time. The bubbles crackling on my tongue add to my agitation.

“Sit down, Carl,” Neisha says. “Sit down and talk to me.”

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Suddenly I don’t want to be sitting here, surrounded by drips and drops, a soggy world holding voices, smells, things I don’t want to see. I want to be inside, somewhere warm and dry. I want to sit under one of those hand dryers you find in public toilets. Sit there and feel the hot, dry air blasting over me. I want to feel safe.

But Neisha’s looking at me, expecting me to sit. I pull a chair back a little and perch on the edge.

“… early days, after all.”

I’m doing it again. Not listening.

“Carl?”

“What? Sorry. Sorry, Neisha.” My leg is jiggling like a jackrabbit’s. I keep flipping the metal tab on the top of my can up and down, up and down. Gotta keep her safe. Gotta keep him away from …

“You don’t really want to be here with me, do you?”

“Yeah, of course I do. You’re the only person … the only one who can understand.”

“I know. That’s what I’ve been thinking. We were the only ones there. We’ve been through something huge. Do you think we’ll always be … close?”

Close. Her lips touching mine. Her breath on my skin. But we can’t be really close if she doesn’t know what I’m going through. If I don’t tell her the truth.

“ ’Course,” I say.

It’s stopped raining. Rob’s gone. I relax a bit.

“Neisha,” I say. “You know how I helped you …”

“Yeah,” she says. “You did more than help me. You saved my life.”

She’s looking at me from underneath her eyelashes. They’re thick and dark and stubby, and I wonder what it would feel like to brush the end of them with my fingertip.

“Well, I want to keep doing that. I want to keep you safe.”

Her eyes soften. She reaches across to me now, touches my wrist, and it changes everything, chases away all thoughts of confession. She keeps her hand there, but her face darkens.

“Thanks, Carl, but there’s no such thing as safe, really, is there?” she says. “We’re just hanging by a thread. One thing, just one little thing, can finish it all.”

“Like water,” I say. “Water in your lungs, not air.” And shivers run up and down my spine, making my arms twitch. Neisha notices and her hand tightens a little. Steadying. Reassuring.

“Yes,” she says. “Or one cell going wrong. Growing too fast, taking over.”

We’re not talking about Rob anymore. I’m guessing it’s someone close, but I don’t want to assume, say the wrong thing, spoil this.

“Like … cancer?” I say.

“My mum,” she says, and the fingers on my wrist tense further. One of her fingernails moves against my skin, digging in. I don’t mind. She can give me some of her pain.

“I’m sorry,” I say. Doing that thing — apologizing for something I didn’t do. Understanding it now. That it’s shorthand for “I’m sorry this has happened to you.”

“Not your fault,” she says. “Not anybody’s.”

“Was it … ? I mean, how long … ?”

“Ages ago, when I was five. Dad moved here to make a new start. He transferred from the factory in Birmingham to the one here. S’pose he thought he was doing the right thing …”

“Wasn’t he?”

She sticks her bottom lip out a little.

“No family. No friends. Years of having no one to talk to, being the only Indian girl in the room, the only one in the whole
miserable town. I love my dad, but I hated him for bringing us here.”

And if she hadn’t been here, then she wouldn’t have met Rob. And he wouldn’t have hurt her and she wouldn’t have tried to get away …

“Now this factory’s closing, so God knows what we’ll do next.”

Her face is so sad. Not teary sad, just resigned, worn down. I want to prove her wrong. I want to make things okay. But what can I do? What can I possibly do that would make things better?

Without thinking I half rise from my chair, lean across the table, and kiss her lightly on the cheek. I close my eyes and inhale as my lips brush her skin. And my head is full of white chocolate, vanilla, peaches. She’s sunshine, not the feeble, half-hearted stuff we get in England — full-on tropical sunshine.

I realize what I’ve just done and move slowly away from her. I hardly dare open my eyes. When I do, my self-defense mechanisms kick in. I smack my head and grin stupidly.

“Sorry, sorry. Don’t know what I was doing. God, why did I do that?”

I squint at her out of the corners of my eyes, and she’s smiling, too.

“It’s all right,” she says. “It’s all right.”

And just in this moment, in this glorious second, a fraction of time shared by us, known only to us, I feel happy. Everything else is forgotten. And I want it to stay like this forever. I want to
keep her looking at me, through her ridiculously thick eyelashes. I want to keep that light in her eyes, these dimples on either side of her mouth.

There’s a loud crack. Out of nowhere a gust of wind blasts under the table umbrella, stressing the fabric to bursting point. All the water gathered on top cascades onto Neisha, almost like someone is tipping over a bucket. The napkins on our table blow onto the grass, the table itself rocks as the umbrella pole strains to escape from the hole in the middle. Neisha’s coffee cup rolls on its side and dumps its contents in her lap.

Neisha screams.

She jumps up and flaps her hands as if that will shake the water away. She’s dancing on the spot, squealing. Her hair is flattened against her scalp by the water from above. The tops of her legs are steaming as the coffee soaks into her jeans.

I grab a handful of napkins from the next table and hold them out toward her.

“Are you all right? Are you burned?”

The noise she’s making is halfway between laughing and crying.

After a couple of minutes dabbing at her hair and face and neck and legs, she’s calmed down enough to laugh about it. The woman in the café kiosk brings her another coffee, on the house, and a towel. Neisha dries herself properly, wipes the chair again, and sits down. The sun appears from behind the clouds and I can feel its warmth on my skin.

“Jesus Christ, what just happened? That was like an act of
God or something!”

Despite the sunshine, her words send a shiver down my spine. In a way I’m sure she’s right. It was deliberate. Someone made it happen. Someone in a jealous rage. And it reminds me how real all this is. Rob. He’s still here. He wants Neisha dead.

I thought I could keep her safe, but maybe I can’t.

“Neisha,” I say, “don’t go down to the lake. Will you promise me?”

She tips her head to one side. “I just think it’s something I’ve got to do.”

“Not today, then. And don’t go on your own. Take me with you. Promise me you won’t go on your own.”

“Okay,” she says, “I promise.”

She sips her coffee. I wish I had coffee not Coke now. I don’t even like the stuff, but I want to taste the same thing as her.

“I’d better be getting back, before Dad goes completely apeshit,” she says after a while.

Without the rain, there’s no excuse to huddle together, and we walk out of the park side by side, not quite touching. When our fingers accidentally bump, I look the other way, embarrassed. I’m itching to put my arm around her, draw her close, to walk in step with her, find the same rhythm. But I can’t … and I don’t need to. Her fingers find mine, threading in between so our hands join up like a zipper. And now I do look at her, just a glance. She’s face-forward, acting cool, like she holds hands with boys all the time. But the last boy she held hands with was Rob.