The Drowning Read Free Page B

at my face, then stare around the room. There’s no one here. It’s only a small room: sink, toilet, bathtub with a shower at one end and a plastic shower curtain bunched up. Black mold between the tiles, and on the ceiling. My heart’s still beating ten to the dozen in my chest.
    I was there, in the lake. I was there when my brother died.
    I take a few deep breaths, sucking the cold, damp air deep into me, trying to calm down.
    The tap’s still running, gushing full pelt into the sink, gurgling down the drainpipe. I don’t want it on my face, in my eyes, but I am thirsty. I turn the top around, cutting the flow to something a bit more than a trickle. I lean over again and hang my head under carefully, turning my face so I can catch the water in my mouth.
    It’s cold and clean. I swish it around, squirting it between my teeth, slooshing it over my gums, inside my puffed-out cheeks, then I spit. I swallow the next mouthful and the next, feeling the cool freshness make its way down inside me. I’m ragingly thirsty — the more water I drink, the worse it seems to get. Ireach up and increase the flow as I gulp and swallow and gulp some more. Water spills out of my mouth, down my chin and my cheek.
    Cee.
    Someone says my name — not like the shouting and splashing that I heard before — this is close, here, in this room. I stand up, turn the tap off, and look behind me. There’s no one. I shake my head, dig the corner of the towel into my ears to get the water out.
    It sounded like … But it couldn’t be. I heard him last night, though, when I was drifting off. But that’s different, isn’t it? When you’re nearly asleep, the edges blur, you’re halfway into your dreams, aren’t you? But I’m awake now. The cold water’s seen to that.
    Someone’s messing about, playing tricks on me.
    I take two paces across the room and yank the plastic shower curtain all the way back. The bathtub is empty. This room is empty. But there was someone … I heard someone.
    I go onto the landing, stop for a minute and listen. It’s quiet. Somewhere in the distance, a siren is howling, but even that fades and disappears. I head toward Mum’s room.
    I walk softly inside. It’s not as dark as mine. The curtains are open and the streetlight outside is casting a yellow glow onto the patterned walls. The bed is empty. The floor still strewn with clothes and discarded plates.
    I know she’s not here, but I still say, “Mum?” into the emptiness. There’s no reply.
    I turn and walk back to my bedroom, mine and Rob’s, the room with the holes in the door. The thought of walking back in there makes me feel a bit sick. What if someone’s in there, waiting for me? But the light from the landing shows me that there’s nothing, just the two mattresses — two crumpled sleeping bags.
    In the harsh light of the bare bulb overhead, the room looks smaller and sadder than ever. I look at my watch. Ten past three. Must be ten past three in the morning. I cross to the window and part the curtains. I’m on top of the shops, looking out across an empty streetlamp-lit parking lot and a stretch of grass beyond, fringed by terraces of houses. There’s no one about. I rest my elbows on the windowsill, prop my chin in my hands, and stare out. I don’t exactly remember this, but there’s something comforting about it, which makes me feel that I’ve done this before. Stood here. Stared.
    After a while, I open the top panel of the window and push it out as far as it will go, fixing it open by slotting the metal peg on the frame into one of the holes in the handle. It’s a still night, but the opening brings some fresh air into the room, and a sort of background hush, nothing you can put your finger on, just the sound a small town makes in its sleep.
    No chance of sleep for me. I’m a hundred percent awake.
    I start sifting through some of the stuff on the floor. T-shirts, socks, pants. There doesn’t seem to be a dividing line anywhere, nothing