LITMIR.BIZ

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loved his creations. He didn’t care anyway. If we’d been on the Titanic he would have packed me and Alfie off in a lifeboat and happily joined the orchestra. Nothing fazed Josh. And that’s what I liked about him when I first met him. Everyone at Stealth Records, where I used to work, used to flap like seals on speed if a taxi didn’t arrive on time or if a press release missed its deadline. But it was impossible to get a rise out of Josh. He’d just shrug and come out with some kind of non sequitur, giving the impression of confusion and/or low IQ, so the executives mostly left him alone.

      He never said much. Even when we were married he wasn’t verbally expressive. But he’d write messages on Post-it notes and leave them around the flat and sometimes in my desk at work for me to find.

      I loved it that he hadn’t got sucked into the utterly manic culture of Stealth, especially as, when I started, I got landed with a massive campaign and spent my first year spinning in a PR tiz. But on Friday afternoons, after the marketing meeting, I’d sneak off down to the studio and watch Josh work, not listening or paying much attention to the music but basking in the calm he radiated.

      He was in constant demand for engineering even though, truth be told, he wasn’t the best. Josh was simply cool. He was cool in life and he was cool at the end. I was glad he felt nothing.

      I didn’t either for the first week.

      Then the rage and frustration came.

      The pain was my connection for a long time. He had given it to me. It was all that was left attaching me to him, along with his name, the care of our son and an insurance policy that eventually paid off the mortgage on our flat.

      I tried to keep things normal for Alfie but it was hard to live there with the constant expectation Josh would wheel his bike through the front door.

      One day I found a Post-it in my jumper drawer. He must have hidden it months before. It read ‘I don’t tell you enough that I love you’.

      It killed me.

      I mean, it really, truly finished me off. The old Sarah died that day.

      After the sobbing and puking and screaming I knew I couldn’t remain in the husk of my old life.

      Josh had moved on and so must I.

      So that was that.

      I left the flat that night and returned to Essex to stay with my mum. The next day I put the flat on the market. Three months later Alfie and I moved into the house in Leigh-on-Sea.

      For the most part it pleased me to live in Leigh. There was a sense of community, tradition. People knew each other and soon started to recognize me and Alfie. It was nice, different to London, although sometimes, I’ve got to say, I missed the cynicism, the illegal twenty-four-hour off-licences and the anonymity. Down here you couldn’t mention someone’s name without being overheard by their wife/husband/cousin/sister/brother-in-law/mum/best friend (delete as appropriate).

      But the up side was that the grocer called you by your first name when he handed over your change, on Thursdays the Rag and Bone man drove down the street, the butcher saved you lardons on a Saturday, and the library would phone you to let you know that book you were discussing had arrived.

      No, at that point in time, I didn’t mind Leigh at all.

      We reached the beach and as I came out of my thoughts I heard Lottie saying ‘And then the credit card! Honestly, Sarah, I could have killed him.’

      Remembering herself she apologized. ‘I’m sorry. Metaphorical and all that.’

      I was used to it. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. But I was pleased when, once we’d set out the blanket and the picnic, Lottie took the boys off to get their sugary rewards.

      Determined to enjoy a moment to myself I removed my sandals, rolled up my trousers and sauntered down to the sea.

      The noise levels were more subdued here than at Leigh. The lazy rhythmic lap of the waves frothed about my ankles, warm and inviting. Out on the grey horizon a large transport tanker crept towards the North Sea.

      I closed my eyes, lifted my head to the sun and breathed the salty air in deeply. The tension in my body started to dissipate.

      ‘Sarah.’

      It was a low whisper, close to my ear. I opened my eyes and turned around. A quick scan of the beach revealed no one that I knew. I stood alone in the surf. On the beach I saw our blanket was empty. Lottie and the boys were still on their ice-cream expedition.

      ‘Sarah.’

      A woman’s voice.

      This time it seemed to come from my left but there were only two children determinedly building a wall against the encroaching tide. The voice was much older.

      ‘Sarah.’

      Something drew my eyes down to look at the sand.

      I froze.

      Caught in the high beam of the one o’clock sun, my shadow barely stretched before me – a fat compact dwarf-like outline.

      But beside it there was another shadow – the long blackened haze of a woman’s shape.

      As I stared transfixed, small strands of shadow hair wisped out of what looked like a bonnet and fluttered in the breeze.

      And then it came to me, like a forgotten memory or a dream, swamping me, taking me down.

      Running aimlessly through a garden: hurtling, staggering, losing my footing in the loose earth, sprawling, staggering, rushing towards … no, no, not going towards, but running from something or someone. My sobs choke me and I feel the desperate strangling claustrophobia of misery, of utter desolation, entrapment. There is no hope. Then out of the garden up to the road. Slowing to an unsteady walk. Vision blurred. Panting. Wet face.

      Clouds roll in over the heavens. Grey sky. Buildings the colour of slate give way to reveal the water surrounded by rushes. It is waiting for me, the Drowning Pool, my saviour, my haven. Take me.

      Through the reeds, I descend deeper into the water’s embrace. Then from behind, a shout. ‘Sarah!’ A middle-aged man in an ochre jacket. Father. Panic, thrashing into the pool. No! I step backwards. Away. Wading further into the centre.

      Take me.

      The heavy drag of wet fabric makes me stumble. Water-drenched, my skirt billows out beneath me in the shallows.

      My doom.

      A foot catches the floating cloth and I am under, gulping the pond into my lungs, filling them, losing myself in the pool’s murky depths.

      Take me to him.

      Down, deeper into the blackness of death, swirling, searching for welcoming numbness.

      Then suddenly fingers around the back of my neck, gripping my dress. Hands about my waist, heaving, lifting, bearing me through the water. Staggering, falling, up again. On the grass. The hardness of the road, mud under my head. Coughing water, air. Two faces above, father and another, a woman full of tears: Mother. Oh, Mother. Look what has become of me.

      Beyond them, a crowd.

      A woman in a black bonnet has stopped to stare. She nudges her gentleman companion. ‘Who is it there?’

      A voice loud and booming. ‘’Tis the Sutton girl in the Drowning Pool.’

      The woman clucks. ‘It wouldn’t take her, see. She floats.’

      ‘No, the water will not take her sort.’ A large man now, white beard, shabby frock coat. Fierce. ‘She cannot drown herself.’ He makes the sign of the cross.

      Spittle on my feet.

      ‘Witch.’

      ‘Sarah!’ The voice cut through the scene like a blast of cold air. Familiar, shrill – Lottie.

      ‘Deaf as a bloody post. What are you doing? Standing there like a zombie?

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