‘Lorelei!’
Her name echoed all around and rang off the walls. I stared at her, her mouth pulled into that silent scream, her hair wafting under the surface and her eyes as bright as coral. The flood at my feet made it seem like the floor itself was shifting. The black-and-white squares were losing their familiar shape, twisting into one another.
And then a thought pushed into my mind. An urgent and desperate hope that forced away all the others: perhaps she was still alive.
Perhaps I had mistaken what had happened. There might still be a pulse beating in her wrists. I thrust my hands into the water and tried desperately to lift her, but her head arched back and the sides of the copper bath were too high. As the taps continued to pour down a torrent, I pushed my arms deeper until I was half submerged. ‘Lorelei!’ I shouted again, fighting against the radio in the corner as it blared her voice, the lines from a play recorded long ago.
Her body against mine as I wrenched her up with all my strength, I cried out her name for the last time. Then her face burst through the surface, her mouth open, as if she were gasping for air, and I stared into her eyes, waiting for them to turn to me. I stared from one to the other.
But there was no breath, no flush of colour on her cheek. And, as I felt it against me, I knew her body was as cold as stone. In that moment, with her in my arms, I collapsed downwards, my hair trailing in the water like hers, some of the strands intertwining and drifting in the tide. At the last I held her against me, feeling my arms shake, feeling numb, before I let her slip back under. Nothing but the icy water now.
The radio crackled as I stumbled out of the room, down the stairs and out the front door. ‘And what have you been to me, my love? What have you been to me?’
It was, I suppose, an hour later that I stood again on that landing. The floor was still awash but the radio was broadcasting a man’s voice. ‘In readiness for tomorrow’s magnificent celebrations for Liberation Day…’ I didn’t know when the programme had changed.
The house seemed full of men now. One asked me a question and I think I told him the answer. And Nick was there too – someone must have called him, though it hadn’t been me. I was thankful that they had: just having his familiar presence there made it feel like I was still in this world.
‘Did you touch her?’ It was an older man with square glasses and white hair, thin as a rake, who was speaking to me. He gently guided me away from the doorway so that I couldn’t see into the bathroom. ‘Did you touch her?’
I turned my bewildered eyes to Nick, wishing that he – or anyone, really – could answer the questions for me. I struggled to form any words: it was as if they had been locked away from me. ‘I… I tried to pull her out,’ I mumbled.
‘You tried to lift her out?’
‘Yes,’ I said. My mind was focusing, fighting through the shock of the body. ‘How did she… Did someone do that?’
He didn’t answer me. ‘Go back to the beginning. You entered the room – what then?’
I put my hand to my forehead. As I touched it, I felt a stab of pain. ‘I… fell. I think I hit my head. On the bath. Then I woke up on the floor.’
He wrote it down in a notepad. ‘That’s when you saw her, tried to pull her out, couldn’t, and ran for help. Is that right?’
My head was throbbing. I saw her image under the water. Shimmering and perfect. White all over. As I tried to remember, it hurt more. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said.
‘She was definitely dead at the time?’ I looked at him now. He had an air about him like one of the houses that had been bombed in the night Blitz, leaving a sad shell that, when the morning came, threatened to collapse in on itself.
‘Sergeant, as my wife told you–’ Nick interjected.
‘Please stay out of this, sir.’
‘She was dead. I know she was,’ I pleaded. I saw her again.
‘Mrs Cawson?’
I realized the policeman had asked me another question but I hadn’t heard it. Nick put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Sergeant, I’m taking my wife home,’ he said. ‘She can’t remember because she has concussion. It’s very common after an accident. You can speak to her later.’ He turned to me. ‘Just rest. You’ll be fine in a couple of days.’
‘I’m afraid you can’t take her, sir.’ I stared at the hammer-and-compass insignia on his cap. Even after years of seeing it, the sight still jarred.
‘I can and I will,’ Nick insisted, taking me by the arm.
We started to leave and I felt an overwhelming rush of gratitude to him. It wasn’t just gratitude, though – mixed in was a sense of guilt that was spreading as I recalled more. I had gone to the house in the mad, unjust belief that Nick was there, making love to her. I looked at him, trying to tell from his face if he knew what I had done, hoping that he didn’t, but I saw only concern for me. My eyes blurred with tears and I realized that, until then, I had been too shocked to cry.
But the policeman put an open hand in Nick’s path. He wasn’t young. He looked as if he had been in a few hard situations in his time and was prepared for another one if politeness wasn’t enough. ‘Dr Cawson, I can’t let your wife leave here until I’ve spoken to her. It’s the scene of a death. We have to know what we’re dealing with. You understand, don’t you, sir?’
Nick looked as if he were considering knocking the officer’s hand aside and taking me home regardless. ‘Good God, she’s concussed!’ he said. ‘If you just leave her be, she’ll get better, she’ll remember more. Talk to her tomorrow.’ He rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘And I have to leave. I have to tell my daughter.’ My God, I hadn’t even thought of Hazel, his daughter with Lorelei. Telling her would be a burden far greater than looking after me.
‘I understand, sir, but we’ll see what she remembers now. We won’t keep her too long.’ His manner was kind. I looked up at Nick and nodded. ‘I’ll make sure she’s all right, sir.’
Nick seemed to relent. But there was something else in his manner, and he hesitated. ‘Officer,’ he said. He took the policeman to one side and said something very quietly.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ muttered the other man. ‘When was it?’
‘A few weeks ago.’
I knew what Nick had told him. It was something that should have been just for us. The pain of that night, of what had happened at the party where Lorelei had shone so, had not gone away – would never go away – and now he was telling this policeman. It’s agonizing to have a stranger know your grief. They looked at me for what seemed a long time. ‘Come this way, please,’ the officer said to me gently.
‘All right,’ I said.
He led us into the master bedroom. The walls were covered with theatre playbills and film posters but it didn’t register that they were Lorelei’s productions until I saw her name in big letters at the bottom of one of them. ‘And just what were you doing here, Mrs Cawson?’ he asked. I didn’t know what to say. The shame I felt, the stupidity – they held the words in my throat. ‘Mrs Cawson. What were you doing in Miss Addington’s house?’