Chloe slips from her grasp, lands side-down. Bel, stuck in the mud herself, wobbles, lets go, flails and, coming abruptly free, falls forward on top of the others. She feels Chloe’s slimy face against her own, panics, thrashes in the murk, comes up gasping. Jade is down there, somewhere, forced underwater by the weight on top. Bel can see her feet kick, sees a starfish hand break the surface, grabs the wrist and hauls. Puts her weighted foot on a lichen-slippy rock and feels her feet go out from under her again. She lets go of Jade’s wrist and tries to find the bottom with her hands, to push back to the air. Under the surface, it’s particles and brown and bits of weed, the whoosh of bubbles stirred up by her struggling limbs.
She breaks the surface. Jade is on the other side of the pool, sliding backwards on her elbows, coughing and spitting, hair black with twigs and earth, a single mallow stem wound round her ear, the flower dangling, showy like a pirate’s piercing, by her left cheek. She feels it, swipes at it, panicked, and flings it out into the middle of the water.
It lands on Chloe’s half-submerged body. She is not moving. Her face is below the surface.
‘Oh Jesus,’ says Jade, and lunges back out into the pool. She grabs the back of Chloe’s top and flounders back to the bank. Bel throws herself after them. Together they manoeuvre the child on to stable ground, look desperately into her face for signs of life.
There’s duckweed hanging from her mouth, snagged on her gappy incisors.
‘She’s not breathing. She’s not breathing!’ Bel flops a lifeless wrist about; pats at lax white cheeks.
‘CPR,’ says Jade. She’s seen it time and time again, on General Hospital. The dead springing, coughing and weeping, back to life under the pumping fists of paramedics. She pushes Bel away, leans both palms on Chloe’s chest and pounds up and down from the hips. Keeps doing it, over and over, until, after five minutes, she hears something go crack inside and an oily bubble rises up from the child’s parted lips.
Chapter Forty-six
She finds the crumpled remains of a packet of cigarettes in her pocket: three Camel soft-top, a miniature lighter tucked beneath the foiclass="underline" Jackie’s brand. She must have left them in here one of the many times she borrowed the fleece to go and stand in the garden. She looks at them for a moment, then thinks, Oh, what the hell. There’s no one to tell me not to any more, and it’s not as if I’m riding high on the longevity list.
She puts one in her mouth, lights it and inhales deeply, filtering out the ugly optimism of the dawn. It’s stale and harsh, and makes her out-of-practice brain stagger under the force of the nicotine. She has to lean one hand against the station wall for a few seconds, to stop herself falling down. Goddamn, she thinks. You hardly notice the effects if you do it all the time, but tobacco is powerful stuff.
Martin stirs and utters a gurgle of mindless humanity. Amber looks down, sees that his blood has almost reached her feet. She steps back, repelled, and takes another drag on the cigarette. If he’s still bleeding, his heart’s still beating, she thinks. I have to wait till it stops. I need to be certain he’s dead before I call.
On the seafront, she hears a car engine start up, the crunch of tyres as it pulls out of its parking place. That’ll be her, she thinks. Please don’t let her change her mind. There’s been enough waste already. Our lives, this shrivelled, bitter existence, it has to stop at some point. The cycle of revenge and punishment and passing it on to the next generation, it has to stop. I won’t let it spread out, destroy her nice husband, those clean, safe little kids. What good would it do? Who would it help? Society. I know. Society. But let’s face it: society doesn’t really care who it blames, as long as it blames someone.
She takes another drag and walks over to where the coupler lies, blood and skin and hair entwined among the bolts and the butterfly nuts. The iron has been painted red against rusting, flakes chipped off where it’s seen impact. She picks it up, two-fingered, and dangles it in front of her face, strangely fascinated. Bet this won’t go down so well with Health and Safety, she thinks. Bet someone will lose their job over this.
She leans her arm out over the guardrail, and heaves the weight of the coupler out into the air. Watches as it spirals downward, is caught by a wave and sucked beneath. She can see it sink for a foot or so after it enters the water; is impressed that the Whitmouth brine is clean enough to allow any visibility at all. The sea will do its work. Nothing remains unscoured for long in those endless, restless depths. Even if they look, if they find it, if Kirsty’s fingerprints are still on it, there won’t be anything else to link her to the crime.
A sound attracts her attention. Martin has started to fit, there on the floor. His heels drum like pistons on the wood, fingers bone-straight and brittle. It won’t be long now. Even if she does call an ambulance, the chances that he will survive, she thinks, remembering the deaths she has seen before, are slim; his skin is blue and what remains of his lips are drawn back to show his wisdom teeth. But she’s not going to. There will be no one to bewail his passing, she’s sure of that, and if she’s going to make this sacrifice, she wants to ensure that it is not in vain.
She finishes the cigarette and drops it after the coupler. A gull swoops down in hope of a tasty titbit, sweeps on with a shriek of disgust. To her surprise she finds herself smiling. I should make the most of these last few minutes, she thinks. I suppose this is the last time I shall ever see the sea.
There’s a bench beside the station: white-painted wrought iron, a lovely view of Funnland. Beyond the walls, her friends – her erstwhile friends – will be finishing up: wiping down the final surfaces, packing away their gear with a yawn and a sigh of relief. She sits, and surveys the view: flags and bunting, the blue-and-white of striped canvas awnings, the shine of rain-soaked stones catching early-morning rays. Three tiny figures pick a slow route along the top of the rollercoaster: a maintenance crew, or some teenagers who got past Jason Murphy and are celebrating their sense of immortality. You’re not much of a place, Whitmouth. But you’re my place. The only place I’ve ever thought of, even if only for a while, as home. I shall miss you.
She lights another cigarette.
Another parting, a quarter-century ago. Amber remembers her mother, visiting her in the remand centre. Coming emptyhanded, wrapped in cashmere, looking older. Bel attempts to throw herself into her mother’s arms, and finds a hand extended, blocking her approach. ‘Don’t,’ says Lucinda. ‘Just don’t.’
They’re not allowed to be alone – Bel is slowly understanding that she will never, to all intents and purposes, be alone again – but the crop-haired weightlifter in charge affords them what privacy she can by sitting on the far side of the rec room. Bel sits on a stained, armless, tweed chair with tubular steel legs. Lucinda, after scanning her options, picks a moulded grey-plastic chair beside a table four feet away and perches on it gingerly, as though she is afraid of infection. Both seats are fixed to the floor: a precaution against fighting. She puts her bag on the table, leans an elbow watchfully on the strap, even though they are the only people there. Crosses one knee elegantly over the other. She wears graceful wedge-heeled boots in green leather.