Cold Water Read online

  I reach the first stone easily, to my surprise. I let out a sigh of relief when I feel my feet hitting hard rock and I straighten up, brushing the dark strands out of my eyes. “Not bad for a beginner,” he approves. Then, as if he’s just looking for a chance to show off, he leaps elegantly to the next stone, spinning again to watch my jump. I have something to prove. I manage the next jump easily as well. Not perfectly or agilely or gracefully like him, but I don’t fall into the water and that’s good enough.

  My luck runs out quickly.

  The third stepping stone is further away. Of course Ash had made it look easy, but he has the advantage of being athletic and right now I’m not even at full health…why am I being put through this torture? However in the end it’s my miscalculation allying with my impulsiveness that is my downfall.

  I feel my feet touch the edge of the stone before I realise something is wrong. I slip, my stomach lurches and my breath catches before suddenly I’m falling through thin air as I let out a strangled scream. It’s not like those stereotypical thriller movies at all. Time doesn’t stop and my heart doesn’t skip a beat; it’s quite boring, really. It’s over in a second and I don’t even realise what’s happened before a horrible coldness consumes me and suddenly I’m underwater where it’s muddy and murky and I can’t see anything. And it’s freezing.

  My clothes drag me down, but my natural instincts kick in automatically and I flail and thrash my arms and legs, dizzy and disorientated. My precious oxygen escapes in a string of bubbles and I claw at the water to try and follow them. Thank god humans float. I somehow manage to find my way to the surface and I thrust my head upwards, up into the beautiful sunlight and the air which I gasp for greedily.

  I wheeze and take in deep breathes, relief washing over me as I tread water and make big splashes. I’ve never been a great swimmer. I try to calm my racing heart and everything around me is blurry because of the lake water in my eyes. Finally, I catch sight of the offending stepping stone right in front of me along with a pair of trainers. I crane my head, still gasping and splashing, to see messy hair and a smug smirk that clearly has a condescending ‘amateur’ written all over it.

  “Need saving again?” he squats on the stone so that I can see the amusement on his face.

  “I’m fine,” I assure him forcefully through gritted teeth, trying to hide the fact that the water is still freezing cold and I’m shivering. Is that a piece of lake weed wrapped around my leg? With a scowl, I manoeuvre myself in the water and kick hard, doggy-paddling it back to the bank. He also makes his way back, the same way we’d both come, a triumphant grin on his face.

  I drag myself out of the water, stumbling onto the grassy banks, gasping for breath while my saturated clothes weigh me down and threaten to topple me over. My head pounds, my limbs ache. Suddenly a hand appears in my line of sight. I recognise it as his hand and I force myself to stumble ahead without his help. He’s standing a few paces in front of me, smirking as though me almost drowning had been funny.

  “Are you okay?” he asks, feigning concern. I collapse onto my back, breathing deeply.

  “Just peachy thanks,” I gripe. “I thought you said it wasn’t dangerous.”

  He calmly sits down beside me. “Hey, you should’ve been more careful.”

  “You were the one who suggested it in the first place.”

  “Well, you listened to me!”

  I stare at him incredulously. “So it’s my fault?”

  “I wouldn’t say all of it was your fault but…”

  “Can we just go back?” I sigh in irritation and cut him off, trying to find the will to move. My arms and legs do not respond; traitors. I swear my conscience is recruiting.

  “Hope?” I give him the silent treatment. “Are you actually okay?”

  My limbs still won’t move. “Oh I’m just great,” I snap. “You know, apart from the fact that my head feels like it’s being split open, I can’t move, my arm hurts and – what is that slimy thing on my leg?”

  He laughs as he reaches over and gingerly picks it up, dangling it in the air. “Lake weed, apparently.” Then he stands up and I envy how easy it is for him. His face, complete with gradually-becoming-insufferable smirk, appears over me and he offers me a hand. It’s my pride, or sleeping here for the night.

  Although grudging, I accept the offered hand and with impressive strength he pulls me to my feet. I feel dizzy and stumble, but he steadies me. My wet clothes cling to my small frame and although the sun is beating down on our backs, I’m shivering.

  “Here, take this.” I’m surprised when he strips off his jacket and offers it to me. There is a genuine concerned look on his face which catches me off guard.

  “No, I’m fine.” I try to refuse the offer but my shivers betray me.

  He rolls his eyes and despite my protest drapes the jacket over my shoulders anyway. “You’re my responsibility, remember?” he says. I pull the jacket tighter around me. It’s warm, much too big for me and feels lovely. “Better?” I nod uncertainly.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” I ask. “Your jacket’s going to smell like lake water after this.”

  “I’m willing to take that risk.”

  “Thank you, I guess,” I offer him a small, nervous smile.

  “So you can smile,” he notes. “You should do it more often.”

  I blush slightly, but don’t saying anything else. I suddenly feel warm inside; a comfortable and pleasant sensation, one which I have to convince myself is only due to the jacket on my shoulders.

  Chapter 4: Life is just a masquerade

  It is superstition that if a robin flies into a room through the window, death will shortly follow

  I spend the rest of that day in bed, half awake and blearily conscious of my surroundings. Sometime around dinner Jenny comes up and checks my temperature, concluding that I have a small fever, which explains the headache. Ash is with her at the time and both of us know the real reason for my worsening condition. Obviously, the lake water has no healing properties whatsoever.

  When Jenny deems she has poked and prodded me enough, she leaves me alone, telling me to call her if I need anything. It’s only after she’s left the room that I notice Ash has remained, leaning nonchalantly against the wall with his arms crossed and a strange, unreadable expression on his face. He walks over and takes a seat beside my bed.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurt out suddenly, although I’m not sure why I’m apologising.

  “What for?”

  “Jenny. She’s fussing over me so much, but she’s your mother.”

  “I don’t mind,” he shrugs. “She does it to everyone; I think she has some sort of hospitality disorder. It’s almost a relief to not have all of her attention on me anymore.”

  “Oh,” is all I can say. I fidget nervously, staring down at my bedcovers. “Why does she care so much, anyway?”

  “She’s just like that. It’s called being nice,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone, as if I should already know that sometimes people do things just to be nice and not for ulterior motives.“What about your parents? Wouldn’t they do the same thing?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  He smiles, but it seems a little strained. “And I’m sorry too, by the way.”

  Now, this is a surprise. I raise an eyebrow. “What for?”

  “For making you jump stones with me. I knew you weren’t fully recovered, and it was irresponsible of me. I almost let you drown.” There’s a hint of guilt in his voice as he fiddles with his shirt and looks awkward. It’s almost sweet, I think to myself.

  “Okay,” I acknowledge, and it takes a lot of will power to fight down the grin that threatens to surface. Victory is sweet. “Apology accepted. Besides, thanks to me, your jacket smells of lake water now.”

  “Good point. You owe me, again.”

  “Hey, I’m sick, be nice.” I force out a racking cough to reinforce my point.

  “I can tell that’s fake, you know.”

  �
�Do you want me to cough for real and give you my germs?”

  He laughs, standing up and stretching. “Keep them. Just hurry up and get better, okay? You’re boring when you’re sick.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  He walks to the door, stopping at the entrance to the room. “I’m going down for dinner now. You’ll be alright on your own, right?”

  “Just fine.”

  “Are you sure? Not scared of the dark?”

  “Just leave, seriously,” I glare.

  “Cranky females.”

  He ducks quickly out of the room, before the cushion I throw can hit him in the face.

  I sigh once he’s gone, hearing him clattering loudly down the stairs. Then, I settle back into my pillow and simply stare at the ceiling, savouring the undisturbed peace and quiet. It’s a relief to be alone again. So much has happened to me over the past few days that it’s hard to comprehend. ‘Don’t get too attached’ I remind myself but already my resolve is wavering. Freedom is like chocolate – once you taste it, you want more of it. I wonder which is worse, having something and losing it or never having it at all.

  I’m used to being alone because it is something I understand. You don’t put yourself through years of self-inflicted isolation and learn nothing. I’ve learnt in this process that socialising is overrated. I wouldn’t say it’s completely useless, but why try and make someone else understand you if they’re not even willing to do so?

  Over the years my school has assigned me two counsellors. The first had come only a few weeks after my parents’ deaths. There had been nothing wrong with her, from what I remember. She had been a nice lady with a large torso, a smile that was just a little too big and horn-rimmed glasses. My memory there is blurry, but I vaguely remember hiding in the toilets to get out of our weekly sessions. She had not lasted long.

  The second counsellor came a few years later, in secondary school. I had been thirteen, rebellious and my teachers had gotten fed up with me. This time it was a man: Mr. Scott. He was fifty two years old, divorced and had two children; a young daughter and a teenage son. I remember him well. You see, he was different. He was not a particularly charming or clever man, but he was eccentric. He told me he wanted to help me. At first I tried to push him away. I faked the smiles and pretended to laugh at his odd jokes, trying to convince him that I was okay. But he could always tell when I was lying.

  But out of all of these things, what I remember the most about him is the story he told me once. A Chinese folk tale, I think he said. Either way, it’s this story that stayed with me, and for the first time made me think about life in a way that was not tainted by my own grief. The story goes something like this:

  A long time ago, there lived a wise old man and his son. They lived together in a small rural village, and grew vegetables for a living. One day this wise old man lost his only horse. It was a terrible loss, because he and his son were very poor. However when all of the neighbours came to comfort him he said to them ‘losing a horse is only losing a horse. It may not be a bad thing.’

  In the next few days the old man’s lost horse returned suddenly, bringing with it a herd of wild horses as well. However when the neighbours came to congratulate the old man, he said to them ‘why do you celebrate? This may not be a good thing.’

  A week later, the old man’s son was riding one of the wild horses when he fell off and broke his leg. Yet when the neighbours once again came to comfort him, the old man still said ‘a broken leg is only a broken leg. It may not be a bad thing.’

  In that same year, the old man’s village went to war. All of the young people in the village were sent out to fight on the battlefields, in the end all of them being killed. However, the old man’s son did not go to fight, because of his injured leg. Therefore he was the only young person in the whole village to survive.

  At first, I hadn’t understood the story. Why should I care about a fictional old man spouting cryptic philosophies? But then Mr. Scott explained. “The moral of that story is that things change,” he told me. “Sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better, but nothing is ever certain. All we can do is accept life as it comes and wait patiently for the next instalment.”

  It took me three weeks to admit it, but I was sad when our sessions ended.

  *****

  The night seems to last forever. The darkness plays tricks on me, black shadows dancing across the room and morphing into strange shapes. The room feels alien. It is too clean, too neat; too much like a hotel room. It smells of detergent and air freshener, a subtle mix that is nothing like my own room. My room is grubby and small, the ground splattered with clothes and the bed with its childish Harry Potter covers. There’s a single window that looks out onto a dreary street where people illegally park and the flow of cars speeding along the road is like an endless river.

  I miss my bed. I suppose it’s childish, really. My bed smells like me. It sags in the middle and the covers are creased because I never bothered to tidy them in the mornings. This bed has new, fresh covers that smell clean and unused. Sleep evades me for a long time.

  Eventually I just pass out from exhaustion. But this time, unlike my previous dreamless nights, my sleep is fitful. I dream of dark shapes and grey walls. I dream of nameless faces that cluster in crowds and shove roughly past. The grey walls bear down on me menacingly, like a cardboard box collapsing inwards. And then I hear someone calling out.

  “Hope Weller?”

  My eyes travel to the single door at the end of the room, where a chubby, middle-aged man with beady, black eyes has his head poked around the corner. I don’t know why, but I walk towards him. He scoffs impatiently and then gestures for me to follow him through the door. I do so and find myself entering an office with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a cluttered desk in the centre of the room. It reminds me of an interrogation room.

  I follow the stout man to the desk, which he takes a seat behind. Instinctively I take the seat opposite him and cross my legs nervously. My heart is racing in anticipation. He peers at me intently for a moment, beetle black eyes narrowing almost maliciously and his mouth turns downwards into a scowl. When he speaks, his voice is a blank monotone, devoid of anything.

  “Time of death: 17:26. Location of death: Outskirts of Cleadon village, Sussex, England. Cause of death: dehydration and fever.”

  I tune out completely after the first three words. ‘Time of death?’ I wonder silently, the full concept not sinking in. “Where am I?” I ask.

  If possible, he looks even more irate by my question. “You should already know that,” he chastises. At my blank look he rolls his eyes but explains reluctantly. “This is the headquarters for the society of lost souls.”

  “What?”

  “The society for lost souls,” he repeats, clicking his tongue impatiently. “All souls pass through here to verify the conditions of their death before they move on, however some end up staying here for one reason or another.”

  None of what he is saying makes any sense to me. “So who are you?”

  “Your personal adviser.”

  “I still don’t understand…”

  He then proceeds to give me the most patronising look I have ever received. “Hope,” he says gently, as if speaking to a fragile child. “You’re dead.”

  And then I wake up.

  The grey walls and the pair of stern, black eyes disappear suddenly to be replaced by blinding, white light which stings my eyes. I had forgotten to draw the curtains last night. I wait until the cream walls and floral-patterned ceiling swim into focus. Then I sigh and swing my legs over the side of the bed, reminding myself of where I am and what I have to do. There’s a part of me that had been expecting to wake up to a world of clouds and blue skies, some sort of afterlife, rather than blank walls and stark ceilings. I’m almost disappointed. But then I remember.

  Can’t die yet. You owe them that, at least.

  *****

  After breakfast, Jenny asks me to co
me out into the garden with her.

  “So, are you and Ash getting along?” is her first light-hearted question. It’s obvious that she has more serious matters on her mind, but I play along and do not press for answers.

  “Yeah,” I mutter, glancing around the garden. There’s a cobbled path leading up one side, winding its way to the flower bed that hugs the back fence in an array of vivid colours. In the far corner is a deserted birdhouse, ivy crawling up the sides like a colony of small, green insects.

  “I’m glad. I heard he showed you around the estate yesterday.”